League swap pits Spartanburgers vs. Greenville Drive. Who will you cheer for next season? (2024)

SPARTANBURG — The Upstate just got a new sports rivalry.

Spartanburg’s new minor league baseball team, The Hub City Spartanburgers, announced July 23 that it will compete in the same league as the Greenville Drive—the High-A South Atlantic League, also called the Sally League.

“I am looking forward to developing a healthy and fun rivalry with our friends in Greenville and throughout the Carolinas,” Tyson Jeffers, Spartanburgers general manager, said in a press release.

Set to start play in April 2025, the Spartanburgers will also compete with nearby rival the Asheville Tourists and the rest of the South Division members, the Winston-Salem Dash, Rome Emperors and Bowling Green Hot Rods.

Jeffers told The Post and Courier that the Spartanburgers will play four six-game series with the Drive — two at home and two in Greenville— for 24 total rivalry matchups.

The Spartanburgers will also play one home and one away series with the Asheville Tourists for a total of 12 games.

The season starts April 9, and Jeffers said the team will release its full schedule in a few weeks.

Greenville Drive GMEric Jarinko noted that this will be the first time since 2019 the team will compete with a fellow South Carolina club as that was the last season it played at the Single-A level against the Charleston RiverDogs.

"Obviously, it's going to create a kind of a natural rivalry between the Drive and the Spartanburgers," Jarinko said. "This'll be the closest opponent we've ever had."

Spartanburg Mayor Jerome Rice said he expects the rivalry games to be sellouts.

"We want to win all 24," Rice said. "I’m sure the mayor of Greenville, Knox White, and I will have a friendly wager on the side, maybe a co*ke or a Pepsi.

"I can’t wait for the first series to go off," he added. "Baseball is back in the 'Burg."

Minor League Baseballconsists offour levels, or classes, withTriple-A at the top just below MLB, followed by Double-A, High-A and finally Single-A.

The Texas Rangers-affiliated Spartanburgers were initially set to play in the Single-A Carolina League, as that is the current league of the club they’re taking over, the Down East Wood Ducks of Kinston, N.C.

Now, the Spartanburgers will take the place of the Hickory Crawdads as the Rangers’ High-A affiliate. The Crawdads, a fixture of the Sally League since 1993, will drop a level and return to their roots in the Carolina League as the Single-A affiliate of the Rangers after the 2024 season.

While many Spartanburg residents are thrilled about the new club, so much that one fan even got the team logo tattooed on his leg, the Greenville Drive ownership has been less than happy about the competition.

Drive owner Craig Brown told Greenville City Council on July 2023 that the clubprotestedthe arrival of a Spartanburg minor league baseball team, calling it a "significant threat" to the business. His concerns were added competition and fans leaving the Drive for Spartanburg's team.

Jarinko said he expects the club to be successful in 2025 and beyond despite competing for the Upstate baseball fanbase.

"We've positioned ourselves in the Greenville and Upstate community for 19 years as a community asset," Jarinko said.

Longtime Spartanburg residents might recall that this isn’t the first Hub City-based team to play in the Sally League. The Spartanburg Phillies were among the initial crop of teams in 1980 and stayed with the league long after they moved to North Carolina in 1995, where they're now the Kannapolis Cannon Ballers.

The name South Atlantic League started in 1980, beginning with eight teams as a Class A league. Following a one-year run as the High-A East in 2021, the South Atlantic League returned as a 12-team circuit reaching from New York to Georgia.

The modern-day Sally League began as the Western Carolina League in 1948, although the league’s name has existed in the minor leagues for more than a century.

Fifth Third Park, the future home stadium of the Spartanburgers, will host 66 baseball games as well as other sporting events, concerts, comedy shows, festivals and more.

Part of a broader mixed-use $425 million development that will include offices, a hotel, parking garages and a multifamily development, the project is reshaping Spartanburg’s downtown as the city continues to rapidly grow.

Jeffers briefed Spartanburg City Council at a July 22 meeting on the progress of the stadium, saying that its construction is going as planned and the club staff hope to move into it around February or March 2025.

He added that ticket sales have been "overwhelming in a very positive way," and that single-game tickets behind home plate should cost around $18 to $20.

"The response, without doing a ton of marketing, just organically, has been off the charts," Jeffers told city council members.