A good guy will be laid to rest today.
 
Pat Dawson passed away last week – much, much too soon – and the world is a worse place for it.
 
Our paths overlapped at Concord University, where I was SID and the Mountain Lions’ play-by-play voice and he was an assistant coach for a football program ascending from irrelevance. The rise to the top is always thrilling, and it was an exciting time in Athens.

Concord went just 1-21 over the 2007 and 2008 seasons. But by 2011, Pat’s first season on Garin Justice’s staff, the Mountain Lions completed a remarkable turnaround that included an unlikely conference championship and a spot in the NCAA playoffs.

All the coaches were helpful and easy to work with. But Pat and I, both being somewhat low on the athletic department totem pole, had more chances to talk freely about things. He’d give me the straight dope on what was going on with the team, knowing that what needed to be kept in confidence would be treated as such. He was also unfailingly enthusiastic, and it was clear that he loved what he was doing.
 
Concord went on to greater heights in 2014, and Pat rose through the ranks to become defensive coordinator in 2016. To lose him now, too soon, is a tragedy. Heartbreaking. And unfair.
 
A good guy will be laid to rest today.
 
Rest in peace, and thank you, Pat Dawson.

The Appalachian League faces an uncertain future. Franchises in Pulaski, Greeneville, Johnson City and Danville are on solid footing, but the same can't be said for places like Princeton and Elizabethton.

The Minnesota Twins have had a team in Elizabethton since 1974, and it's been one of the most accomplished in the league. The E-Twins have won ten league championships, the most recent in 2012, and are a perennial contender. But the on-field accomplishments haven't translated to the turnstiles -- Elizabethton has finished no better than 5th in attendance in the past five seasons.

Elizabethton's home park -- Joe O'Brien Field -- opened when the Twins arrived 43 years ago, and it's been showing its age for more than a decade. That, the middling attendance numbers, and the city's deliberate approach to funding upgrades to the ballpark have put the long-running Twins affiliation in jeopardy.

During the Princeton Rays' recent series at Elizabethton, I sat down with E-Twins General Manager Mike Mains for a candid, illuminating conversation on the future of professional baseball in a town of 14,000 people.

That interview will be aired in three parts, in the "Dugout Show" segment of the Princeton Rays' Pre-Game Show during the P-Rays series at Bluefield. The pre-game show begins at 6:45 pm EDT on Saturday, July 8th, 5:45 pm on Sunday, July 9th, and 6:45 pm on Monday, July 10th.

You can hear the pre-game show -- and the game -- online, on the Princeton Rays Network.