News-Record.com

Another home run
The Grasshoppers closed with a victory last week and another banner year in attendance, drawing 10,103 fans to NewBridge Bank Park for their Labor Day finale.

The Hoppers just barely fell short (331 fans) of last year’s record attendance but led the South Atlantic League in total attendance anyway, attracting more than 440,787 fans.

The team has eclipsed the 440,000 mark in all four seasons it has played in its downtown park, defying conventional wisdom that attendance significantly dips after the novelty of a new stadium wears off.

There were other noteworthy successes:

-- hosting 8,367 fans for the South Atlantic All-Star Game in June;
-- capturing SAL General Manager of the Year honors for President and General Manager Don Moore for the fourth year in a row — and Community Relations Director of the Year honors for his daughter, Allison Moore.

Even though the team didn’t post a winning record on the field, center fielder Mike Stanton, 18, still was dazzling and became the youngest U.S.-based pro player to hit 35 or more homers in a season since at least 1962.

All in all, a grand old season for the grand old game in Greensboro.

The best-dressed kids
Guilford school administrators can’t explain it, but “sameness” seems to be “in” this year. Ho-hum Standard Mode of Dress rules are catching on.

Not only are most students complying with those rules, but administrators say they see a positive difference, so far, in student behavior.

Six of the system’s schools have added SMOD policies, bringing the total to 36.
Rules vary from school to school, but the typical outfit pairs shirts and pants and sets modest limits on skirt lengths.

Rather than a conformity comeback, the dress code may be helpful because it levels the sartorial playing field for students who, for whatever reasons, used to feel left out.

As one school staffer noted, “I don’t completely understand it, but if it works, who cares why?”

From balloons to goats
We had just finished watching the longest balloon drop in history at the GOP Convention Thursday night when we changed channels only to find Guilford County Commissioner Billy Yow talking on The History Channel about the mysterious death of his goats.

Yow was featured in an episode of “MonsterQuest.” The spot, titled “Vampire Beast,” apparently first aired earlier this summer. It investigates the killing of animals by a creature that has been found in a swath running from southeastern North Carolina up to Guilford County. The beast attacks animals’ necks but otherwise doesn’t mangle the animals it kills, hence the “vampire” designation.

But the creature might not be so spooky after all. The show ends with the speculation that it’s some type of big cat, or cats, making these kills. It shows a cell phone photo supposedly taken at one Carolina site of a cat that looks like an eastern cougar.

So is that the vampire beast?

Or since the cougar has supposedly been killed off in this part of the country, could it be a close cousin? Some speculate that exotic pets, including big cats, escape or are released into the wild and roam rural areas.

Whatever it was on the show, it’s probably still out there. Someone from Liberty in Randolph County posted recently on the Internet that animals in that area also are mysteriously being killed.