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The lights attract people from far away, like beacons in the night guiding folks from their busy lives to a relaxed atmosphere downtown.

The center of Greensboro isn’t a skyscraper but a ballpark.

Now finishing its fourth season, NewBridge Bank Park is still drawing people from all over the Triad, people wanting to get away from things, people wanting to step back in time a little. Baseball is back in Greensboro in a big way.

You walk into the ballpark, and it still feels brand new. That’s the way Donald Moore and his staff of hundreds want it.

“We want people walking in here for the first time to feel like it’s home,’’ the Grasshoppers’ president and general manager said. “We want them to feel like it’s all new.”

Hours before the games, volunteers and college students walk around the entire park, wiping clean every one of the seats, every surface, every nook and cranny of a park that has transformed downtown Greensboro and has helped spark a regional and national upsurge in new ballparks. Almost every night, people come to NewBridge Bank Park just to see it, people from other towns, other cities, other franchises.

The park has become a model for downtown redevelopment, and people want to see it for themselves. When they walk in, they see a clean, green expanse that looks as if the land was just lying there waiting for someone to pour a baseball stadium into it.

“It’s the little things people notice,’’ Moore said. “It’s not the big things. That’s what we have to remember.’’

In the hours before the game, people are scrambling. Moore’s daughter, Allison, is sitting cross-legged below the stadium seats, working on a tricycle that will be used for one of the countless skits designed to entertain the crowds.

Katie Dannemiller, the franchise vice president, is on the radio directing someone to the front gates. People are running past batting cages carrying sacks and tools and bags filled with gags, seemingly none of it having anything to do with baseball.

“There are a lot of moving parts,’’ Moore said. “You’re always planning for the perfect game, and it never happens. Something always goes wrong — the radar gun doesn’t work or the scoreboard. It could be anything.
You always keep trying, thinking the next game’s going to be perfect.”

The park is full outside, and there’s a baseball game getting ready to start, but from under the stadium where all the work is going on, it’s chaos. People are running in from the field and running out to the field.

People are settled into their seats above, relaxing on a perfect summer evening with family and friends. The beer is cold. The peanuts are fresh. The grills fill the park and the entire downtown area with the smell of hot dogs.

And on the field, a dog is running to the plate. She has a bucket of baseballs in her mouth.
“Babe” is the team mascot, the league’s best-trained ball and bat retriever and one of the biggest draws Moore has.

“That’s one of my main jobs,” he said. “I was standing out there with Babe one night, and this little girl was working for me at the field gate, and the umpire signaled that he needed baseballs. So, I turned to her and said, ‘Hey, he needs three baseballs.’ And she looked at me and said, ‘Well, why don’t you take ’em to him?’ I said ‘No, you need to take ’em.’

“So anyway, I come off the field and the guy who watches the gate for me looks at the girl and said, ‘Do you know who that man was that you just talked to like that?’ And she said ‘Yeah, he’s the dog handler.’

“That’s me. The dog handler.”

There are close to 200 people working on any given night at the ballpark, and the work continues through the game and after. The chaos below belies the calm atmosphere above.

Greensboro’s ballpark is still brand new. The people come from all around to walk in for the first time, night after night. It’s like a field of dreams for some, a return to childhood, a place to get away from daytime stress and unwind in a clean, comfortable seat in front of a minor-league baseball game and seated over a minor-league franchise that works like a machine.

The people walk in and out all night, a casual take on a game they’ve been around all their lives. The park is in its fourth season, and it feels like it’ll be here forever. There’s no rush to get here early, no worries about walking in late. The lights stay on all night, drawing people in at their leisure.

When they decide to come, the game will be waiting for them as if it had been there for years and years, waiting for each person to walk in for the first time in their lives, night after night after night.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com