. . . They will come back fifty years later. In the 1960s and 1970s Del Murray Field on East Maddox at Cobb Park Drive was a showcase Little League park: scoreboard, concession stand, public address system playing Big Band songs, umpires, coaches, real dugouts, real uniforms, real bases, real bleachers full of real parents. Today it’s all gone, a field of wildflowers. This is the view toward home plate from centerfield, where I spent many an inning praying that nothing would be hit my way.
Teams were sponsored by East Side businesses such as House of Chairs, Empire Electric Company, Rox-Ex Exterminating, and Moreland Drugstore.
“But who,” you no doubt have often wondered, “was Del Murray?”
Delmer Watson Murray was a longtime local amateur athlete. He played softball and coached both men’s and women’s softball teams. He also was president of East Side Little League, which played at the field later named for him.
Murray owned a gas station on Rosedale Street at Binkley.
Del Murray died in 1956. He was only forty-three.
Del Murray is buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery.
