Generals tap Palmer as new field manager

  
Story by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net

Ronnie Palmer has built a winner in baseball at the community-college and now Division II college levels. It’s now Palmer’s task to rebuild the Waynesboro Generals after a season that saw the team miss the Valley League playoffs for the first time in three years.

“The history of the Valley League goes without saying with the players that you guys have had in this league. It’s certainly an honor to be a head coach in the league,” said Palmer, 34, the head coach at Davis & Elkins College in Elkins, W.Va., who was named the manager of the Generals on Sept. 29.

Palmer will work for his former college coach, Lawrence Nesselrodt, the director of baseball operations for the Generals and a former Waynesboro manager.

Palmer’s Senators improved from a nine-win season in 2008, his first year at the helm of the program, to 24 wins and an appearance in the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference tournament in 2009. His 2007 team at Salem (N.J.) Community College won a conference championship at the tail end of a four-year run that saw the team increase its win total each year.

Palmer is a Davis & Elkins alum, graduating from the school in 1999 after hitting a school-record 16 homers and driving in a school-record 45 runs as a senior. Read more

A new day for the Waynesboro Generals

Critzer, Gauldin step forward to save Valley League team

Story by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net

The uncertain future of the Waynesboro Generals was a hot topic of conversation for a lot of baseball fans in and around Waynesboro. Among those talking around the proverbial hot stove were a pair of Waynesboro-based businessmen who decided they could perhaps do more than engage in idle talk.

“I was surprised to hear that the team was up for sale. I read the article in the paper, and of course another article came out, and there was talk that the team might not even be in Waynesboro any longer, and may even fold. And that was disturbing to us,” said Jim Critzer, whose name might be familiar for his successful run as owner of the Valley League team for much of the past decade, before selling the team to Jerry Carter in 2009 and riding off, ostensibly, into the proverbial baseball sunset.

David Gauldin II was at the office at Mathers Construction talking about the articles in the paper when the conversation turned to, Hey, Dave, why don’t you try to buy the team?

“So many sit around and talk about what should be done. I said, Well, maybe it’s time to step forward and be a little more active,” said Gauldin, who with Critzer joined in an agreement with Carter to purchase the team in a deal that was made public on Jan. 20. Read more