The High Point Rockers announced this week that manager Jamie Keefe and his staff will return for the 2024 season.
That’s very good news for Rockers’ fans. Over the last four years, Keefe has led the Rockers to 287 victories – more than any other Atlantic League baseball team.
In addition to winning both halves of the South Division in 2023, the Rockers have reached the playoffs in three of four seasons. The Rockers team was brought to High Point to help reignite interest in the city’s downtown. And the team’s winning streaks are one big way of doing that.
So, the return of the corpus of the team’s leadership, who has brought a lot of winning baseball to the city in recent years, is good news for Rockers’ fans and those who want to see High Point’s downtown prosper.
“We feel we have the best manager in the league,” said Rockers President Pete Fisch in a Thursday, Jan. 25 press release. “Jamie and his staff have excelled in putting together clubs that are in contention for the league championship each season. It is a tribute to High Point and the community that we have kept this outstanding group together since our inception.”
Keefe will be in his 22nd season as a professional baseball manager – a career in which he’s won 1,059 games and reached the playoffs in 12 seasons.
Keefe will manage his 2,000th professional game early in the 2024 season.
Joining him for the fifth consecutive season will be pitching coach Frank Viola and bench coach Bert Gonzalez.
George Greer will again serve as the hitting instructor for the team.
“I feel like the luckiest guy in baseball to have the coaching staff that the Rockers have,” Keefe said this week. “Between Frank, Bert and George, there are well over 100 years of experience in college, minor league, Major League and independent baseball. It gives me a great sense of comfort to have really smart people around me, but it makes it even more special that I can call them my friends.”
The High Point Rockers team is operated by the non-profit group High Point Baseball and they play their home games at Truist Point, a – $36 million ballpark that is serving as a catalyst to the rejuvenation of downtown High Point.
Beautiful Ballpark, but be careful walking one block over around the dilapidated businesses where homeless people live, use the restroom, break glass, leave trash, harass you for money, etc. High Point needs to contact the property owners around the stadium and get them to clean up the properties, tear them down, or sell them to someone who will make something of them. All sorts of good development on Main Street and Elm Street, but be careful on Lindsay Street, West English, Ferndale, Gatewood etc…Its dirty and unsafe. Come on Nido and High Point you can do better. As Leaders, please get out and walk the area (at 10 p.m.) when games are over and see what you think.