The book closes on the Salem Avalanche as an Astros affiliate with the end of play yesterday. It was a forgetable season. The Avs finished with the worst record in the Carolina League (56-84) and they ended the year with three players getting arrested at a local eatery.
Clemens and Ori were charged with disorderly conduct and Goethals with assault and battery. All three were taken to the Roanoke County-Salem Jail before being released on bond, according to a news release from the Salem police….The release does not describe any of the events leading to the arrests. It states only that Clemens and Ori were arrested on the scene and that Goethals was charged “after an employee of the restaurant obtained a warrant for his arrest” from the Roanoke County/Salem magistrate’s office.
As for the team’s play this year, Jordan Parraz had this to say to sum it all up.
“We all wish we could be on a winning team,” Parraz said. “But we just didn’t have the players or the talent or the chemistry or whatever.”
This is not to say that there weren’t memorable times in Salem. Here is one of the funniest stories of the Astros’ time in Salem.
Who could forget back in 2003 when Houston Astros’ farmhand Todd Self, frustrated by a bad at-bat, slammed the dugout bathroom door shut so hard that he locked himself in?
“I was hollering [for help] and they were laughing at me,” Self reported at the time.
Self was stuck in that bathroom at Kinston’s Grainger Stadium so long he actually needed a fielder to take over for him at first base and wasn’t freed until after the game ended.
So let’s see how the last Astros farmhands faired in Salem.Read More