ACC may just be our cup of Joe

Just follow the bouncing baseball:

--The Atlantic Coast Conference Baseball Tournament, going on this week in Durham, N.C., is on its way back to South Carolina, bound for Myrtle Beach in 2011.

--Greenville, record-setting ACC Tournament home from 1987-95, wants in on the fun again but must currently settle for this week's Southern Conference Tournament.

--Which left Charleston after a successful 19-year-run, and messed up the Charleston RiverDogs' plans to bid for the ACC Tournament's 2011-2013 deal, awarded last week to Myrtle Beach.

Envious?

"Oh, definitely," said Dave Echols, general manager of Charleston's Class A South Atlantic League team. "I'm extremely interested in having the ACC Tournament come here."

Picture Florida State vs. Clemson before a sellout crowd at The Joe.

Maybe some May, but not soon.

For better or worse, the ACC's Myrtle Beach music means the league no longer honors the NAACP's call for a boycott of sporting and other events held in South Carolina in protest of a Confederate battle flag on State House grounds.

But timing contracts is as important as timing pitches.

The Southern Conference's stay in Greenville is for 2009 only.

"We have been kind of hampered by the Southern Conference, which wants us to wait until after this (SoCon) Tournament to put in for another three-year bid," Echols said. "We really wanted another tournament here when the Southern Conference left for Greenville, but it's only for one year. I was going to go after the ACC, and we talked with people in their office, but it was hard knowing we had to wait for the Southern Conference to see what would happen for 2010 and after."

Dancing shoes

These are sensitive matters.

The ACC and SoCon tournaments these days are held simultaneously. The Citadel, which shares The Joe with the RiverDogs, obviously wants as many "home field" SoCon Tournaments as possible. College of Charleston fans appreciate convenience, too.

But if the SoCon wants to play fickle dance partner, bring on the ACC.

Please.

The ACC Tournament would work splendidly in Charleston.

It will do well in Myrtle Beach.

It would do well again in Greenville, which set an ACC Tournament attendance record of 43,675 in 1992, the year Ray Tanner's N.C. State Wolfpack defeated Clemson, 7-3, in the championship game.

That turnstile mark stood for 13 years as the ACC Tournament searched in the baseball wilderness for a home, making unfortunate stops from yawning St. Petersburg (20,990 total attendance in 2002) to rainy Salem, Va., (18,276 in 2003).

'A fantastic draw'

Finally, the ACC found a good answer with a three-year run in Jacksonville starting in 2005 (66,475).

A national NAACP board passed a resolution this week blasting the ACC's decision to reverse its pattern of not placing baseball tournaments in South Carolina, but the Myrtle Beach NAACP chapter president supports the BB&T Coastal Field plans for 2011-13, the Myrtle Beach Sun News reported. The RiverDogs, well connected to minority groups in Charleston, would reach out to NAACP officials before making an ACC bid, Echols said.

It won't happen this year or next or from 2011-13.

But there will be an ACC Tournament in Charleston during your lifetime, even if you're as old as Jamie Moyer.

"We have to be a little careful," Echols said. "I don't want to sound like I don't want the Southern Conference Tournament. But an ACC Tournament, I think, would be a fantastic draw."

Reach Gene Sapakoff at gsapakoff@postandcourier.com or 937-5593.