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Mickie Gordon, The Man, The Park
Mickie Gordon, The Man, The Park
By Denis Cotter
Two years ago, the Loudoun County Parks and Recreation Department was fully intent on turning historic Mickie Gordon Memorial Park in Middleburg into a cricket complex. On the 99-acre site, it proposed installing three championship cricket fields, 238 parking spaces, eighteen 100-foot high light poles for evening matches, and a widening of Route 50.
Almost immediately, a grass-roots community campaign began to “Save Mickie Gordon Park.” It was quite effective and the county quickly backed off, eventually recommending restoring the park as strictly a baseball venue. At the time of the controversy, much also was learned about the history of the park long before Mickie Gordon had ever been there.
In the beginning, it was known as Hall’s Park, named after a highly successful local African-American builder, William Nathaniel Hall (1891-1958), who purchased the field in 1920.
It was one of the few places a Black athlete could play organized baseball. The Middleburg Braves, an all-Black team, called it home for decades. Every Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and first Friday in September, Black spectators from near and far came out in force to see baseball, horse racing, and marching bands from Washington.
And just who was Mickie Gordon?
Like William Nathaniel Hall, he was a Middleburg native, born in September 1927 as William Lee Gordon. He was a small, active child and somehow got compared to Walt Disney’s cartoon mouse—Mickie—just then starting to become popular.
He was the fourth of six children born to Edna and Raymond Gordon. The family lived on Madison Street where Raymond Gordon (1900–1969) owned a tailor shop. He served local and visiting equestrians, including First Lady Jackie Kennedy, for whom he made riding clothing.
Raymond Gordon, known as “Pop,” was a baseball enthusiast, a passion he inherited from his father, Clarence. Pop duly passed along the love of baseball to his own children. John Kelly Barrett’s book, “A History of Loudoun County Baseball, 1869 to 1987,” records that Pop began playing in 1921 for the all-White Middleburg team in the newly formed Loudoun County Baseball League.
They played at Clark’s Field on The Plains Road owned by the late Stephen Clark Jr., and now part of the Hill School property. Clark’s own father had donated his extensive collection of baseball memorabilia to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.
After graduation from high school in 1945, Mickie joined the Navy a few months before the end of World War II. He served for four years before being honorably discharged in 1949.
A year later, he married a local Middleburg girl, Eleanor Pearson. The marriage certificate identified his occupation as an electrician, a trade he learned in the Navy. Later, he was trained by Maytag as a master repairman for their brand. He went on to become a master gas fitter, installing and maintaining the gas heating for local homes and swimming pools.
Mickie and Eleanor had two children, Tim and Debra. Tim Gordon rapidly became involved in baseball. By then, William Nathaniel Hall had sold Hall’s Park in 1948 to a horse breeder who later sold it to the Loudoun County School Board, which intended to construct a segregated school there for Black children. Eventually, the board abandoned this idea and built Banneker Elementary in St. Louis instead.
In 1960, the School Board leased the land to the Loudoun County Parks and Rec to be used for baseball, football and other activities. It was re-named Mercer Park after Charles Mercer, founder of Aldie.
As his children grew up in the 1950s and ‘60s, Mickie played several positions, including shortstop, and was a Loudoun County All-Star for several years, like his father before him. His father, Pop, coached the team and for a while, his brother, Jack, did the same.
In the mid-1950s, Mickie became interested in the Babe Ruth Baseball League, founded in 1951 as a follow-up to Little League, enabled youngsters to continue playing into their teenage years. Mickie helped establish the Babe Ruth Baseball League in Loudoun County.
Loudoun schools were integrated in 1962, and by the mid-1960s, Mickie started a Babe Ruth Baseball League team in Middleburg and actively recruited both Black and White payers. If a youngster needed ride to a games, Mickie picked him up himself. He also solicited donations to ensure his players always had uniforms and equipment.
Mickie was a volunteer giant, and one of his main goals was to enable disadvantaged teenagers to have a safe place to go and a constructive pastime. His players learned much about the intricacies of the game from him and the value of teamwork and commitment.
He became known as “Mr. Babe Ruth of Loudoun” and his dream was to bring a Babe Ruth International World Series for 16-year olds to the county. It happened shortly after his passing in 1996 when it was awarded to Fireman’s Field in Purcellville.
Mickie also spent countless hours as a member of the Loudoun Parks and Rec advisory board starting in 1976. In the Spring of 1982, a plaque was placed at Mercer Park dedicating the baseball field as Pop Gordon Field, honoring Mickie’s father for his contributions to Middleburg and county baseball.
Mickie died at age of 68 in June, 1996. He had been baptized, married, and had his funeral service at the same church—Middleburg’s United Methodist on Washington Street. At his request, he was buried in his Middleburg Lions baseball uniform. He also had asked the choir sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” at the end of the service.
He was buried in Middleburg Memorial Cemetery. A year later, Loudoun County renamed Mercer Park “Mickie Gordon Memorial Park” in his honor.
