Macon, Illinois shares connection Atlanta manager Brian Snitker

EDITOR’S NOTE: There are six cities and towns named Macon in the U.S. Columnist Ed Grisamore writes about his recent visit to our sister city of Macon, Illinois, the hometown of Atlanta Braves Manager Brian Snitker. In last week’s edition of The Macon Melody, Grisamore featured Macon, Missouri. 

There is no Macon Bacon baseball team in central Illinois. There is no life-size, strip-of-bacon mascot named Kevin dancing in the bleachers between innings.

But they do serve bacon on the Eastwood Burger and Westwood Chicken Sandwich at Mattie’s Bar & Grill on Wall Street. 

Yes, there is a Wall Street in Macon, Illinois. No, it is not in a financial district, although the Dollar General is a block away on Merchant Street. 

This no-stoplight, postage-stamp size town is only 1.45 square miles. The streets are laid out in alphabetical order, so it’s not easy to get lost here.

Kendan Burrows tends the bar and waits on tables at Mattie’s. It’s a place a lot like “Cheers” … where everybody knows your name.

“I can wave when somebody drives by, and they will wave back,’’ she said. “In a small town, that’s what we do.’’

Macon, Illinois is one of our five American sister cities, and a little sister, for sure. The population is 1,177, making it roughly 130 times smaller than its Georgia kin. 

In a place where everybody knows everybody’s name – not to mention where they’re going and where they’ve been – there is a famous native son nobody will ever forget.

He was a sophomore on the 1971 Macon High School Ironmen baseball team. He wore thick, black glasses and played right field. His father was a salesman for a beer and liquor distributor and traveled a lot. His mother was a secretary at the local elementary school.

His name is Brian Snitker and, in the spring of 2021, the high school baseball field was named after him to commemorate the 50th anniversary of that legendary team. That fall, six months after the dedication, Snitker won the World Series as manager of the Atlanta Braves.

Snitker is the common thread that connects Macon, Illinois, with Macon, Georgia, across 665 miles of rivers, corn fields, blue grass, mountains and tall pines.

Before Snitker became Atlanta’s second-winningest manager behind Bobby Cox, he bounced around the Braves farm system as both a player and coach, paying his dues on late-night bus rides and filling out lineup cards in cinder-block dugouts.

(He also became the answer to an obscure trivia question when he was manager of the Durham Bulls for the 1987 season. His baseball card is believed to be the one on the mirror of Annie Savoy – played by Susan Sarandon – in the opening scene of the movie “Bull Durham,’’ which was filmed that year and featured a young Kevin Costner as Crash Davis.)

In 1991, Snitker was the hitting coach for the Class A Macon Braves of the South Atlantic League, when the team was led by a young infield prospect named Chipper Jones. He was named manager for the 1992 season, and again in 1997 and ‘98, when he won back-to-back division titles at Luther Williams Field.

In his hometown, the 1971 Ironmen will forever be Macon’s claim to fame as one of the most famous Cinderella teams in Illinois prep history. The Ironmen had the kind of season that Hollywood movies are made about. 

Think “Hoosiers’’ … only substitute Indiana and basketball with Illinois and baseball. The season was chronicled in a 2012 book titled “One Shot at Forever: A Small Town, an Unlikely Coach, and a Magical Baseball Season” by Chris Ballard, a senior writer at Sports Illustrated.

The Ironmen were an undersized and undermanned collection of farm boys who wore hand-me-down uniforms and Caterpillar tractor caps. They were coached by an eclectic English teacher who had no prior coaching experience and had not played the sport in either high school or college. 

Macon High (now Meridian HS) was a school with only 250 students. The Ironmen advanced in a field of 370 teams and became the smallest school in state history to reach the all-classification title game. They lost to Chicago powerhouse Waukegan High, 4-2, in the David vs. Goliath championship. Sadly, Snitker grounded out for the game’s final out. (Hey, they can’t all end up like “Hoosiers.’’)

Baseball is not Macon’s lone sports connection. The Macon Speedway on the edge of town has been in operation since 1946 and is one of the oldest tracks in the state. The quarter-mile track was built on the site of an old brick factory and was once known as the “Other Brickyard,’’ in reference to the famous nickname of Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home of the Indy 500. NASCAR divers Ken Schrader, Tony Stewart and Kenny Wallace were former owners of Macon Speedway.

A number of stores are no longer in business in Macon, and many of the family farms have been bought out by larger enterprises. The nearest interstate ramp is 15 miles north toward Decatur, which at one time carried the reputation as the “soybean capital of the world.’’

Macon Mayor Frank Dunmire said the town is situated as a bedroom community of Decatur, the city where a young Abraham Lincoln gave his first political speech.  

Folks choose to live in Macon because people look after each other, he said. That was on display last year after a storm with straight line winds ripped through the town, causing widespread damage.

“A few hours later, you could go down any street and hear the chainsaws,’’ Dunmire said. “People were helping each other. They didn’t even have to ask.’’

On a recent Saturday afternoon, a crowd gathered in Front Street Park to listen to the Greg Bickers Band. The local library sold pulled pork and hot dog meals to raise money to buy a new digital sign. The Macon Methodist Church gave out free baked goods.

And over at Matties, longtime residents Julie Baldwin and Fran Herbert sat together at a table near the door and talked about what it means to be a Maconite … Illinois style.

“I have friends here I have known all my life,’’ Fran said. “I don’t know what I would do without them.’’

Said Julie: “Our grandparents grew up here. There are memories everywhere we go.’’

Ed Grisamore has been a journalist in Macon and Middle Georgia for more than 45 years. He received the 2024 John Holliman Lifetime Achievement Award from the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia. He was the recipient of the 2010 Will Rogers Humanitarian Award, presented by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Grisamore has won first-place awards from the Georgia Press Association in five categories and has written nine books.