KODAK, Tenn. — For more than 40 years, Phil Trucks hasn't touched home plate in East Tennessee.
Trucks was drafted by at the age of 17 and first went to Sarasota.
"Just, every kid's dream was to play ball," he said. "I actually was with some of my friends at a house. We were about to graduate high school, and we were over at the house, and one of the guys at the house said, 'Hey man, I just saw they mentioned you on TV.' And I said, 'Well what did they say?' He said, 'I think something like you got drafted.'"
By the late 1970s, he was playing for the Knoxville Sox, the team now known as the Tennessee Smokies. In 1978, the team went on to win the Southern League crown. But, Trucks did not play in the final game.
"I wasn't here for the championship game," he said. "They had moved me back to single-A, and we won the championship there at the same time they were winning it here."
Soon after that season, Trucks hung up his mitt for good. But this season, he is returning to baseball at Smokies Stadium. But instead of catching balls, he'll be taking tickets.
"I want to get out," he said. "I'm retired now, so it's gonna get me out of the house a little but for three, or four hours to watch a baseball game. So, I'm looking forward to doing that. I've been wanting to do it, just never got around to doing it. I'll have an advantage over a regular fan, some of them, because you don't know what's going on once they go back in that locker room and get on that bus and ride around. But no, it's all out of my system by now. I just want to see a good ball game."
The Tennessee Smokies said the team is also planning a reunion celebration with the 1978 players sometime this season, to celebrate its outright Southern League championship title that year.