On a Saturday in June 2025, American Legion Post 295 took the field at Mickie Gordon Memorial Park for its season opener against Leesburg's Post 34. It was the first baseball game on Pop Gordon Field since the County had converted it to a cricket pitch, and the end of a two-year fight that began with a zoning application almost nobody in Middleburg knew about. Leesburg won, 12-1, but the day belonged to the field (Loudoun Now, June 16, 2025).

This is how the field came back.

A Ballfield With a History

Mickie Gordon Memorial Park is about 100 acres of fields, woods and a fishing pond along Route 50, a mile east of town, reached by a gravel lane off Carters Farm Lane. Loudoun County Public Schools bought the land in 1967 and leased part of it to the County parks department in 1978. Its neighbors say it was long under-maintained, and they liked it quiet.

The main diamond is named for Pop Gordon, the town tailor, who played for Middleburg's baseball team from the 1920s. The park took the name of his son, Mickie Gordon, after Mickie's death in 1996. He coached Babe Ruth baseball for years, served on the County's parks advisory board, and, his daughter Debra Gordon Schleith remembers, spent hours dragging the infield behind his little white truck. One of his players, Rick Furr, later said "Middleburg was like the UCLA of baseball" in those years (Loudoun Now, December 2, 2025).

The ground's older history belongs to Middleburg's Black community. In segregated Loudoun, Black teams had few places to play, and the fields east of town were one of them. Asbury Lloyd learned to pitch there, when, as he put it, "any kind of stick would do for a bat," and went on to win more than 200 games in the Virginia-Maryland Negro league (Loudoun Now, June 30, 2023). Louis Haley, whose obituary ran in the Eccentric in 2021, played on and managed local Black teams and came back every summer for the Odd Fellows' gatherings at the park. Some accounts trace the park to Hall's Park, a gathering place opened by William Nathaniel Hall; others place Hall's Park on the parcel next door. Either way, Mayor Bridge Littleton told Council in June 2023, the park "was built and provided for the African American community during segregation. And it's a unique piece of history that we want to preserve."

It was also, for a while, the home of the Loudoun Rangers, a collegiate summer team whose first home game was played there in June 2004, as the Eccentric announced at the time.

The Plan

Cricket is Loudoun's fastest-growing sport. The County's adult league grew from seven teams in 2009 to 60 teams and more than 1,600 players, with more on waiting lists. The parks department put a cricket pitch in the middle of the Mickie Gordon ballfield in 2009 and retrofitted the lighted field for cricket in 2016 (Loudoun Now, June 9, 2023). In 2022 the School Board leased the whole parcel to the County, with an additional cricket field, a press box, bleachers and a new entrance from Route 50 in mind (Loudoun Now, February 25, 2022). In May 2022 the department filed a special exception application for three lighted, competition-level cricket pitches.

By the time Middleburg read it, the plan had grown. Megan Gallagher of East Marshall Street laid it out for Council on June 8, 2023: turn lanes on Route 50, "a clear contradiction, contravention of 50 years of efforts for traffic calming," and "18, 100 foot lighted towers for three tournament level cricket fields that would operate from March to November up to 11:00 at night." Less than 5 percent of the park would stay as it was. The baseball diamond, she said, "increasingly has become the focus of an interesting and valued part of African American history." ▶ video

Middleburg Notices

Five neighbors followed her to the lectern that night. Littleton had already called County Chair Phyllis Randall, who hadn't heard of the plan, and Parks Director Steve Torpy, who agreed to put off the Planning Commission hearing and come to Middleburg to listen. Council was unanimous. "As an Englishman who grew up playing cricket, this is the wrong place for cricket," said Vice Mayor Peter Leonard-Morgan. Councilmember Kevin Daly noted that a cricket match can run "eight hours. That's why the lights are going to be on until 11:00 at night." Councilmember Cindy Pearson, remembering the night a Middleburg officer was struck on Route 50 during Christmas in Middleburg, said "Big no needs to come from here." ▶ video

Nobody in Middleburg said cricket players didn't need fields. Littleton made the point every time: "This is not about being against cricket," he said in June. "It's about where's the right place for a facility to support those folks." The players lived mostly in eastern Loudoun, half an hour or more away, and some families were driving to Maryland for their children's matches. The question was why their fields should go on a quiet rural park on a two-lane road.

By June 22 an online petition Littleton started had about 700 signatures. Littleton told Council the main diamond now had an artificial-turf strip down the middle, the practice field was overgrown, and "the soccer goals are actually in the woods." Councilmember Bud Jacobs asked for "some sort of marker or sign describing the history of the place." ▶ video

"I Missed the Mark"

The County held its meeting at the American Legion on June 29. The parks department, Littleton said later, usually sees about 50 people at such meetings. About 250 came. Asbury Lloyd spoke first, from his wheelchair. Debra Gordon Schleith said the conversion of her grandfather's field was "very hurtful to our family," and that if the field was going to be done away with, "I want the plaque removed and I want the sign removed because it is no longer my family's legacy."

Torpy did something public officials rarely do. He said the project had started as a modest in-house upgrade and grown into a capital project without anyone asking the neighbors. "In hindsight that was not a good choice by me and I want to own that tonight," he said. "Obviously I missed the mark on this one" (Loudoun Now, June 30, 2023).

On Hold Is Not Withdrawn

The application, though, stayed alive. Torpy agreed to hold two community workshops but would only put the application on hold, not withdraw it: withdrawing meant losing fees and engineering already paid for, and going back to the end of a line that could add a year. Littleton told Council on August 24 that the commitment in June had been to start over, and "the community feels a little misled." Torpy wanted to "tweak" the application after the workshops. "Tweak as in substantially amend," Jacobs replied. Littleton said he'd told Torpy that the lost fees were "the price you pay to rebuild trust." ▶ video

About 150 residents filled the Community Center for the first workshop on August 31, 2023. The tables asked for a dawn-to-dusk park: restore the fields, with room for cricket; bring back the bleachers; add real restrooms, a bigger pavilion, trails, a community garden and pickleball. No new lights and no widening of Route 50. Randall sat in. Sometimes these discussions are "about turn lanes and asphalt and capacity and density," she said, "and sometimes involved in all that it's also about memories" (Loudoun Now, September 1, 2023). A second workshop followed at the Legion on October 4.

On October 12, 2023, Littleton opened Council's information items with a question. "You guys heard about Mickie Gordon Park? Okay, so the special exception application was pulled today by the county." The room applauded. Torpy had called him around noon. "He kept to his word," Littleton said. ▶ video Two weeks later Gallagher came back to the lectern to call it "the glorious news that we won this stage of the Mickie Gordon fight." ▶ video

Back to the Drawing Board

Torpy came to Council in June 2024 with what his staff had heard: return Pop Gordon Field to baseball, no new lights, open space for unorganized play, bathrooms "that flush," a bigger pavilion, gravel roads, and the recycling center moved away from the houses (Loudoun Now, June 17, 2024). In August, consultants at Kimley-Horn released three concepts, from a modest refresh to one with more tennis and pickleball courts. Each restored baseball on the main field and kept a single cricket pitch instead of three (Loudoun Now, August 23, 2024).

Residents filled the Community Center again on September 5, 2024. They still wanted the old field lights taken down, the roads left gravel, and no pickleball noise. Little River Supervisor Laura TeKrony, elected the previous fall, promised the historic field would be restored in every option and said she would try to move the land from the School Board to the County "so it can be an official community park for Middleburg." Littleton thanked Torpy: "This started as a rocky road, but you stepped in and really took leadership and brought the community together. ... Is it perfect? No. Is it 85%? Yes" (Loudoun Now, September 9, 2024).

The Board Votes

The Board of Supervisors took it up on October 16, 2024, and the cricket players had a defender. Supervisor Matt Letourneau of Dulles said the adult league was at capacity and the youth league had "zero teams because we don't have capacity for a single child in Loudoun County to be playing cricket despite massive demand." He also had a point Middleburg didn't like to hear: "This is not a Middleburg park. It's not even in the town." A neighbor, John Rizik, said picking among the three concepts was "like asking me if I would rather get kicked in the knee or get kicked in the shin." Randall sided with the neighbors: "I don't know why we're not listening to the constituents on this one."

TeKrony's motion to go ahead with the most modest plan, Concept A, and start a new special exception process passed 7-2. Her second motion, to turn the cricket pitch back into a baseball field by spring, passed 5-4, with the Board directing staff to look for new cricket pitches on school property (Loudoun Now, October 17, 2024). "They've asked to get their historic baseball field back," TeKrony said.

Play Ball

The field was ready by June 2025. Gary Nickelson, the Legion's outgoing commander, thanked the Town Council, Randall, TeKrony and Torpy, and credited Legionnaire Mike Merritt, with Leesburg coaches Pat Burke and Brandon Kelman, for reviving the Post's baseball program. In September 2023 Nickelson had told Council the Legion wanted a team again so it could play at Mickie Gordon. It took two years.

What's Left

The larger renovation under Concept A still has to go through a special exception, with public hearings before the County Planning Commission and the Board, and the decision on the old field lights was left to that process. The land still belongs to the School Board. And Loudoun's cricket players still need fields; two more fields that can be used for cricket were planned at Hal and Berni Hanson Regional Park near Arcola.

What Middleburg learned is in the record. Five neighbors at a Council meeting in June became 250 at the Legion and 150 at the Community Center. A Mayor made phone calls, a parks director said he got it wrong and then proved it, and a Board of Supervisors split over whose park it was. Pop Gordon's field is a ballfield again.

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Sources: Middleburg Town Council meeting videos and the Town contractor's transcripts (June 8, June 22, August 24, October 12 and October 26, 2023); the Middleburg Town Council Reports for June, August and October 2023; and Loudoun Now's coverage, cited in the text. Quotes from County meetings and the Board of Supervisors are Loudoun Now's.