FROM PRESS RELEASE
Lynchburg, Va. – Liberty Director of Athletics Jeff Barber and the Liberty Athletics Department announced today, the department has entered into a contract which will allow lights to be installed at Worthington Stadium.

“The coaching staff and players are extremely excited to be adding lights to Worthington Stadium,” stated Liberty Head Coach Jim Toman. “It will benefit us in many ways.”

“We are certainly appreciative of the athletics department and the school’s administration commitment to Liberty Baseball. It will allow more people to come out to the games and hopefully, benefit us in recruiting.” Read the rest of this entry »

The University of Oregon has put out plans for their new baseball facility which comes with a price tag of $12-15 million. They have already made an agreement with the Eugene Emeralds to play in the facility as soon as the 2010 season. The first phase of the stadium will be finished by the start of the 2009 season. The second phase will be completed soon after. The full press release from Oregon is available here. The Oregon Daily Emerald also checks in with an article which can be read here.

The Lafayette Leopards have put out the 2008 schedule which is highlighted with a season opening series at VMI. They will make a trip to Bradenton Florida for their annual trip to Florida to play four games. They will open the Liberty Bell Classic on March 25th against the Penn Quakers and will play the winner of the St. Joe’s/Delaware matchup on April 1st. The Leopards will host Patriot League opponents Bucknell and Navy. They will head on the road to take on Holy Cross, Army, and Lehigh. The College Baseball Blog will be in attendance for at least one of the doubleheaders at Holy Cross. The full schedule for the Leopards is available here.

The Lafayette Athletic Department is renovating many fields at the Metzgar Fields Athletic Complex. The Baseball program is getting the most benefit in these renovations with an expansion of the dugouts, more seating, and a better locker room for the team. The full release is available here.

The new Fieldturf field at UIC is close to completion so the Flames will be able to practice later in the fall season and open up the home schedule earlier in the year. This is an important project for the Chicago based school as they will become one of 19 Division 1 schools to have this surface. The full release is available here.

FROM PRESS RELEASE
NEW YORK – The series of recent upgrades to Columbia’s baseball facilities continues this fall, when Columbia Athletics will install a state-of-the-art artificial surface at Andy Coakley Field. The surface will allow the team to practice at its home venue earlier in the year.

On September 4, installation of the FieldTurf™ infill system will begin. It is the same surface used at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., and Columbia Soccer Stadium. Renovation of the field will be completed in November, allowing the field to set during the winter months.

“We are delighted to embark on this project to support our varsity baseball program,” says Dr. M. Dianne Murphy, Director of Intercollegiate Athletics and Physical Education. “This will be an outstanding field that illustrates our commitment to Columbia Baseball, as we continue to strive for quality and excellence in all that we do. We are dedicated to providing the best experience for our student-athletes, and that commitment includes providing the best possible facilities.”

The surface will be a hybrid fiber, rubber and sand infill blend designed to have a more consistent feel. It will cover both the infield and outfield, with the only dirt covering the mound and home plate. The surface will be more resilient than the current grass field, and will allow the team more practice opportunities.

The resurfacing of the playing surface at Andy Coakley Field has been made possible through a combination of charitable gifts from interested donors, friends and alumni.

“The ‘new’ Andy Coakley Field is going to help take Columbia Baseball to a new level,” says Brett Boretti, head coach of baseball. “It will allow us to practice and play outdoors in February, earlier than ever before.”

These improvements come just months after Andy Coakley Field received major upgrades that included the installation of 250 chairback seats, a press box, an extended major league-style backdrop behind home plate and an improved sound system.

A modern batting cage was installed in left field, bullpens were reconfigured, and a strengthened retaining wall was put in place along the right field line.

“With the installation of the FieldTurf, Andy Coakley Field will also be one of the best baseball facilities in the league,” Boretti states. “We are excited and looking forward to showing our recruits and our team our new facility.”

“By installing a state-of-the-art surface at Andy Coakley Field, we are continuing consistent and significant improvement of this facility, which ranks it among the best baseball venues in the Ivy League,” adds Dr. Murphy.

The three FieldTurf facilities at Baker Field Athletics Complex – Columbia Soccer Stadium and Lawrence A. Wien Stadium are the other two – plus the Desso Sportilux SV 37 “water-based” polypropylene turf for field hockey, makes the entire complex versatile and durable for year-round and multiple-team use.

While the FieldTurf is being installed at Andy Coakley Field, the baseball team will use an alternate site for fall practices in preparation for the 2008 season.

The installation follows a season in which Columbia Baseball posted its most wins since 2003.

Months of negotiations remain to hash out the details of a new downtown home for the College World Series, but Omaha’s mayor said Friday that the plan offers a “historic” chance to keep the championship in Omaha through 2030.

Rosenblatt Stadium

Seats: 23,145

Size: About 21 acres

Year built: 1947, for $1 million

Public investment: About $36 million in improvements have been made since 1989.

A plan to build a new ballpark north of the Qwest Center Omaha won the NCAA’s blessing Friday, and city officials said they hope to finalize the stadium’s design and financing plans by Jan. 1.

“This is a critical step in what is still a very long process. Now we can get to work on the details requested by the NCAA,” Mayor Mike Fahey said.

Fahey’s goal is a downtown home for the CWS by 2011.

Dennis Poppe, the NCAA’s senior director for baseball and football, said: “We have a sense of direction, and we are moving forward.”

Opponents of moving the CWS from its home at Rosenblatt Stadium said they are not giving up.

OMAHA.com

Doug Kroll of CSTV has recently checked in with an article about the prospects of bringing baseball back at some of the other BCS schools without the sport. He spoke with Wisconsin’s AD Barry Alvarez and other administrators around the nation about the challenges they are facing in bringing back the sport. His full article is available here.

The Southern Miss Department of Athletics has announced plans to give fans the opportunity to purchase chairback seating in an expansion plan that calls for the construction of a 580-seat grandstand down the third-base line at Pete Taylor Park/Hill Denson Field.

Sales of the seats will begin on Sept. 17.

“We felt that with our demand increasing each season for seats that this project allows more fans an opportunity to see Golden Eagle baseball,” Southern Miss coach Corky Palmer said.

With a purchase, that person will have their name placed on the seat for a minimum of 10 years or as long as that person is a season ticket holder, whichever is longer. The cost of the seat is $400, which is a one-time fee.

Complete story

The North Carolina Tar Heels have released their fall schedule for 2007. They will play five game from October 9th-October 15th at the USA Baseball National Training Complex in Cary NC. The full fall schedule is available here. The Tar Heels will play the entire 2008 season in Cary NC with Boshamer Stadium being renovated for the 2009 season. The full release on the ground breaking of Boshamer Stadium is available here.

Aaron Fitt of Baseball America recently had a chance to sit down with George Horton to discuss his move to Oregon. A major change in the Oregon situation is that Horton will have the full 11.7 scholarships in his first season and the school is looking to build about a 10-15 million dollar baseball stadium. Horton also believes that Rick Vanderhook should be named the next head coach at Fullerton. The full article is available here.

Based on the heart of Rice’s gorgeous campus, Reckling Park is one of the more distinguished fields in the NCAAs. This summer it is getting a subterranean tummy tuck, with a new drainage system installed.

If you’re a fan of PVC and engineering, you’ll love CSTV’s four part photo gallery. If you are a fan of beautiful things, Gallery #1 might be as painful to you as it was to me. Galleries 2-4 are interesting and show the skeletal structure of a field, but numero uno is like watching surgery. Hard to look away, but not pretty to look at as the field is torn up by Caterpillar trucks.

View the damage here.

The University of Oregon announced on July 13th that they were bringing back baseball to the Eugene school after a 26 year absence. The school ended up dropping the wrestling program and adding competitive cheerleading to the athletic program. The reason that was quoted by the Oregon athletic department to add baseball was that the sport is seeing increased growth across the country.

I believe that this is true in the suburbs but Baseball has seen a major decrease in urban areas. The main reason is the increasing cost in competing on select teams which in some communities start before the age of 12 when a kid in the city of Miami can go play a game of basketball for weeks on end at the playground for 20 bucks with a decent basketball. I would like my readers to drive by a baseball field this weekend and see how many kids are playing on their local Little League field. Also, look at the Little League World Series and see how many African-American kids participated in the final eight. There was a report on Say Hey which is one of the top sports blogs on the internet that only two out of the eight US teams had any African American kids. (Click here for article). The other experiment is to look at a MLB baseball game and see how many players are minorities from United States. You will be surprised with how low it actually is.

The other problem I see with Oregon adding baseball is that the wrestlers at the school now will have to transfer to continue their athletic careers and possibly make the Olympic team. Baseball has been removed from the Olympics starting in 2012 due to the lack of interest in the sport around the world. We did see a very well attended World Port Tournament in Holland this summer with over 3,000 people attending some of Team USA games but we also saw the debacle which was the Pan-American games. During that tournament, we saw multiple delays with the field due to poor drainage and even had the tournament readjusted a day before it started due to insufficient lighting.

The final problem I have with Oregon is that they couldn’t support baseball 26 years ago. What has changed in Eugene to say they can support a Pac-10 team? They currently have no stadium and need to build a brand new facility.

I also think that the Oregon Athletic Department is aiming way too high with the help of Phil Knight for a new head coach. The Oregon Athletic Department has already interviewed Tim Corbin and planned on bringing in Dave Serrano before he backed out. There was some reports on the Internet that Phil Knight had earmarked so much money that whoever took the job would be one of the top five coaches in the nation in terms of salary. Why has Oregon not looked at some of the top assistants on the West Coast instead of a current head coach? How many top head coaches are going to leave a successful place to restart a program which will not have the full usage of scholarships until 2011-2012 season?

I just felt like sharing my thoughts on the situation in Eugene and hope that the Oregon program will be a success but they need to overcome the obstacles I have outlined above.

Following up a story by djbfootball, Ritch Price of Kansas has been linked to the job opening with the Oregon Ducks. Price has lead the Kansas program for five seasons with an overall record of 173-142 including getting to the NCAA Tournament in 2006 after winning the Big 12 Tournament. Price has connections with Kansas currently as two of his sons play for him. Ryne being a senior and his youngest Robby being a sophomore. Price is a native of Sweet Home, Oregon and went to college at Williamette University in Salem Oregon. The full article from The Lawrence Journal-World News is available by clicking here.

Coach Dave Serrano will be visiting University of Oregon and the facilities on Monday and Tuesday. When they approached him two weeks ago to see if he was interested he told them thanks but no thanks. He felt he was not ready for to make this move. Well he had second thoughts about this job and it is a good move on his part to at least go and see what they are willing to provide for a program. This may not be the right job for Serrano but, for the long term he needs to know what is out there. Coach Dave Serrano is a coach that will make a name for himself rather it be at UC Irvine or at another University. Coach Dave is capable of turning UC Irvine into a Cal State Fullerton. Fullerton was not on the baseball map until Augie Garrido came in and turn that program into a Baseball powerhouse which Coach Horton as continue that with Great success. Both Horton and Serrano has played and or coach under Garrido. So, Serrano will be successful wherever he goes.

Some other articles in regard to the coaching job.

The Register Guard
Daily Pilot

Oregon may not be earning any friends at OSU by talking to Pat Casey, but were there really any friendships there to begin with? Brian Meehan of the Oregonian weighed in on coaching search etiquette. You can read the column here. The article has some info on the folks who are on NIKE’s wish list (Dave Serrano of UC Irvine, Pat Casey of OSU and Dave Brundage of the Braves AAA team).

Meanwhile, Mo Patton of the Tennessean reported that Vanderbilt skipper Tim Corbin was out in Eugene over the weekend. You can read the article here. There is an uncorroborated rumor that Corbin was indeed offered the opportunity to restart the Duck program in 2009. Corbin flirted with LSU’s vacancy last year and Auburn’s two years prior. Corbin turned down both opportunities but noted that the interviewing process is a good means of information exchange in the building of programs. From a Vanderbilt fan perspective and as a massive supporter of Corbin, considering Oregon makes sense for two reasons: 1) the opportunity to learn about Oregon’s plans for building a program for the bottom up and 2) the challenge involved (turning Vandy around was a challenge in which Corbin has and is succeeding famously). On the other hand, Corbin has no connections to the Northwest. The X-Factor? The departure of Chancellor Gordon Gee (to OSU) removes one of the biggest promoters of Vanderbilt baseball. This blogger says: just another in a line of Corbin paying respect with a visit and bringing home ideas to build on the Commodore foundation. After all, is Corbin willing to give up the recruiting advantage he and recruiting coordinator Erik Bakich share with Stanford, Rice and Tulane that Will Kimmey documented two years ago?