New baseball field at GU a true diamond
GONZAGA BASEBALL
In the middle of a crazy basketball week, I took time Monday to tour Gonzaga's new baseball field.
Calling it a field does the Washington Trust Field at the Patterson Baseball Complex a disservice.
If you remember the old postal annex that was on the corner of Trent and Cincinnati, what the land has turned into will shock you. This baseball facility is as nice as it comes at the college level.
And it is the crowning achievement of Steve Hertz's career.
Full disclosure here. I met Steve when he was the baseball coach at UC Irvine in 1979 and 1980, and I, a recent graduate, worked in the sports information office. Baseball was my responsibility, and I came to know coach Hertz well enough to wish I had redshirted a year so I could have played for him.
But I took the tour yesterday not with Gonzaga's baseball coach, which Hertz was for 23 years, but with Gonzaga's Director of Athletic Relations, which Hertz is know, and the driving force behind the new facility. (If you want to see how the field was built and what it looks like now, click on this link for a photo gallery.)
Hertz is proud of the facility and well he should be. The playing surface is state of the art and as good as the Indians' and Whitworth's, which have been the gold standard around here. And it will get better as the grass matures and thickens.
One signature feature is the entrance plaza, which Hertz envisions as an area to honor great Zag players and teams sometime in the near future. There are also two grassy berms, one down each line, where fans can spread out and watch the game without sitting in the stands. The stands are brick faced, feature individual seats and are covered to keep rain away which, in Spokane, is important until about July.
The home team clubhouse and lounge is comfortable enough that I would have slept there in college because it's a lot nicer then some of the places I lived. Hell, it has hot water. There is also a big screen TV, couches, sturdy lockers, a mud room for shoes, and a dugout with a rubberized floor that may even repel sunflower seeds.
Plus, left and right fields are backed up by a 50-foot high monster fence, designed to keep home run balls from going into Cincinnati or Trent – or whatever they are calling it now. But the school found the fences weren't high enough, as GU's power hitters were launching shots over them occasionally in batting practice.
So there is work to be done – the screens will have 20 feet added and the light poles won't be installed until April sometime – but the games are about to begin.
The Bulldogs, who entered Tuesday's game at Utah at 10-10, will host Rider University on Thursday at 2 p.m., which means Hertz won't be at the first game on the field he's sweated over. He'll be with the GU basketball team in Sacramento, but his heart will be somewhere in the first-place dugout.