Baseball team will now have year-round home

By Aaron Juarez

Like Ralphie in "A Christmas Story," the Santa Clara baseball team finally received the gift they had always wanted. While the team's gift wasn't an official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot air rifle, it still has an even greater effect on the team than the Red Ryder rifle did on Ralphie.

After playing the alumni game on Jan. 24, the team was gathered together and given the news: a brand new, state-of-the-art baseball stadium to begin play in 2005.

"We were told [about the stadium plan] after the alumni game and you could just see everyone's eyes getting wide from just hearing the news," junior outfielder Ryan Chiarelli said. "It's like getting a new Christmas present."

The players can thank former Santa Clara pitcher and current owner of the Oakland Athletics Stephen Schott ('60), for whom the stadium will be named. On Jan. 28, the University officially announced that Schott had agreed to make a donation of $4 million to go towards the construction of a new baseball stadium. The announcement followed the Santa Clara City Council's unanimous approval at its Jan. 27 meeting to change its El Camino Real master plan, which paves the way for the development of the stadium plans.

"Every player is going to call Mr. Schott or give him something to show our gratitude for what he has done," Chiarelli said.

Stephen Schott Baseball Stadium will provide the baseball program with a valuable year-round facility for practice and games, which will benefit the team's growth as well as the individual improvement of each player. With the current setup, the baseball team uses the practice diamond on Bellomy Field prior to the beginning of the season, then moves to Buck Shaw Stadium once the reconfiguration of the field is finished.

"There had been talk of it when I was hired by Santa Clara," Manager Mark O'Brien said, regarding his hiring three years ago from Stanford. "That was one thing that definitely lured me to take the job."

Plans for the stadium's construction include: VIP suites, a clubhouse for the team with walk-in locker stalls, a team conference room, chair-back seating, a new press box, batting cages and a training room for the team. There will also be lawn seating for fans behind right field.

The stadium's presence could also lure more recruits to the Mission Campus. With a brand-new facility that will at least rival, if not exceed, those of other top programs in the nation, Santa Clara can greatly increase its appeal to top recruits.

"[A new facility] has an unbelievable effect on recruiting," O'Brien said. "It helps you attract quality student-athletes who may not have looked at Santa Clara before. 16, 17 and 18-year-old kids are attracted to good facilities."

"As a high-school player, you don't often play on great fields," Chiarelli said. "Now recruits will get to see something that resembles a top minor-league ballpark."

Added freshman catcher Brian Neault, who had been told on his recruiting trip that Santa Clara was in the process of working out a deal for a new stadium, "I didn't get many details, and it wasn't the main reason I chose Santa Clara, but it's still huge. My high-school field was pretty decent in San Diego, but even when I saw Buck Shaw, it was much better than what I had played on. But this new field should be 20 times better than what I played on in high school."

The preseason practice routine for the team is rather limiting and nomadic as the team is always on the move. After the practices at Bellomy Field, the team moves to Buck Shaw Stadium during the winter before the start of the season to do workouts in the Leavey Center.

"At Bellomy, we don't have batting cages to use, so we can't get the quality of repetition there, and that will hurt us." said O'Brien about the drawbacks to practicing on Bellomy Field.

"It will also be good for the intramural sports and club teams," O'Brien continued. "The baseball team having a new facility to use year-round gives our students a field of their own. The guys are sensitive about disturbing the other teams out there and don't like to be hitting balls into the rugby team's practice or into students' flag-football games on Bellomy."

Because Buck Shaw is used for soccer in the fall and winter, the baseball team, out of sensitivity to the soccer teams, doesn't use the batting cages along the right-field line. The facilities can also be an inconvenience at times.

"The dugouts are old and there is no access to the bathrooms at Buck Shaw, so we have to travel a ways to the clubhouse," O'Brien said. "The drainage is also bad on the field, but the new stadium will take care of all that. It's a USGA-type field and will be very player and fan friendly. We will never have to use another facility besides our stadium."

O'Brien also mentioned how the team's laundry will now be able to be done at the new stadium, further adding to the convenience. Instead of trekking it around, the players can now drop it into a chute where it will be taken care of.

Another advantage of the stadium is that the players can quickly become accustomed to the quirks and nuances of their surroundings. Because the team has limited practice time on the Buck Shaw diamond before the season, it usually takes a little time to get used to playing balls off of the outfield walls or playing caroms in the left and right field corners.

"At Bellomy, you can't play caroms, whether off of the walls or the backstop behind home plate," said Neault, a catcher who will have to quickly adjust to the Buck Shaw backstop. "Being able to use a field from the beginning of fall to the end of the season allows you to be aware of the potential obstacles and surroundings of the field and gain valuable reads out there."

"I have nothing bad to say about Buck Shaw's field itself, but sometimes it's not taken as good of care of as a regular field," added Chiarelli, referring to the beating the turf takes from the soccer team. "Having a field to play on year-round will change that. When you have something that's yours and only yours, you tend to take better care of it and we're gonna baby the thing."

"You have to enjoy the place you're going to work everyday," O'Brien said.

While the new stadium will not be finished in time for next fall, it will be open for the start of the 2005 season, when they'll no longer have to worry about hitting rugby players or lugging around their laundry.

û Contact Aaron Juarez at (408) 554-4852 or ajuarez@scu.edu