West Virginia baseball isn’t some overnight success story. In fact, it’s far from it.
The success they have experienced over the past three years isn’t just some random blip on the radar, either. Over the last fourteen years, the duo of Randy Mazey and Steve Sabins has built a program and one that is now on the verge of being considered a national power.
This summer, we saw 96,020 fans file into Kendrick Family Ballpark to watch the Mountaineers play, and no, that doesn’t include the folks who watched games from Randy’s Ridge during the regional and super regional rounds.
That shot of the crowd on the Ridge during the Omaha clincher against Cal Poly is hard to believe, especially if you know where this program came from. Players used to change in the parking lot at old Hawley Field, and there may have been 30 or 40 fans show up to games, most of whom were friends and family of the players and coaches.
Interest in the baseball program is at an all-time high, and it’s only going to continue to increase. It became pretty apparent during the NCAA Tournament run that Kendrick Family Ballpark needs to add more seats. Head coach Steve Sabins said it himself.
But will it actually happen?
WVU athletic director Wren Baker discussed the possibility during an appearance on 3 Guys Before the Game.
“People will say, ‘Well, expand the park.’ Well, if you take those two berms and you create some premium space, you did not expand the park. You actually are going to, especially on the third base side, where it’s been standing room only, you go over there and build something, you’re going to reduce capacity.”
I know. Probably not the response you were looking for. But wait, there’s more.
“We’re going to hire an architect and look at everything very intentionally,” he stated. “Where can we potentially expand capacity? Where can we potentially grow premium? Then we’ll test donor interest because if we can’t raise the money to build it, and yes, it brings in another 100 grand, but you’re spending 200-250 grand to satisfy debt service on it, that did not help you at all. Everybody else gets to be emotional and reactionary and just throw things out there. My job is to stay grounded and look analytically and strategically, and to bring in architects and experts to say, ‘Okay, here’s our ballpark. Let’s look at it. What can we do to improve it? What can we do to drive revenue? What can we do to increase capacity?”
Baker also reminded fans of a very important detail, which makes the pursuit of expanding the stadium not as simple as you would think.
“We actually don’t own it. The county does. And there’s another team, another tenant in there in the (West Virginia) Black Bears. And so really, it’s a conversation involving three parties. I don’t think that if we decided we wanted to do something, it should be 100% our expense. We’re definitely willing to participate in that.”
Every penny counts these days
It’s easy to scream from the top of Randy’s Ridge to expand the park, but it has to make sense financially. And ultimately, there’s going to have to be a revenue-generating component to it, especially when you’re pouring a huge chunk of money into a sport that doesn’t produce profit. So if more seats are added, we will likely also see the addition of premium seating, which is something Baker is bringing more of to Hope Coliseum and Milan Puskar Stadium.
Baker admitted as much during his annual end-of-year press conference back in the spring, stating, “Generally, if a project is not revenue-producing, we’re not tracking on it very much right now.”
The fact that they are about to explore options leads me to believe that something will be done at the ballpark. It’s just a matter of when, how much of the pie they have to take on, and what it all looks like.
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