Fantasy Baseball: When the game returns to Boulder

The following exists only in my over active imagination...close your eyes…

…it’s a beautiful spring afternoon on the outskirts of Boulder, Colorado. Excited fans are filing in to the ballpark, and there’s a certain electricity in the air. It’s about 20 minutes from the first pitch; the starting pitchers are making their way out to their bullpens, beginning to get loose for the start of today’s NCAA Regional play-off baseball game. In just a few minutes, the Colorado Buffaloes will be hosting defending College World Series champion North Carolina in the key first game of the Boulder regional at spectacular new Flatirons Field. The winner moves a step closer to heading to the College World Series.

Flatirons Field is in its fourth year, having debuted a season ago when the University of Colorado Athletic Department re-instated its varsity baseball program (along with starting up Women’s softball). The renewed program faced an immediate problem - finding a place to play. Playing somewhere on campus was not an option, and facilities like run down Scott Carpenter Field near campus were nowhere near Big 12 standards. In order to bring back baseball – AND have it help pay its own way – a new facility had to be built.

Athletic Director Mike Bohn had to raise a lot of money, both to restart the programs and to build the new ballpark. He found it from private donors – baseball supporters – and the new facility turned into a money maker when a new Independent Minor League team relocated to Boulder and became the summer tenant. The Boulder Baseliners became members of the Northern League and called Flatirons Field home.

The only drawback had been resistance from two special interest groups in Boulder – an animal rights group that objected to using open space land within the city limits because it would have displaced some prairie dogs, and the group that was behind the city wide smoking ban. They objected to a baseball park because they heard there was a long standing tie between baseball and tobacco. Arguments that it was smokeless tobacco fell on deaf ears.

That forced Bohn to look outside the city limits, which he did successfully when some land was acquired between Boulder and Niwot that would become home for the new baseball and softball facility. The Niwot area’s passion for baseball was a huge factor for Bohn, he said at the time, as was the fact that the new park could be used by high school teams - like Niwot High - as well. About the only thing the investors could not agree on was whether or not to try to find a naming rights sponsor, so they opted to name the new park Flatirons Field…for now. A naming rights sponsor could emerge later, Bohn told the media.

With the facility in place, Bohn had to turn his attention to building a team. He was successful in getting former Buff All-America catcher John Stearns to accept the head coaching position, and Stearns hit the recruiting trail hard. He landed several junior college standouts, and convinced three of the states top recruits to stay home, rather than heading to Nebraska. The presence of a baseball team even got one four star football recruit to come to CU because he would be able to play both sports in college. In their first two years back, the Buffs finished in the Big 12 cellar, but after getting an influx of new talent, the team took off, finishing fourth in the Big 12 post-season tournament, and earning a chance to not only be in the field of 64 for the NCAA tourney, but even host a regional at their beautiful new ballpark.

The Buffs got competitive quickly because Stearns was able to sell recruits on the great new facility, he told the media. By keeping the best high schoolers in Colorado at home, Stearns has promised to get the Buffs into the College World Series in the very near future. That future could start today if CU can topple the mighty Tar Heels.

As you sit in your stadium seat awaiting the start of the game, you remember five years ago, before CU brought baseball back, when schools like Nebraska were swooping in and taking all the in-state talent out of state. You smile when you read about the much needed revenue being brought into the CU Athletic Department from the new ballpark – meaning baseball can no longer be called a ‘non-revenue’ sport in Boulder. You smile and tell yourself you knew it all along. If they would have just listened to you a decade ago when you told them to build a new ballpark and bring back baseball, all this could have happened in the mid ‘90’s.

You smile as you realize we don’t have to miss out on the splendour of College Baseball around here anymore.

You stop smiling when you open your eyes, and realize that this fantasy baseball is still probably many years away, at best.

 (Photo courtesy of Tarheelblue.com)