If you build it, Ray, they will come.
They'll come to see $4 million worth of improvements that should transform a mere baseball field into a state-of-the-art park. They'll come for the new chair-back seats, stadium lights and a digital scoreboard.
Build it, Ray, and they will buy.
They'll buy yearly contracts for skyboxes to watch baseball at a basketball school. They'll buy stadium hot dogs, soda and chips to their heart's delight.
Build it, Ray, and they will play.
Top high school baseball players from all around the region will give up offers from the national powers to come to Virginia and play in a stadium built with them in mind. They'll turn Virginia baseball, a program nearly given a death sentence a year ago, into an annual conference contender.
Build it, Ray ... and they will ... Hey, Ray! Snap out of it!
They're not coming, Ray! It's too damn cold!
Fair weather fans
There's one thing I know for sure about the "new" U.Va. baseball stadium.
It might turn out to be a beautiful place to play ball. I can't tell quite yet. The skyboxes aren't even close to being finished and the new digital scoreboard and concession stands are still just promises.
It might become a terrific recruiting tool. But first it needs indoor bathrooms, not Port-a-Johns.
Oh, but there is one thing I can tell you.
It's cold out there.
It's freeze-your-toes-off cold. Wear-your-parka-and-gloves-and-ski-mask cold. Lucy Liu cold.
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At the doubleheader against Seton Hall Sunday, by the time the sun started going down behind the field's beautiful canopy -- which is supposed to protect fans from the weather - the outside temperature was about 40 degrees and the wind inside the stadium was gusting at 10-15 mph.
Maybe I was watching some kind of demonstration sport for the 2006 Winter Games.
But baseball?
"It's always like that," senior Dan Street, the team's most consistent hitter and pitcher, said. "Playing in Virginia is always like that."
And you ask why Virginia isn't a baseball powerhouse? There are 1,500 seats in the new stadium, all of them closer to the field than you could get at a major league park without breaking your bank account.
Sunday, officially, 287 of them were filled. I saw about half that many, but maybe the statisticians were counting parkas too.
The new U.Va. baseball stadium may turn out to be a great place to play and watch, but Charlottesville in early March never will be.
A ray of light
Not to be too hard on the stadium's designers or its benefactors. Their jobs - once the Port-a-Johns are replaced with automatic flush toilets and the old scoreboard is swapped with one that can ask the crowd for "NOISE" or to "GET FIRED UP" -- are done.
And once the weather cooperates, thanks to the new stadium, we could have quite a program here.
It won't be Miami or Stanford or LSU; the cold will have a lot to say about that.
But it could be the best in the state, maybe even the best north of the Carolinas.
And to think, just nine months ago, baseball was on the verge of extinction at the University. The athletic department was a Board of Visitors vote away from eliminating completely its scholarship allotment and severely cutting back its travel budget.
Nobody wanted to do it. Some said they had to do it.
Then somebody got the idea that $4 million - donated anonymously - could save the U.Va. baseball team. It might even bring it a level it's never seen before.
Hey, Ray. Thanks.
(Sam Le's column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at sle@cavalierdaily.com.)
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