A new baseball stadium will be a boon to Huntington and enable Marshall to build a sports program of national prominence.
If you drive by the old BASF plant on Fifth Avenue in Huntington and take a quick look to your left, you can see all the way to Third Avenue where the hulking, shuttered, ACF plant still stands. Both are industrial artifacts of bygone days in the city.
In between the two thoroughfares is Marshall’s diamond in the rough.
Construction equipment already has been at work on the eight-acre site clearing the land for Marshall’s very own on-campus baseball stadium. It’s all a part of the “Herd Rises” fundraising campaign which will help finance the $22 million facility. For the better part of 60 years, Marshall’s lack of a baseball stadium to call its own has almost been a cruel joke.
“On Oct. 26, I told my wife I had the groundbreaking on our new baseball stadium,” said Athletic Director Mike Hamrick. “She said, ‘New stadium, where’s the old one?’”
At that groundbreaking former Marshall Pitcher and Major League All-Star Rick Reed had his own gallows humor moment: “I figured it up, and Marshall has played about 3,000 baseball games here,” said Reed. “Well, not here at Marshall. That’s one helluva road trip.”
The searing one-liners have been replaced by a fervent optimism that this project can be a showpiece for Marshall University and the city of Huntington.
“We can do a lot of things with this baseball stadium to bring people to Huntington,” Hamrick asserted. “We can bring commerce and prosperity to Huntington. We can bring people to stay in our hotels and eat in our restaurants. This new stadium is something we all can be proud of.”
Hamrick said the hope was to have the stadium open for the 2021 season, but the administration is working with the architects to make some “value engineering” modifications, which may delay the project to a 2022 opening.
The stadium will seat 3,500 people, with a clubhouse and three locker rooms, and give the program a home base it’s been lacking since baseball was born at Marshall in 1896. This is the news that former Marshall Coach Jack Cook has been waiting for since 1967, when he became the head coach. How long ago is that? Carl Yastrzemski and Harmon Killebrew shared the major league home run lead that year. Late inning pitchers weren’t “closers” back then, but “relievers.” The Herd’s vagabond program has been hopscotching all around the Tri-State ever since. It’s hard to call it a home game when you still need to have a travel budget to get back to the residence halls.
“What’s neat to see is the look on Coach Jack Cook’s face,” said Huntington Mayor Steve Williams about the 93-year-old baseball icon. “He’s been promised a field since the 1960s and that promise is finally being fulfilled. It shows the partnership between Marshall and Huntington. This new baseball stadium can enable Coach Waggoner to not just lead a good team in a great conference, but build a program of national prominence.”
Jeff Waggoner is entering his 13th year as Marshall’s baseball coach. Conference USA is challenging enough when you have to travel to Hattiesburg to play Southern Miss, or to Houston to take on Rice, who won the College World Series in 2007. Imagine not having to drive to Appalachian Power Park in Charleston or out to the Kennedy Center on Route 2 to host fellow Conference USA schools. Nearly every year the league is routinely among the top 10 baseball conferences in the country. The new stadium can be a crown jewel for the city and for the program.
“The city of Huntington, and Marshall’s fan base, can actually watch the team play in one of the best conferences in the country,” said Waggoner. “They can see some of the star players we’ve been producing and other great players in this league. I think it’s going to be awesome for springtime in Huntington, West Virginia.”
For Waggoner the recruiting possibilities a new stadium can bring are numerous. Tracking down talent is one thing. Asking that talent to come play for your school when there’s no on-campus facility is another thing altogether. Waggoner would like nothing better than to see summer baseball at the new facility, which he says would be a boon to recruiting.
“You can host high school tournaments here,” Waggoner said. “You can bring in teams from all the surrounding areas to play in tournaments and that helps recruiting. That’s how you’re going to have a great baseball program. But, I don’t think you want to be in a situation where you have a minor league team playing here for a year or two and then they leave. Plus, minor league teams don’t take care of your facilities.”
The stadium will also broaden Marshall’s footprint to the east of the city. As motorists drive down Third Avenue approaching the Huntington campus, the first glimpse they’ll get of a Marshall athletic facility will be the baseball stadium.
“The location of this stadium, just a short walk from the east edge of our campus, is absolutely fantastic for the Marshall community, particularly our students,” said Marshall President Jerome Gilbert. “I envision students and their friends walking over to watch college baseball, something they haven’t ever been able to do at Marshall. Our new baseball stadium beautifully augments our existing athletic facilities and I couldn’t be happier with its physical location, not to mention its outstanding design.”
Major League Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby once said of America’s pastime, “People ask me what I do in the winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”
Soon — hopefully as early as next year — baseball fans all around the region will be watching out their windows. After all these years, the wait will be well worth it.
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About the Author: Keith Morehouse is sports director at WSAZ NewsChannel 3. He is a two-time Emmy winner and received the West Virginia Sportscaster of the Year award in 1999, 2007 and 2012. He graduated from Marshall University in 1983 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Broadcast Journalism.
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Photos (from top): Head Baseball Coach Jeff Waggoner stands on the future site of the Marshall University baseball stadium.
The groundbreaking for the new baseball stadium was Oct. 26, 2019. From left: Brian Pounds, Architect, AECOM; Marshall Board of Governors Chair James Bailes; Head Baseball Coach Jeff Waggoner; President Jerome Gilbert; former Head Baseball Coach Jack Cook; Athletic Director Mike Hamrick; former Herd and Major League Baseball player Mike Montgomery; Huntington Mayor Steve Williams and former Herd and Major League Baseball player Rick Reed.
The Marshall University baseball program has a long and storied tradition on campus. The completion of a new, long-awaited $22 milion baseball stadium in 2021 is expected to reinvigorate the program and help the university build a sports program of national prominence.
An artist’s rendering of Marshall University’s new baseball stadium, which will be located between Third Avenue and Fifth Avenue just east of the indoor practice facility.