Baseball coach questions size of proposed field

Council looking to make sure baseball field will really work

Can a baseball field that’s not even built yet be too small for Crested Butte’s growing children?

That’s the concern of longtime Crested Butte Babe Ruth baseball coach Mickey Cooper. Under the verbal agreement between the town and the school district, the Tommy V. baseball field is supposed to be moved across the road from its current location to accommodate the upcoming school expansion.
The understanding is that the replacement field will be the same or better than the existing field. Coach Cooper contends that plans on the drawing board make the field worse and virtually unusable for baseball.
 The Crested Butte Town Council asked the town staff to look into the effect of shortening the baseball field. Currently, home plate at Tommy V. is 320 feet from all the outfield fences. The current plan calls for the alleys from home plate to right and left field to be 300 feet and straightaway center field to be 320 feet. Cooper sent a letter to the council stating that the shortened field “is totally inadequate for baseball at the Babe Ruth level.”
Town building and zoning director Bob Gillie admitted the field would be a bit shrunk. “The staff looked at all kinds of configurations for the field,” he told the council. “The site is constrained by wetlands issues. The current plan is the best that we felt could come out of the site. We thought they could play fine on 300-foot fields. There is actually some more space between home plate and the backstop.”
The issue brought frustration to councilperson Billy Rankin. “If one person in town is upset with this, then we have done a bad job with this deal,” he said. “The field is the center of this whole deal and we’ll have blown it if three or four or one person isn’t happy. The deal was that the field would be as good as or better than what we have. This makes me concerned.”
Mayor Alan Bernholtz was less upset. “I am a big baseball fan and have played ball all my life,” he said. “We are talking about 20 feet and the future of the children and the school of this community. I love softball and Babe Ruth. I can’t see not letting this deal go through over 20 feet. I would have a difficult time saying no for 20 feet. Let’s keep this in perspective. I think 300 feet is a long way for a Babe Ruth player to be hitting out there.”
Bernholtz asked if the wetland prohibiting the field being larger could be mitigated. Gillie said those wetlands were under a conservation easement held by the Army Corps of Engineers.
Councilperson Skip Berkshire asked if the 20 feet would compromise the game to the point of not having a field useable for baseball.
In his letter, Cooper states, “For those not in the know, a baseball field is dramatically different from a softball field in terms of base distances, field distances, and playing conditions. The students deserve to have an adequate field to learn on and play on.”
Gillie said the town would do some investigating but “We felt like we made the best field decision we could, given the area.”