Team Is Ready, but Is Field?

Jack Hodges, the Saddleback College baseball coach, and his players know all about life on the road.

A construction project to improve the field and build a temporary stadium for a minor league team forced the Gauchos off their field for about three weeks this season.

But Hodges never complained about the inconvenience, despite playing “home” games at Fullerton, Golden West and Orange Coast colleges.

Instead, Saddleback stayed focused on a more important project--reaching the playoffs.

Saddleback swept Southwestern in the best-of-three series and is hosting one of two Southern California regional tournaments starting Friday. The other is at Rancho Santiago.

There is little question the Gauchos will be ready. The bigger question is whether the stands behind them will be.

The college brought in sets of small bleachers that sat in front of the stands that are being constructed and they provided more than enough seating for the first-round series against Southwestern.

But at least 300 to 500 seats in the grandstands are expected to be ready for this weekend’s second-round games.

The first eight rows are theater-style seats that are expected to arrive by truck from Minnesota no later than Thursday. The rest will be bleachers.

In case of delays, the college will keep the bleachers in front of the grandstands. The light towers are also expected to be installed this week but they won’t be used.

“It’s kind of neat,” Hodges said, “every day they have done something new.”

Besides the stands, the most obvious change is a giant fence that runs behind the outfield fence in center and left field. The fence is 40 feet high and covered by a green wind screen. Balls only have to clear the regular outfield fence to be home runs.

The taller fence was designed to protect people on the tennis courts behind it but it also has helped alter the way baseballs hit in that direction carry.

Balls hit above the screen seem to catch a jet stream and fly right over, like the home run first baseman Kirk Bolling hit Friday in a victory over Southwestern.

But some balls get hung up in the turbulence caused when the wind hits the screen.

“It really has changed the way some balls carry,” Hodges said.