By Bill Koch
The Cincinnati Enquirer

For University of Cincinnati baseball coach Brian Cleary, it's impossible to overstate the impact of the new $11 million, 3,085-seat baseball stadium that will open Thursday night on the UC campus.

"I think it's going to change the face of UC baseball," he said - "much like Shoemaker Center did for UC basketball."

BEARCATS' LAIR

• Photos of the new stadium • Varsity Village map   (930k PDF file; pan & zoom)

The stadium is the first tangible evidence of a massive makeover that's designed to change the face not just of the baseball program, but of the entire UC athletic operation.

It's the first completed phase of the $80 million Richard E. Lindner Varsity Village project, for which ground was broken in March 2003. Athletic director Bob Goin views it as a sign to the community that "everything we do is going to be at the highest level of Division I."

UC will play the first game in the new stadium, on Corry Street off Jefferson Avenue, at 7:30 p.m. Thursday against Alabama-Birmingham in the Bearcats' final series of the season. Admission is free, while parking on campus will be $3. UC president Nancy Zimpher will throw out the ceremonial first pitch.

The Bearcats also will play UAB at 7:30 p.m. Friday and 1 p.m. Saturday. An official dedication for the stadium, unnamed pending negotiation of a naming-rights deal, will occur early in the 2005 season.

The Fifth Third Arena at Shoemaker Center, which opened in 1989, helped transform the Bearcats basketball team under coach Bob Huggins from a national nonentity into a perennial Top 25 program. The baseball team, which hasn't had a winning season since 2001, has a long way to go to reach that status. It was 15-39 last year and was 13-38 this season heading into Tuesday's game at Akron.

But the Bearcats have never had a home like this.

"I saw all the diagrams and pictures and models of it, so I knew it was going to be pretty spectacular," senior catcher Steve Pickerell said. "But once you see it in person, it's pretty awe-inspiring."

The stadium was scheduled to open earlier in the season, but inclement weather pushed that back.

"We're pushing it for this," Goin said. "There's still more work to be done after the opening game, but I did want our team to be the first one to play baseball in it."

The new ballpark, comparable to many professional class A minor league stadiums, has lights and a FieldTurf artificial playing surface so that it can be used during inclement early spring weather and for intramurals. Goin also envisions it as an amphitheater for nonathletic outdoor events.

But it's a baseball stadium first and foremost, with all the amenities that the major college programs have. There's a players lounge, a spacious home locker room, an umpires room, a visitors locker room, coaches locker rooms, a heated indoor batting cage and pitchers mounds for use during the winter, a training room, laundry room and a press box with two broadcast booths, a print media booth and a VIP booth.

"I look at it sometimes and say I can't believe we ever built this here," Cleary said.

Said infielder Drew Saylor: "I've been around the country playing baseball. I've been to Georgia Tech and Georgia and San Diego State. This place blows all those places away. Every time I set foot in there, my jaw drops to the floor."

Cleary is hoping the new field will serve both as a recruiting tool and as a magnet to attract fans.

"I think it's going to be difficult for anyone to see a game there and not want to come back," he said. Getting to this point has been a struggle for the Bearcats, who have been forced to compete without a home field the past two seasons. While their new home was under construction, they played at Midland Field in Amelia, 30 to 45 minutes from campus.

"It's been absolutely brutal," senior Aaron Moll said. "You don't get a sense of playing at home, and the only people that come out are 10 or 15 parents."

Moll will get to play only three games in the new stadium, but he plans to savor them. He'll be UC's starting pitcher Thursday night, making the first pitch.

"It'll be a fastball," Moll said. "I'm going to throw it 110 miles per hour. I'll be so excited, I might throw it over the press box."

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E-mail bkoch@enquirer.com