Monongalia County Ballpark
Photo by: All Pro Photography/Dale Sparks
WVU’s Mazey Nostalgic on Eve of First Morgantown NCAA Regional in 64 Years
May 28, 2019 02:30 PM | Baseball
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Every once in a while, it's a good idea to take a look back before moving forward.Veteran West Virginia coach Randy Mazey did so one day after learning that his 17th-ranked Mountaineer baseball team is going to host an NCAA regional for the first time in 64 years.
Mazey and his players received the good news during their descent into Clarksburg following West Virginia's 5-2 loss to Oklahoma State in the Big 12 Tournament championship game on Sunday.
He referenced the many players through the years whose hard work helped get the baseball program into the position it's in right now, which includes an SEC baseball team playing in Morgantown, West Virginia, for the first time since Mountaineer players first began tossing baseballs around in 1892.
He even recalled the charm and allure of old Hawley Field, the former home of WVU baseball from 1971 until 2014.
"Hawley Field was awesome," he chuckled. "It was great. I loved Hawley Field. I loved the atmosphere we had there and the energy in that place. The setting was beautiful. You've got the Coliseum in the background and it was a shame that we were so land locked back there that we couldn't have put this stadium there, because you want your stadium to be as close to campus as you can."Without Hawley Field and the hundreds and even the thousands of guys who played on Hawley Field and dressed out of the trunks of their cars because they didn't have lockers … without those guys, we're not here."
He's right. Before Monongalia County Ballpark, Hawley Field was all we had to watch baseball games. It was where the Morgantown American Legion team used to play during the summertime, and it was also once the site of a college baseball tournament way back in 1985.
That's when WVU hosted the Atlantic 10 Championships and Mountaineer fans got to see Bob Bernardo go on a home run hitting binge that carried West Virginia right into the NCAA Tournament. It was said that one of his mammoth blasts landed halfway up on top of the roof of the WVU Shell Building still sitting behind the left-field fence.
And any wayward baseballs flying backwards into the neighborhood just behind Hawley Field in Star City were always retrieved with great alacrity before the kids got to them. The late Dale Ramsburg wasn't about to blow his miniscule baseball budget on lost foul balls, so he usually assigned the most annoying reserve player he had in the dugout to go chase them down.
One particular guy with an uncanny knack of distracting Ramsburg at the most inopportune times was backup catcher Eric Petho, nicknamed "Hooch" for reasons unknown. Whenever old Hooch got revved up with another good story or a funny comment about the other team, Ramsburg would order him to leave the dugout to go look for foul balls out in the neighborhood while wearing his full uniform. The Rammer would sometimes instruct Hooch not to return until at least the eighth inning, or perhaps not even until the final out was recorded in the bottom of the ninth if it was a really tight game.
Mazey didn't quite go to those extremes during his one year navigating the extremely tight dugout quarters at Hawley Field, but he did have to stand in line to wait his turn to go to the bathroom, sometimes standing in a stall right next to "Ding-It-Out" Tommy.
Just like Bobby Bowden, who once joked that coaching in old Mountaineer Field with the fans right next to him provided him the pleasure of hearing every bad name he was being called, Mazey often had to listen to advice from well-intentioned fans while he stood in line before doing his business.
"My favorite part of Hawley Field was when I had to use the restroom, you stood right in line with everyone else," he chuckled. "That was when the fans were asking me why I bunted and who was going to pitch the next inning while I was waiting my turn.
"We seemed to do a lot better when I was standing in the bathroom, anyway," Mazey joked.
In 2014, the final year of Hawley Field, Mazey took great delight in seeing the late legendary Texas coach Augie Garrido's reaction the first time he saw Hawley Field with his Longhorn players when they got off the bus to begin their long walk down to the field."You can't see the field until you walk around the leftfield corner so I just wanted to see him walk around the corner. When he walked around the corner and looked, he hesitated like he was thinking about getting back on the bus, but no, we had a great crowd back then. I think we had 2,500 for the Texas series when we played them there and that was awesome," he said.
"To have Carol Ramsburg come out there with her family and throw out the first pitch that weekend was special for them, and how much (Dale) meant to the program and all of his guys that played here ... all of those special times are starting to come to the forefront right now just because we're hosting a regional. People don't understand the impact of what hosting a regional does for the entire community and alumni base. Hopefully this will change the face of our program."
It WILL change the face of West Virginia University baseball, just as the hiring of Randy Mazey in 2013 and the completion of Monongalia County Ballpark in 2015 have also changed the face of the program.
And, of equal importance, more fond college baseball memories are about to be made this weekend.
West Virginia will face Atlantic 10 champion Fordham on Friday night at 8 p.m. on ESPN3, while Texas A&M and Duke will open regional play at 4 p.m. on ESPN2.
Briefly: The announcers assigned by ESPN to call all of the action at Monongalia County Ballpark this weekend will be Mark Neely and former Pittsburgh Pirates catcher Mike LaValliere.
Steve Sabins | April 14
Tuesday, April 14
Coal Rush Baseball Uniform Reveal
Wednesday, March 11
Steve Sabins | Feb. 16
Monday, February 16
Matthew Graveline | Feb. 16
Monday, February 16
