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Ole Miss baseball stadiumRaising the bar

SEBaseball.com / Mark Etheridge, April 29, 2009

Oxford, MS — Nestled on the tree-lined Taylor Road on the outskirts of the Ole Miss campus sits a masterpiece. For the folks in Oxford, this is not exactly uncommon. The locals see historic antebellum mansions, boast literary geniuses from the zip code, and have the enviable reputation of producing the top collection of southern belles. To put it mildly, these folks don't impress easy.

Ole Miss is an athletic program that has not enjoyed the recent success in the marquee sports. Nice upticks followed by disappointing downturns have been the modus operandi. Their stadiums pale in comparison to some of their conference mates.

But baseball is different. Since head coach Mike Bianco took over in 2001, the team has won at least 35 games each season and won 39 or more in seven of the nine. A fanbase eager for a winner has one in the Diamond Rebels. As a result of the success, the crowds have flocked to Swayze Field. The stadium itself was nice enough, but pales in comparison to some of more modern facilities. Those days are a memory now.

Fans still roll through the campus at 18 mph but instead of a cookie-cutter college stadium, now a renovated modern replacement sits in its place. And while it may appear like aliens dropped a new ballyard where the old on once sat, this is the same place. Like a sorority girl on the backside of perky, it just finished a load of plastic surgery.

A $18 million dollar expansion provides a red brick entrance to the park that compliments the campus' other buildings. Inside the park 880 club seats between first and third base were added, as well as an increase in box seats from 400 to approximately 1,700. The grandstands were also extended down both baselines with new box seats and grandstand seating. The overall number of chairback seats jumped from 2,951 to over 6,000.

They used the same architectural firm (Cooke Douglass Farr Lemons in Jackson, MS) that originally built the stadium. The firm knew plenty about the stadium going in which aided the design and construction. One difference in Oxford-University Stadium compared to other new or renovated ballparks is the club level. Used in the place of suites, you don't  have to be a bailout candidate to have one.

"I am really proud of the club level," Bianco said. "I think schools have gone to suites that are bought by corporations. This way actually makes more money. We have sold all but 15% of them. There are real fans up there - not corporations who give the seats away or don't show. These people are going to be there every day.

"We moved the box seats and the fans closer to the action and put in the concourse level that will get you all the way to the outfield. Everybody always talked about our outfield. Now you have concessions and restrooms out there to take care of nearly six thousand people out there sometimes." While South Carolina and LSU built new stadiums on new sites, the stadium at Ole Miss remained in its current place. This allowed traditions to continue uninterrupted and few programs have their traditions like the Hotty Toddy, Gosh almighty Rebels. 

Some examples include the "Throw it in the Dirt...Dirt" chants for wild pitches to the beer showers in the outfield after a dramatic win. Don't forget about after pre-inning warmups when the outfielders throw a baseball into the mass of students beyond the outfield wall. The students write messages and then throw the ball back to the outfielders for the next inning.

"It's not just the environment," Georgia coach David Perno told Neal McCready of RebelSports.net. "It's the stadium. They've got everything. It's done right. It's the best we've been in, not just the environment and being tough to play in, but just the looks, the aesthetics. Everything's done right and I tip my hat to Mike and Ole Miss and their athletic department. They've done a great job."

Perno would no doubt love to see his Georgia program attempt something similar. After all, in the SEC arms race those standing still are losing ground.

So how does this happen? How does a school that is winning take that next step and have a facility to turn recruits' heads? "The reason it happens is  you have an administration that cares about baseball," said Bianco. "That is a neat thing. We went for years in the old stadium where there wasn't an empty seat in the house. All the seats would be sold. Now we can sell more season tickets. We're real proud."

"They love baseball here," Bianco added. And why not? They can boast about having the best on-campus baseball atmosphere in the country.