Schlossnagle wants stadium upgrades
Fresh off final-four finish, coach says Blue Bell needs expanded amenities
OMAHA, Neb. — Minutes after Texas A&M’s most successful season in history had wrapped up in college baseball’s equivalent of the final four, coach Jim Schlossnagle nodded appreciatively in a Charles Schwab Field tunnel as Mississippi’s players walked by en route for the outside dirt and grass and ideally glory in the sunshine.
Schlossnagle then put the feeling of competing in the NCAA Tournament and its showcase, the College World Series, in a way that any 5-year-old with a hat and a bat could grasp.
“Look at these guys,” Schlossnagle said as the Ole Miss players strolled past. “They’re playing awesome, and they were arguably the 64th team in the field. It’s tournament baseball — just like Little League. You’ve got to get to the thing and then hope to play better than everybody else.”
For the first time in program history, only two teams played better than A&M (44-20) in the end: Oklahoma and Ole Miss, which beat Arkansas 2-0 on Thursday and will face the Sooners starting Saturday in the best-of-three championship series.
OU eliminated A&M 5-1 on Wednesday in the CWS as the Aggies finished 2-2 in Omaha and doubled their CWS win total (4-14 overall) in Schlossnagle’s first season. Now, the coach who did so much for TCU’s baseball revitalization over 18 seasons is striking while the passion is hot among his latest fan base. Schlossnagle said A&M’s longtime baseball home, Blue Bell Park, needs “total renovation.”
“We need to get caught up,” he said. “We’re in the dark ages. Whether it be player amenities and player development things and things for our fans.”
Blue Bell also needs significant expansion, he added. For instance, 6,656 fans were on hand on June 11 for A&M’s 4-3 victory over Louisville in a super regional propelling the Aggies to their seventh CWS. Compare that to the 14,385 who saw Mississippi State defeat Notre Dame in a super regional opener last year in Starkville, Miss., and Schlossnagle believes A&M needs to get rolling on the widening.
“We need a bigger ballpark, and there’s a demand for season tickets, and there’s demand for premium space,” said Schlossnagle, who added that A&M athletic director Ross Bjork is well aware of his requests. “They’re on the docket, and when I talked about coming to A&M (a year ago), those were things we discussed. It will happen in time.
“No one will ever convince me that a great university like Texas A&M doesn’t deserve to have not just a competitive stadium but the best stadium. We need to set the market for what a college baseball stadium looks like.”
Schlossnagle said if the overall renovation project, still in the idea/ planning stages, is completed in phases, he’d hope to see a phase completed by the spring of 2024 and perhaps the entire project finished by 2025.
Schlossnagle is capitalizing on the good tidings brought about by the deepest NCAA Tournament run in A&M history. The Aggies had never won more than one game in Omaha in six previous trips, and in 1999, 2011 and 2017 under two previous coaches, they lost their first two games each year.
“The biggest thing this year does is reignite the fan base,” Schlossnagle said. “And I hope it spurs some people to want to speed up the process on renovating our ballpark. We have work to do to get our facility the right way. But the greatest thing it does: Now you have a group of players who will be back next year who have been through this.
“So instead of listening to (assistant) Nate Yeskie or myself or (assistant) Nolan Cain talk about Omaha and what it’s like, how do you get there and how important is every single game and every single practice and every single workout … instead of hearing that from a coach, now you’re going to hear it from players.”
One of Schlossnagle’s key offseason missions will be finding more consistent starting pitching. A&M’s offense led the SEC, which had four of the final five teams at the CWS, in batting average in conference games behind coveted hitting coach Michael Earley.
“Starting pitching is everything,” Schlossnagle said. “We overcame so much … really, I’ve never been a part of a team like it. There isn’t a starting pitcher you could hang your hat on and say, ‘OK, we’ve got that game squared away.’ Guys just battled … and we just pieced things together.
That’s a true statement to their character.”
A&M started three seniors in Wednesday’s finale in catcher Troy Claunch, left fielder Dylan Rock and shortstop Kole Kaler. Schlossnagle as usual must wait and see what impact the summer draft has on his roster concerning juniors or draft-eligible sophomores and go from there.
Schlossnagle leaned heavily on the transfer portal in his first season, and Claunch arrived last year from Oregon State knowing little about A&M — but much about Schlossnagle, who had taken TCU to five College World Series. The strong-armed catcher said he’ll always be thankful he headed south and helped make maroon history.
“It was a leap of faith,” said Claunch, fighting through emotion following his college finale. “Just to have all of these guys with me all year long for my last season — I couldn’t have asked for anything more.”