The grass is greener
Revamped fields bring fresh optimism to Capital High baseball and softball teams.
If you build it …
With a history that extends back more than a year, the new(ish) baseball and softball complex at Capital High School has had its much-anticipated debut delayed by fire, bad weather, construction snafus, a pandemic and, most recently, a scheduling issue.
At long last, they’re finally ready to roll.
The $2.8 million project has transformed the southeast footprint of campus, excavating the old grass baseball field that bordered the tennis courts to the west and Paseo del Sol to the east and replacing it with a state-of-the-art complex complete with turf fields, concrete walkways, new scoreboards, fresh fences and plenty of oohs and aahs.
“We went from maybe the worst fields around to some of the best because, I mean, the outfield on the old field was horrible,” said Capital baseball player Alann Gutierrez. “I wouldn’t say the entire field was horrible, but looking at what we have now, it doesn’t really compare.”
The softball fields opened for business last weekend when the Jaguars hosted Rio Rancho and, four days later, Cleveland. It wasn’t all smooth sailing. The school hasn’t quite figured out a way to erect bleachers in the minuscule space between the backstop and the concrete retaining wall that separates the campus from Paseo del Sol.
The lack of seating made the first
two games feel a lot like a Little League game as parents in foldout chairs lined the fences down left and right field.
The Jaguars baseball team was supposed to open its facility last week but learned that its opponent had inadvertently scheduled a home game against another school that same day, forcing a delay that pushes the first game on the new field to April 24 against Española Valley.
For Capital baseball coach Nick Salazar, all the waiting has been worth it.
“I remember coming out here to the old grass field and using a shovel to fill in gopher holes before every game, then having them dug back out before the game was even over,” he said. “We’d have balls hit into the outfield and sometimes they’d bounce into one and take a hop in a completely different direction.”
Salazar has seen the best and worst out of Capital’s program over the years. A former student at the school, he inherited a team that has made regular flirtations with 20-loss seasons, not to mention a laundry list of troubles trying to develop talent.
In that respect, Salazar is the perfect man for the job. While he said he had a hand in helping with the design aspect of the new field, he has had an even bigger hand in building a grassroots effort to send players through a pipeline he hopes pays dividends in the future.
Salazar is the co-founder of one of New Mexico’s largest and most well-respected club teams, the Hooligans. Based in Rio Rancho, the organization has expanded into Santa Fe and is partnering with E&G Baseball Academy to open a new facility next month.
It’s Salazar’s hope that the chasm that exists between Santa Fe and the traditional power programs in the Albuquerque area will shrink as fast as the prairie dog colony that once tunneled its way under the Capital outfield grass.
Just thinking about that massive community of desert rodents makes Salazar laugh. He recalled the work it took to move them off campus, then plow over the old grass fields to lay the groundwork for a pair of fields that now share the same space that was once held by a single baseball facility.
“It wasn’t as easy as just laying down a bunch of turf,” he said during a recent practice. “But just look at it. It’s beautiful.”
Squeezing two fields into the space that used to be just one makes for some interesting dimensions. The fences down the left and right field lines are just 285 feet, while a shot to dead center is a very manageable 340. Looming like a radar beacon beyond the fences in left and center is a row of portables, one of which is occupied by Salazar during his day job as a Capital teacher.
The space between the baseball and softball fields is no more than the width of a sidewalk, making a home run to left in softball a veritable missile to anyone playing in right on the baseball field. Filling that space will soon be a 30-foot safety net that will encircle much of the baseball field. The netting down the left field line will prevent most foul balls from landing on the tennis courts.
Capital senior Fernando Valenzuela — no, not that Fernando, Dodgers fans — said it’s too early to tell if the team’s new digs will have any impact on the win column.
“It’s just good to have a place this good,” he said. “I don’t know if more players want to play, but it’s nice to have a good field.”
There’s still some work to be done. Aside from the bleachers for softball and safety netting for baseball, the mound on the baseball field needs to be completely rebuilt as soon as this season ends. Salazar said it was thrown together with a combination of clay and loose sand, making it highly unstable.
He’d also like to have portable mounds installed in the bullpens. As of now, they’re just fenced-in areas with turf that resemble a dog run someone might put in a backyard.
Salazar and his coaching staff handles the infield maintenance. The infield skin is turf, as is the entire outfield, but the rest is natural dirt that sat unused for 13 months, from the start of the pandemic until preseason workouts less than three weeks ago.
“I really feel like Capital baseball has everything in place to have a great future,” Salazar said. “We have the field and now we’re starting to install a program that will develop players from all over the north. All we need now are the wins, and those will come.”