re: Am I the only one that thinks college baseball ain't what it was!!

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Skip has been saying the past few yrs that the ball & the bats are ok now but what makes Omaha so difficult is the stadium is built such that the winds are always blowing in towards home plate that time of the year. And CPM saw UCLA win 2 NC's going small ball with average size players. He knows who & what he is recruiting and why.

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There is a relatively easy fix to that problem, but the Omaha folks wouldn't like that because it would obscure the view of downtown from the park.

Arlington Stadium, home of the Texas Rangers from 1972-1993, had this same problem when it opened--the prevailing southerly wind blew in from right, or right center-field, and made the place a graveyard for power hitters. That is, until they installed a new wrap around scoreboard, probably 50 feet high, around the top of the outfield bleachers (which were somewhat reminiscent of the bleachers at Omaha). Once they did this, the wind went up and over the scoreboard, then bounced off the upper deck behind home plate and created a backwash, that actually worked like a jet stream and turned Arlington Stadium into a hitter's park overnight. The current Rangers ballpark maintains the same dynamic (home plate faces the same direction, and the wind, although blowing in, creates a backwash that helps the ball travel.

So, they could do something similar in Omaha to increase home runs, but it would ruin the aesthetic they were shooting for. Still, I think the NCAA needs to find a way to get this done. There aren't many college baseball fans longing for a return to gorilla ball, but most fans wouldn't object to some adjustments at Omaha to give hitters a fair chance.