Mark Patton: Diamonds Are Never It Seems for Homeless UCSB Baseball Team

Friday is Opening Day for the coach who’s stuck in Groundhog Day.

Andrew Checketts keeps reliving that time of nine years ago when his nose was rubbed in the dirt of the shortcomings of UC Santa Barbara’s baseball facility.

He found himself back in Lake Elsinore — a town where the Gauchos were forced to hold their own 2015 NCAA Baseball Regional — when he needed a practice field last week for his homeless team.

Checketts said after the 2015 Regional that he’d never go down that 175-mile road again.

And yet, there he was last week.

“There’s a high school down there that has lights and turf,” he said of Lakeside High School. “We bused down four hours and played a four-hour scrimmage Friday night under the lights.

“We stayed in a hotel, scrimmaged four more hours Saturday morning, then bused four more hours back.”

Such is the vagabond life of a program that was thrown under the bus by the California Coastal Commission just 12 days before last Christmas.

The commission transformed into the horrifying apparition of Scrooge & Marley Inc. and forbade the Gauchos from installing artificial turf at Caesar Uyesaka Stadium.

UCSB skinned the field of all its grass last August after the commission signaled its approval of the $2.8 million project by putting it on the consent calendar for its September meeting.

A last-minute objection by the Sierra Club California, however, took it off that agenda and tasked UCSB into proving that the new surface wouldn’t pollute the ecosystem with microplastics.

The university proved it eight different ways during the three months that followed.

But since the Sierra Club already declared war against all artificial turf, Coastal Commission staffer Steve Hudson balked like a jittery pitcher hyped up on Red Bull. He recommended that the project be approved only if UCSB used grass.

Ten commissioners fell in line like dutiful sycophants.

Even local commission representative Meagan Harmon, who serves on the Santa Barbara City Council, refused to go to bat for all those local taxpayers who donated to the $2.8 million project.

She just shrugged, declared herself “a nonscientist,” and abstained from voting.

Rain Delay

A rainy season of near-biblical proportions has since mucked up UCSB’s ability to obtain any sod, let alone install it.

It’s forced the Gauchos to move their home-opening series against Sacramento State to Fresno’s Chukchansi Park on the weekend of Feb. 23-25.

They’ve also switched their Feb. 27 home game against St. Mary’s to the Gaels’ park in Moraga.

“We’re up against it,” Checketts told Noozhawk last week. “The original sod that we ordered has been pushed back to like Feb. 26.

“A lot of the places that had the sod got flooded. They can’t harvest them because they can’t get the machinery out on them.

“We’re now navigating for three kinds of grass from a couple of different suppliers.”

The Gauchos will open their season Friday with a three-game series in Buies Creek, North Carolina, against Campbell University.

Considering Checketts’ luck during this whole process, it’s not surprising that rain is in the forecast for the games on both Saturday and Sunday.

But at least Campbell didn’t have an Appalachia Club objecting to artificial turf when it laid its new field at Jim Perry Stadium in 2017.

“I was thinking that maybe we should’ve turfed our field … What do you think?” Checketts asked sarcastically. “Sound like a good idea?”

The weather has mocked him ever since the Coastal Commission cold-cocked him in December.

“The last storm wiped out five or six days worth of work on the field,” Checketts said. “They came back today (Thursday) and are trenching right now to get the irrigation going.

“We’re just running up against it right now.”

His exasperation with the lot he’s been cast morphed into frustration. It’s since turned into the desperation of finding places to train.

“Now I’m just mired in the minutiae,” Checketts said. “‘Here’s what we’ve got … What can we control? … Do the best we can and try to get the guys ready.

“I think everybody is doing all they can — the players and coaches and administrators. Everybody is doing whatever they can.”

But Mother Nature keeps throwing mud into his eyes. The main reason for wanting artificial turf was the way UCSB’s baseball and softball fields serve as a catch basin for water runoff.

Even the well-covered Bob Brontsema Player Development Facility failed to provide shelter during the recent rainstorms.

“The cages are flooded — that’s one of our major issues,” Checketts said. “It makes it hard to do some of the offensive stuff.

“The cages flood when it rains and that saturates the turf. And it’s the old synthetic turf with a rubber pad on top of concrete, so there’s nowhere for the water to go.”

On the Road Again

The Gauchos practiced several times last week atop the artificial turf of the Recreation Department’s soccer fields.

They were also given a short window to scrimmage at Dos Pueblos High School’s Scott O’Leary Field on Friday before the Chargers started their own practice.

Checketts then moved his traveling band of Gauchos to Westmont College’s Russell Carr Field on Sunday.

“We’ve been kind of bouncing around,” he said. “We’re getting in some work. It’s not like we’re not doing anything. There’s a lot of bobbing and weaving.”

UCSB will now tentatively make its home debut on March 1 in the opener of a three-game series against Oregon.

“We’re still holding out hope,” Checketts said. “We’ve got a couple of other suppliers and sod that we’re working with, and maybe somebody can get here a little bit sooner.

“But the field’s got to be ready to take it with the last week of rain.”

The irony is that these worst of times have come at the best of times for Checketts’ program. The Gauchos have been ranked in the preseason top 25 in seven of the nine major collegiate polls.

USA Baseball named junior pitcher Matt Ager to its Golden Spikes Watch List, an award that goes to the nation’s top amateur baseball player. He and fellow Gaucho pitcher Hudson Barrett have made nearly every preseason All-America team.

UCSB also returns its entire infield and a pair of .300-hitting outfielders from last year.

No Restroom for the Weary

The Gauchos are a national power that has gone half-a-year without having its own field to train upon.

The situation stinks as badly as the outhouse that serves as the only restroom facility for their baseball fans.

UCSB’s administration insists that upgrades for sports facilities must be fund-raised by the Athletics Department.

The problem, Checketts wryly notes, is that “What donor wants to put his name on a bathroom?”

No matter how hard he’s tried to dig UCSB baseball out of this hole — raising funds for new lights and now for artificial turf that got rolled up by the Coastal Commission — that abyss seems to get deeper and deeper.

Few realize how close Checketts came to taking the USC job when the Trojans offered him a huge payday two years ago.

I’m guessing he’ll take the money and run from this circus at the very next offering.

For now, he just wants to get into the dugout on Friday and lead his Gauchos against Campbell, a team that advanced to an NCAA Regional final last year.

“We aren’t as ready as we would be if we had a baseball field to train on, but we’re also not sitting around in front of the fire, watching Disney movies,” Checketts said.

“We’ve been working and doing the best we can, and I think there’s enough talent and experience on the roster that we should be able to hold our own.”

At least they’ve gotten used to playing on someone else’s diamond.