Corvallis Gazette-Times

Life has yet to slow down for the Oregon State baseball program in the three weeks since the Beavers captured the 2006 NCAA championship by defeating North Carolina at Rosenblatt Stadium in Omaha.

To wit:

• The new state-of-the-art scoreboard is being erected in right-center field.

• The new synthetic infield surface will be installed in October, immediately after fall practice.

• The Gill Coliseum coaches offices are getting a facelift.

• Head coach Pat Casey addressed a booster group in Portland on Wednesday night, continuing the Goss Stadium fund-raising drive. The Beavers expect to substantially increase the facility’s permanent capacity from about 1,400, and add other amenities, for the 2008 season by extending the present grandstands down the left- and right-field lines.

• Registration for the upcoming summer camp has hit an all-time high.

And the phone continues to ring off the hook, with inquiries from potential donors, and from recruits seeking more information on a program that existed in relative obscurity before grabbing the national spotlight with back-to-back Pacific-10 Conference championships and berths in the College World Series in 2005 and 2006.

“It’s ongoing,” assistant coach Marty Lees said Wednesday of the excitement that’s enveloped the program since the 3-2 victory over North Carolina on June 26 in the rubber game of the best-of-three Championship Series.

“We’ve seen a 100 percent increase in our camp,” on top of a major bump the previous year. “And every (recruit), when we call them, they now know who Oregon State is.

“We might not be able to get everybody, but we’re able to visit” with more prospects than ever before.

The $500,000 new scoreboard, built by the Daktronics corporation of Brookings, S.D., is the most obvious change.

It’s 20-year-old predecessor, the Scott Halbrook Memorial Scoreboard, was sold to Tualatin High School, OSU assistant athletic director for facilities and operations John Cheney said Wednesday.

An appropriate memorial to Halbrook, an infielder who died of head injuries after a 1982 practice mishap at Parker Stadium, will be determined in the near future.

The scoreboard’s five support stanchions are already in place; the actual 37x50-foot apparatus is in Corvallis will be affixed within the next two weeks, Cheney said. The 12.5x20-foot replay screen will require one operator and two cameramen.

“It’s going to be awesome,” Lees said. “It’s another thing that will make OSU baseball better for the kids and the fans.”

OSU will join Washington, Washington State and Gonzaga and become the fourth of the Northwest’s five Division I baseball programs with a synthetic surface when the present grass-and-dirt infield is ripped out. The starting date of fall practice will be moved up so the project can be completed before the fall rains begin; Cheney estimated the project will take 4-to-6 weeks.

The only dirt cutouts will be for the pitcher’s mound and home plate. The infield, basepaths and on-deck circles will be dirt-colored Fieldturf; a similarly-shaded warning track will extend down both foul lines, and a Beaver logo will be added behind home plate.

Lees said the synthetic surface should enable the team to get outside in all but the worst conditions, and virtually eliminate the time-consuming addition and removal of the infield tarp.

Almost half of OSU’s 2007 games will be played on synthetic infields.

“They’re a little slower than dirt and grass, but you get truer hops” Lees said. “We’ve played on that type of turf for three years (at either Washington or WSU) and I don’t think we’ve had an infielder make an error.

“The biggest problem will be going to dirt after playing on turf,” but he noted that WSU and Washington’s fielding percentage improved after going to a synthetic surface.

Lees said players can wear either the traditional metal spikes or turf cleats. Portland will be the area’s lone program in the Northwest with the traditional grass-and-dirt infield.