Steel Yard series quite a challenge

Updated: April 25, 2011 6:24AM

The ninth edition of the RailCats High School Baseball Challenge was originally supposed to fill up eight to 10 quiet evenings in April. The list of participating teams had been pared back from 42 schools to 26 to allow more breathing room between the games, ease the scheduling process and generally lessen the significant stress the series puts on the small staff and the aging field at U.S. Steel Yard.

Right.

"Everybody on the staff kind of knows the deal," said RailCats president Andy Viano, who's been running the Challenge for three years. "Once it gets to April 1, kiss your family good-bye for a little bit and turn your life over to the job."

The fickle nature of what Northwest Indiana amusingly calls "spring" has always wreaked havoc on the high school baseball season. Rainouts and freeze-outs and waterlogged fields and muddy basepaths are a way of life for baseball players here.

But this April has been bad even by region standards - it's gotten to the point where players and coaches get excited by a windy, 45-degree day, just so long as it's dry - and nowhere has Mother Nature's wrath been felt more than at the Steel Yard.

There have been six days worth of postponements in the RailCats Challenge already, with several lengthy delays along the way. It's meant a lot of long days for the staff and grounds crew - who are often one in the same.

Instead of having five or six days between weekend games as originally planned, the Steel Yard suddenly is hosting games - or hoping to, at least - nearly every night.

And at each game, there are six or seven full-time staffers working essentially for free - someone in the ticket office, someone at the gate, someone on the field, someone announcing the game, someone operating the scoreboard, someone selling merchandise - on top of a handful of concession workers.

Not to mention head groundskeeper Blake Bostelman, desperately trying to keep his field - now in its ninth year, when the average life expectancy for a baseball field is five to eight years - in decent shape for the impending RailCats season.

Compounding the stress, worlds are about to collide, as the RailCats report to Gary on Wednesday and the team holds open tryouts on Thursday. And there are still eight high school games that have yet to be played, and the long-term weather forecast isn't all that promising.

"It's been tough in the sense that the postponements push everything back to the point we have a whole bunch of games close together," said media relations manager Ed McCaskey. "So we'll have the whole staff here to put the tarp on the field and try to save a game or two, then have the whole staff pull it off. It's a lot of extra work on top of the 9-to-5 work."

Added Viano with a laugh: "Working in professional sports - and covering professoinal sports - is not as glamorous as people think it is sometimes. But it comes with the territory."

It's a labor of love, of course. The Challenge isn't really a moneymaking proposition for the RailCats, who usually break about even. Each school that participates pays the RailCats $500, and gets tickets to both the high school game and a RailCats game to sell at a small profit. So it's essentially a fund-raiser for the schools.

The RailCats look at it as community service - a small price to pay to Northwest Indiana for providing them with a $40 million stadium a decade ago.

"It's an opportunity to do what we're supposed to do," Viano said. "We take pretty seriously the fact that we're the professional sports franchise for Northwest Indiana. We want to be a good member of the community and obviously the money that keeps us running comes from the community in ticket sales and advertising and corporate partnerships. If they're going to keep us around, we want to do our part to benefit Gary and Northwest Indiana as a whole."

Region coaches have a similar love-hate relationship with the Challenge. Without question, it's one of the highlights of the season for every team involved, for obvious reasons. As Viano put it, "Growing up, I would have killed to play in a ballpark like this." And the RailCats go all out, announcing every player on each team, lining them up along the baselines for the national anthem, and providing each team with keepsake pictures.

Even for teams that routinely play in big parks, it's a special event. Andrean has played at Indianapolis' Victory Field, at Notre Dame's field, at South Bend's Coveleski Stadium and at UIC's field, among others. But Viano said 59ers coach Dave Pishkur is among the many region coaches who go out of their way to make sure their teams play at the Steel Yard every spring.

"It matters to them," Viano said.

But here's the catch - the Challenge usually features nonconference games. So while they're important to the kids, they're not important in the standings. And with the miserable weather ruining everyone's schedules, it has coaches and athletic directors walking a fine line.

Take Portage and Clark, for example. They originally had a Challenge game scheduled for last Saturday. It was rained out and moved to Thursday. But Portage had to reschedule a Merrillville game, too, and Duneland Conference matchups take precedence, so the Indians had to call up the RailCats and cancel on them. The game was promptly moved to this coming Monday. Once again, a DAC game got in the way and Portage again had to postpone.

"And Monday's not looking good, either, so who knows when we'll have to reschedule that one," Portage coach Tim Pirowski said.

Now the Indians and Pioneers are slated to play May 11 - the day before the American Association season starts. Fortunately for everyone involved, the RailCats open the season with an eight-day roadtrip.

Had this been any other nonconference game, the coaches probably would have shrugged it off and just outright cancelled it. But neither Portage nor Clark wants to give up a chance to play at the Steel Yard.

"It's a real big deal to those guys," Pirowski said of the players. "They keep asking me about when we're finally going to play there. At some point, I keep thinking the RailCats ae going to say, ‘You know what, we just can't do it.'"

Don't bet on it. As big a pain as the RailCats High School Baseball Challenge can be - for players, for coaches, for athletic directors, for RailCats staffers (and their families) - there's one common denominator for all involved.

It's a big deal.

And it's well worth the hassle.

"It's certainly tough," Viano said. "But we're very lucky to have the staff of people we have here. They're all willing to do whatever it takes. To borrow a baseball cliché, everybody's always willing to step up to the plate and help out."

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