It will be a slightly different view as hitters step into the batter’s box and gaze out to right field fence at Richter Field.
The facade will be slightly different with bricks stacked four feet up as a base for a now towering 12 foot wall. Left-handers used to point and level their bats to the short six foot wall where for years their kind had feasted.
Duininck construction equipment lined near the levy that runs behind Richter Field’s outfield fence precluded the remodeling of the right field fence and thus signaled the grieving of all left-handers who once lined smoking shots around the right field foul pole for home runs and RBI’s.
The right field wall, once Duininck construction has finished the levy improvements, will rise from six feet to 12 feet for 100 feet in length until it draws in line with the Richter Field’s scoreboard.
$7,602 set aside for replacement of the old fence in conjunction with levy improvements, along with donations and funds drawn from the Granite Falls Baseball Association’s annual fundraisers are being used to facilitate the remodeling.
Yellow Medicine East Athletics Director, Tim Knapper, says that the new eight-foot-tall green steel fence will be built upon a four-foot-tall base of finished brick which will lie two feet apart from the new levy structure. All this is to be done without obscuring both the view of the river and the view of the scoreboard.
And this will need to be completed before the YME varsity baseball team’s home-opener on April 15.
“The biggest thing is that we have a real unique ball park here in the valley,” says baseball association member and current grounds keeper, Mike Richter. “We have both a view of the river and the trees and bluffs behind. We have a lot of teams that like to come to this ball park and it’s been 20 plus years since work has been done (at the ball park). With the flood wall going in, it’s a good opportunity to do some of these things now.”
Yet Richter (also coach of the Granite Falls Kilowatts town team) may have a hidden agenda for the current improvements at the park.
Said Richter, “That short porch in right. We’ll make it a little harder on those lefties, just to keep ‘em honest.”
As for future improvements at the field, Richter believed this time is the right time to explore other possible improvements and to rally community support to assist in both the suggestion of ideas for the park and in seeking volunteers and fans to come out to one of the finest fields in southwest Minnesota.
