MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Batting last at the mic in a pregame lineup of dignitaries, Randy Mazey christened the new $25-million Monongalia County Ballpark with a quote borrowed from perhaps the most famous baseball movie ever.
West Virginia’s coach told the sellout crowd of 3,110 fans: “I heard somewhere before that ‘If you build it they will come.’ Well, they built it and here you are.”
The standing-room-only grandstand cheered, and four hours later, those who stuck around cheered some more when the Mountaineers finally put away Butler 6-5 on a 13th-inning walk-off single by Justin Fox.
Despite plenty of whiffs—including eight by top-of-the-order hitters Fox and Taylor Munden—the Mountaineers (19-12) made opening night memorable.
“We struck out 17 times tonight. We’re hitting in a new atmosphere. We’re fighting every fly ball that goes in the air, because we’re not used to the surroundings yet,” Mazey said.
“But the important thing was to win the game and to let the crowd know we appreciate them coming. Hopefully we gave them some excitement there in the end, enough to get them to come back.”
Fox’s two-out, game-winning drive off the left-field wall salvaged an otherwise miserable night in which he committed two errors, including a dropped pop-fly at third base, and struck out on his first four trips to the plate.
“I had horrible at-bats,” Fox said. “Just being off-balance and not sitting on the pitch I wanted. I was having a little trouble picking up pitches in this new park.
“But (in the 13th) I got a fastball, inner-half. I stayed inside of it and drove it.”
That fastball cost Butler reliever Kyle Allen (1-3), who previously issued a one-out walk to Caleb Potter before KC Huth singled.
The Mountaineers’ bullpen was stellar, allowing two unearned runs over 10 innings. BJ Myers entered in relief of Conner Dotson in the fourth and threw 113 pitches over 7 2/3 innings, allowing four hits, one walk and striking out seven.
“BJ was good and it couldn’t have come at a better time,” Mazey said. “We had to hold Butler right where they were. If they had scored one more run it would have been a different ballgame.”
Blake Smith (4-1) pitched one-hit ball over the final 2 1/3 innings, registering five strikeouts.
WVU’s Kyle Davis delivered the ballpark’s first run, scoring on Huth’s second-inning single. Jackson Cramer hit the ballpark’s first homer, a straight-away solo shot over the 400-foot marker in center field.
Butler (13-19) threatened to put a damper on the stadium’s grand opening, leading 5-4 in the eighth. But Ray Guerrini doubled ahead of Potter’s RBI single, the only crack shown by Bulldogs reliever Danny Pobereyko, who fanned nine over 5 1/3 innings.
That was all the scoring for the next five innings, until WVU broke through on Fox’s hit at 10:22 p.m., precisely four hours after the first pitch.
“It was an unbelievable atmosphere, a great crowd,” Mazey said. “Going into this thing I said that it doesn’t matter how you play tonight and it doesn’t matter what happens, you just have to try and grind out a win, because the kids were distracted.”
FEELING CEREMONIAL
Mountaineers play-by-play voice Tony Caridi and WVU president Gordon Gee kicked off the pregame festivities. Former athletics director Oliver Luck was on hand too, listening as his successor Shane Lyons called the ballpark “the next step to competing for Big 12 and national championships.”
Four-star Gen. Earl E. Anderson, a 1940 graduate of WVU, threw out the ceremonial first pitch.
SATURDAY
The second of a three-game series is slated for Saturday at 4 p.m. West Virginia plans to start junior Ross Vance (4-2) against Butler’s Peter Nyznyk (1-1) in a matchup of left-handers.