Out in Greene County, Iowa

Once beautiful Cap Timm Field at Iowa State U., long the home of Cyclone baseball, is a shambles

By CHUCK OFFENBURGER
August 3, 2009
AMES, IOWA

It happened that I was cruising around the Iowa State University campus here the other day, wanting to get to a slightly open area so that I could do an interview with a radio station via my cell phone, and hope for a good connection.

That led me to drive up and into the “Southwest Athletic Complex,” which is on the southwest corner of Campus Town, three or four blocks south of Lincolnway.

“I’m sitting at a sad site,” I said to Don Hansen, morning show co-host at radio KMA in my hometown of Shenandoah in southwest Iowa, when we spoke briefly off the air. “I’m parked at L.C. ‘Cap’ Timm Field, once the home of the late great Iowa State University baseball program. It’s seen better days, that’s for sure. There are trees growing up in front of the scoreboard. Looks tough.”

Hansen asked if I could send him a photo of it, “because Chuck Morris and I went to Ames to broadcast a couple of Cyclone games a long time ago. I remember it as a beautiful ball park. I’d like to see it again.”

Well, when we ended our on-air chat, I pulled out my camera to take a few photos – and I’m now wondering whether Hansen and a whole lot of other former Cyclone baseball fans or followers are really ready to see what’s happened.

Now, at the south end of this athletic complex, there is the beautiful stadium and field that are home to ISU Cyclone softball. It was built in 1980, then overhauled and expanded in 2004-’05 and, according to the ISU Cyclone sports site on the Internet, it’s “widely regarded as one of the finest fields in the Big 12.” And it indeed is first-rate.

But to get to the softball field, you have to drive right past old Timm Field, which was named for the legendary Cyclones baseball coach, now deceased. ISU killed its baseball program in the spring of 2001, when then-Athletics Director Bruce Van de Velde cited “budget cuts.” Sometime after that, the bleachers or grandstand were removed from in front of the tall press box.

The student government helped fund a “club” baseball program that started up in 2002. The non-varsity program, not associated with the athletics department, played through the 2008 season, but I couldn’t find any indication they fielded a team this year. The first year or two, the club team played at different ball diamonds around Ames. Then ISU gave permission for them to play at Cap Timm Field.

It’s obvious nobody’s pulling much maintenance at what had been such a fine college baseball stadium, as you’ll see in the photos below. Junction boxes that once contained the electrical circuitry for the scoreboard, as well as a little store room with telephone in one dugout, have all been vandalized.

How sad. Iowa State University is certainly better than this.

You can write the columnist at chuck@Offenburger.com.