Thanks to an interested reader who would like to remain unnamed (let’s call him Sammy Hagar), we have finally got a series of good pictures of the long-awaited outfield wall redevelopment happening at Nat Bailey Stadium in preparation for the 2007 NWL season.

The first change that you might note when passing by Ontario and 32nd is the outside of the stadium proper: gone is the baby blue, and in its place is a monochrome grey color scheme that looks like it’s right out of a 1950’s photo postcard.

NOTE: I LOVE THIS!

If the team is going to do what has been promised, and make the long-held NFTN belief that those squares should be used to house pictures of old ballplayers a reality, then the color is perfect to give folks a real sense of retro throwback appeal. 

With the retro plans taking place on the concourse inside the stadium, we can now see where the new team owners are going with all this: it’s baseball the way your granddad used to watch it, and that’s so perfect I could wet myself. 

One caveat: From what I’ve been told, it seems the players to be put on those squares aren’t necessarily going to be all ex-Vancouver players. I’d love to see it restricted to only ex-V-Town guys who made the Majors, but if that’s not going to be the case, at least this’ll be a vast improvement over the old look.

On to the outfield wall - anyone who thought that the plans to shift the wall closer to the plate would result in a homerun avalanche, EG: Everett, Denver, or anywhere in the California League, better not hold their breath.

Rather, it looks like the wall will be shifted about 15 ft in from right-center to left-center, with no work visible on the corners (for now). If the corners DO move in later on, that would give the field a real semi-circle outfield, which would make right-center and left-center tough places to get the ball out of the park, while making the corners a bit of a homerun porch. This I would like to see.

One thing worth noting is that the wall has NOT been lowered. In fact, it remains at the same height, one would presume so that half the crowd doesn’t see the game for free from Little Mountain every night.

I’ve heard Jake Kerr say he plans to make part of the outfield wall see-through, so that kids could watch from the outside, but it makes sense that such a thing should be a small attraction that allows kids in the surrounding park to see an inning or two, knothole-style - not half a mountainside that allows 500 folks to avoid buying a ticket.

Here’s the back of the stadium. Note the precarious scoreboard that Tomo The Japanese Wedding Planner used to have to hang off.

I’m hoping against hope that the scoreboard, as ratty and non-technological as it is, will be salvaged and put to good use. At present it is partly obscured by the new wall, so if it will be saved, it will have to be raised or shifted entirely - no easy task. But it’s worth doing, since this is a piece of MAJOR LEAGUE history, salvaged from Sicks Stadium, the former home of the Seattle Pilots.

Yes, the stadium really does need a nice new high-tech, bells and whistles, screaming video kind of scoreboard, but it would be great if in making the ballpark functional, we don’t lose the REAL history of the place and while manufacturing fake history…

Thanks Sammy. The next beer is on me.