Vince Grippi: Saxons take their longest road trip

If you’re old enough, you remember where you were on “The Day.”

July 19, 1994. The day the tiles fell.

Four water-soaked ceiling tiles dropped from the Kingdome ceiling, forcing our beloved Seattle Mariners on the road for 22 days – 15 games – until the season was mercifully cut short by a players’ strike.

OK, that’s a joke. Nobody remembers where they were when the tiles fell (more than likely you were at a youth baseball game somewhere). The road trip the Mariners endured, however, wasn’t a laughing matter. But it pales in comparison with some trips.

How about not getting to play any baseball games on your home field for an entire season?

It’s happened before in high school sports, and it may happen again, this time to Ferris High.

Most of the previous cases were planned – such as Central Valley in 2001 and 2002, when the Bears played their home schedule at Avista while their new school was built.

Before we go any further, there’s some boilerplate (that’s newspaper speak for junk we run all the time) our ethics’ code forces me to insert.

Jack Grippi, a reserve infielder/catcher at Ferris, is a subsidiary of Vince Grippi, who writes this column.

Now back to our subject.

For the Saxons, the home-away-from-home schedule surfaced with the spring thaw.

Remember Doonesbury’s Walden Pond? Where Zonker used to snorkel among the herons and cattails? Then you know what center field on South Regal is like.

According to Spokane School District Assistant Superintendent Mark Anderson, the problem with center field first started to show last fall. The area just wouldn’t drain.

Rumors abound that the construction of a new gym, the paving of an old dirt road, or the filling in of a wetland three blocks south all conspired to destroy a drainage field.

Not so, according to Anderson.

“That hasn’t been a part of it,” he said. “There is like a soddy mat underneath (the field) that’s holding water like a sponge.

“I’m speaking a little outside of my area of expertise here, but I think our keeping it fertilized so well has something to do with it.”

Insert your fertilizer joke here.

It isn’t a joke to longtime Ferris coach John Thacker.

“You know your field, the hops, the true hops, the bad hops,” said Thacker. “You’re used to hitting in that background, picking the ball up.”

How have the Saxons handled the thrice-weekly road trips?

Going into today’s “home” game against Lewis and Clark at Hart Field (the Tigers’ home park) Ferris has won 10 consecutive games, is 10-1 overall and leads the GSL with a 9-1 mark. The Saxons are ranked ninth in the latest State 4A poll.

“It’s made it a little bit more difficult, and it makes you a little tougher too, mentally tougher,” Thacker said.

They’ve played home games at Whitworth College, Cheney and Gonzaga Prep.

“It would be horrible,” East Valley coach John Phelan said of the circumstances. “It would be absolutely awful. Then to have them play the way they are playing, I can’t even imagine it.

“I don’t know how I would handle it. Not very well, I think.”

There’s one area that all the time on the road is really squeezing, though you don’t find it listed in the GSL stats report: academics.

“We’re getting kids out of class earlier more often,” Thacker said. “And they’re certainly getting home later, too. That does concern me because that does stretch them out in terms of what they have to do during the day.”

So far the district has aerated the area, top-dressed with sand, and expects to add more sand again. The hope is the field will be playable in May. But Anderson admits it might not be ready at all this year.

But that’s OK. At the 30-year reunion, team members can look back at “the year.” The year they were undefeated at home.