Looking back at 100 years of Hoy Field

One hundred years on a single baseball diamond: that’s the amount of years that Cornell University and its surrounding areas were graced with Hoy Field — the home of the Big Red baseball team.

Currently nestled between Hoy Road and Campus Road on the university’s campus, the field is named after David “Davy” F. Hoy.

Hoy was Cornell’s longtime registrar and the baseball team’s advisor — and the one who urged the university to build a grass field. The field was built in 1922 and named in honor of Hoy in 1923.

“It’s been a great college baseball field,” said David Wohlhueter, the Big Red’s sports information director from 1977 to the late 1990s.

Wohlhueter recalled some of the unique features of Hoy Field when he joined Cornell in the late 1970s. There was chicken wire that was 3 feet high in front of the press box and an unbalanced shift in the infield.

“It was not a great field [at first],” Wohlhueter said. “You couldn’t be a second baseman at Cornell unless you were 6-[foot]-2 because it dipped down so much at second base.”

Wohlhueter noted that at one point, the entire field was repositioned. He remembers a home run hit by Guy Leach, a catcher in the 1980s who is a member of the Cornell Hall of Fame, that went over the parking garage.

“[Guy Leach] was the only person to do it,” Wohlhueter added, noting that the parking garage is currently down the left-field line and in foul territory.

Hoy Field was a grass field up until its 85th year. Rich Booth, a Cornell class of 1982 alum, provided funds to the university to replace the field with artificial turf in 2006 and once again a handful of years later.

“The current field is certainly an improvement to what I came to in 1977,” Wohlhueter said. “It was right up there as one of the best fields around.”

At times, Wohlhueter said, there were talks to move the field to a different spot. However, Ted Thorne, Cornell’s baseball coach for almost 30 years, fought to keep the field in its original spot.

“A number of times it was spoken that maybe a building is going to go in that location, but Ted wouldn’t allow it to happen,” Wohlhueter said.

He also noted that Booth was guaranteed the field would “stay there for the life of the turf.”

Hoy Field brought in its fair share of moments throughout the past 100 years. Of those moments, one that has stuck with Wohlhueter is when the Big Red won the Ivy League Championship title in 2012.

Cornell faced Columbia University in a best-of-three championship series, with the series knotted at 1-1. With game three tied at 1-1 in extra innings, Cornell outfielder Chris Cruz hit a game-winning two-run home run in the 11th inning. The Big Red went on to win the game, 3-1, and qualify for the NCAA baseball tournament.

“It was an exciting game,” Wohlhueter said, noting it was Cornell’s first conference title since 1977, back when the Big Red was a member of the Eastern Intercollegiate Baseball League.

Hoy Field also drew in some well-known players on both sides of the ball. Wohlhueter noted that none of the players in Cornell baseball history made it to the major leagues, but one player that came close was Marlin McPhail.

McPhail was a versatile utilityman for Cornell from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. He played in the New York Mets’ and Chicago White Sox’s minor-league system in the 1980s and ’90s.

Following his playing career, McPhail went on to be a scout and a senior advisor for the Mets.

Greg Myers, a standout pitcher for Cornell, had the opportunity to pursue a professional baseball career but chose an engineering career instead.

One of Myers’ biggest accomplishments was beating Mets great Ron Darling, a pitcher for Yale University at the time, in a pitcher’s duel in 1982.

“I didn’t realize it was a big deal at the time, but it turned out to be one,” Wohlhueter said of Myers, a Big Red Hall of Famer, and his matchup against Darling.

From Lou “Iron Horse” Gehrig — the New York Yankees great and a member of the Columbia baseball team — hitting a long home run down the right-field line in 1922 to legendary Cincinnati Reds catcher Johnny Bench making an appearance in an exhibition game in the 1960s with the Buffalo Bisons (Triple-A affiliate of the Reds), there was no shortage of great moments at Hoy Field.

“For one thing, it’s all about tradition,” Wohlhueter said. “Anyone on campus knew the spot for the baseball field. It was just there. Nobody thought differently about it.”

May 1 of this year was the day of the last game that will ever be played at the current location of Hoy Field. The Big Red will play at a brand-new field next spring, which is located near the corner of Ellis Hollow Road and Game Farm Road in the town of Ithaca.

The game in May turned out to be an 11-5 loss for Cornell against Columbia, but after the game, the Big Red’s players and coaches took in history.

“The players and coaches sort of walked around the field and hung out for a bit,” Wohlhueter said in the moments after the May 1 game ended.

Wohlhueter noted he went down to the field as well and told Cornell head coach Dan Pepicelli he should take home plate as a memento. Pepicelli insisted it will stay there for the long run until construction for a new project says otherwise.

Despite playing on a new field next season, the Cornell baseball team will practice at Hoy Field. Whether the new field will be called Hoy Field or not remains to be seen, Wohlhueter said.

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