Jaspers trade Vannie for upstate field of dreams - and a long drive

The pregame preparation for the Manhattan College baseball team is not your typical ritual. But then again, as far as the Jaspers are concerned, it never has been.

For years, the Jaspers, who played their home games at Van Cortlandt Park, would arrive at their field hours prior to first pitch and morph from baseball player to grounds crew member. There was an infield to groom, a pitcher’s mound and batter’s box to manicure and foul lines to put down. And while no official records exist on the topic, the Jaspers were believed to be one of only a handful — if not the only — Division I baseball program in the country that had to perform such tasks while playing their games in a public park.

But this season the ritual has changed, although it still calls for Manhattan to assemble hours prior to game time. Only now the Jaspers have traded in an hour or more of daily grounds keeping for an hour or more of travel to their new home. It takes roughly 75 minutes to cover the 63 miles up the New York Thruway and across two bridges. But when they finally reach the town of Wappingers Falls, there sits the baseball jewel known as Dutchess Stadium. It’s Manhattan’s very own field of dreams.

“If our game was to be played at Van Cortlandt Park, we would probably meet as a team in the morning and then we would go down to the park and do a lot of physical labor to prepare the field for a Division I game,” Jaspers head coach Jim Duffy said. “So now right around the same time that we would go to the park, we’re meeting in Draddy Gym and we’re getting in the vans and it’s been taking us about an hour and fifteen minutes to get here. But it’s worth it. Look at this place.”

Dutchess Stadium is the home to the Hudson Valley Renegades, a minor league affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays, and it has everything Van Cortlandt Park (VCP) did not. Locker rooms for one thing; dugouts, too. Not to mention a state-of-the-art sound system, lights and plenty of parking.