In more ways than I'd ever be able to describe to you, baseball is a unique sport from others played around the world.The equipment needed, the strategy involved, the hand-eye coordination required to play the game, these are all facets that makes baseball stand out from other sports. Another aspect is the venue needed to play the game. Most sports can share their field or court with another sport, making it more cost-friendly and easier to find space to hold practices and games.
Baseball, on the other hand, requires a very specific playing surface that requires about 90,000 square feet set up as a diamond with three bases, a pitcher's mound, fencing around the outfield and down the baselines, a backstop behind home plate, which is surrounded by a batter's box and home plate circle. Once you add amenities such as dugouts, bullpens, lights, a press box and bleachers, and you have facility that's hardly a set-up to co-host soccer matches or American football games on. (Or field hockey, as my coaching friends back in Northern Virginia might tell you!)
These requirements have made it hard to build enough fields in America, nevertheless in cash-strapped and soccer-mad Hungary. If there's land available, the local municipalities or governments are going to favor a soccer pitch over a baseball diamond 99 times out of a 100 here. This has left the country and it's 500 or so baseball players in a predicament.
Heck, the capital city of Budapest, which boasts two million residents, has only one field, and that field's playing surface resembles more coblestone road than putting green. The backstop is simply a hill that climbs about 80 degrees up to a road, and passed balls roll up and down the hill like a pinball machine. The home field to the Obuda Brickhouse, one of the first-division teams here, the field does not have an outfield fence and benches are brought into dugouts prior to games and then taken away afterward for fear that local gypsies will steal them.
In my near-four months here, I've been able to see four of the half-dozen or so top fields in the country. The fields, in Obuda, Szentendre, Erd and Debrecen each have their own unique quality.
In Szentendre, which is home to the Sleepwalkers, the top club team in Hungary, the Pilis Mountains serve as a backdrop to what many regard as the top field (pictured above) in the country. Located about 20 minutes outside of Budapest in a town of 20,000, the field has trees running along the right-field fence, which has ivy covering it much like at Wrigley Field. Dugouts covered with tin roofs (I wouldn't hang around in a lightning storm) overlook what I feel is the best actual playing surface I've seen here, something the baseball and softball players that use the field take a lot of pride in.
Hours before games and on off-days, players can be found mowing, watering and dragging the field, working on the mound and plate and working in the batting cage, which unlike the field, has lights. They even don't seem to mind hauling their batting practice cage, a cast-iron device dubbed "The Monster" that weighs about as much as a Honda Civic and has about six different worn nets tied together on it, from the field to behind the first base dugout.
The field in Erd, which is another small town less than 30 minutes outside of Budapest and home to the first-division Aeros, is a hybrid 60-foot and 90-foot diamond that was built by an American missionary, Terry Lingenhoel, some 10 years ago and now is home to a club of 120 players ranging in age from five to 48. Dugouts and a batting cage are located on the big field, and a temporary fence is rotated between the big field and the small field, which has a home plate in deep right field on the big field.
To get power to the field so the pitching machine can be operated, some 200 yards of extension cords running from the home of a player who participates in the club has to be run down the street, over a creek and across the field to the cage or the mound. To get the full-perspective of this, check out Garret's videos here (Video #1) and here (Video #2). Now THAT, my friends, is dedication.
Out in Debrecen, where I spent a couple days last week, is the top overall facility that I have seen thus far. Debrecen is the second-largest city in Hungary with about 200,000 residents, and its lone baseball field comes equipped with a locker room for its players, an indoor batting facility, lights on the infield and in-ground dugouts. Built behind the business offices of János Szilágyi, who finances the club, is a band-box of a field that would make drop-and-drive rotational hitters produced by Mike Epstein and his crazy disciples salivate. The deepest part of the park is less than 320 feet from home plate, and towering above what's got to be a 225-foot left field fence is a 40-foot net that the ball has to clear for a home run. Think Fenway Park on Slim Fast. Fast fact: both parks were home to zero World Series champions from 1918 to 2003 (had to get the jab in, Red Sox fans).
Debrecen's facility is best set-up to produce a top-notch program in Hungary. What young player wouldn't want to have his own locker or a place to hit or throw a bullpen no matter what the weather conditions are? The playing surface isn't bad, though not quite as nice as in Szentendre, though they said they were working on improving it and had new infield dirt on its way later this fall. Not to mention, Bruno, the Szilágyi family's loveable labrador, keeps his home right next to the field and keeps his eye on the development of Debrecen's young players.
I haven't yet seen the fields in Nagykanizsa or Jánossomorja, home to the other two top-division club teams in the country, but plan to at some point this fall. My early conclusions, however, are that ballplayers and coaches back in the states should never complain about their yards. I know I will have a great appreciation for what we are able to play our National Pastime on back in the states after seeing what they make due with playing on over here.
For some more pictures of fields in Hungary, check out the link here.