David F. Hoy Field, usually referred to simply as Hoy Field, is a baseball field at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

Ithaca Ithaca most commonly refers to: *Homer's Ithaca, an island featured in Homer's ''Odyssey'' *Ithaca (island), an island in Greece, possibly Homer's Ithaca *Ithaca, New York, a city, and home of Cornell University and Ithaca College Ithaca, Ithaka ...

, New York, where the Big Red baseball team plays.

Description

Hoy Field is located just west of

Schoellkopf Field Schoellkopf Field is a 21,500-capacity stadium at Cornell University's Ithaca campus that opened in 1915 and is used for the Cornell Big Red football, sprint football and lacrosse teams. It is located just north of Cascadilla Creek on the so ...

and east of the Engineering Quad on the southern end of Cornell's campus. The dimensions of the field from

home plate A baseball field, also called a ball field or baseball diamond, is the field upon which the game of baseball is played. The term can also be used as a metonym for a baseball park. The term sandlot is sometimes used, although this usually refers ...

to the

outfield The outfield, in cricket, baseball and softball is the area of the field of play further from the batsman or batter than the infield. In association football, the outfield players are positioned outside the goal area. In cricket, baseball a ...

fence are 315 feet in left field, 405 feet in center field and 325 feet in right field. The seating capacity of Hoy Field is about 500. For many years the Bacon Cage, an indoor batting practice facility that was also used as an indoor golf driving range, was located between Schoellkopf Field and Hoy Field. However, Bacon Cage was demolished to build a parking garage and new press box on the west side of Schoellkopf Field. Hoy Field has batting facilities that are dedicated in memory of Kerry Brooks, a 1990 graduate of Cornell and a former "Big Red" co-captain.

History

Background

Cornell's previous baseball field was Percy Field, which stood at the current location of Ithaca High School from the 1890s until 1922. The metal bleachers from Percy Field were preserved and moved to the new baseball field.

David F. Hoy

The new baseball field was built at the urging of baseball advisor David "Davy" Hoy. The dedication took place on April 22, 1922 with a parade and band concert. Hoy threw out the first pitch on the field; the ball he used is preserved in the Kroch Library collections. Hoy, an alumnus and university registrar since 1894, had served the university's baseball advisor for thirty years, and traveled south with the team for spring training each year. The baseball field was named after Hoy in October 1923. Later, Hoy was injured in a 1929 bus accident in Virginia while riding with the baseball team, and he died in December 1930 at age 67. Cornell's

fight song A fight song is a rousing short song associated with a sports team. The term is most common in the United States and Canada. In Australia, Mexico, and New Zealand these songs are called the team anthem, team song, or games song. First associated ...

Give My Regards to Davy "Give My Regards to Davy" is Cornell University's primary fight song. The song's lyrics were written in 1905 by Charles E. Tourison 1905, W. L. Umstad 1906, and Bill Forbes 1906, a trio of roommates at Beta Theta Pi, and set to the tune of Geor ...

references "Davy" Hoy prominently.

Notable events

On April 21, 1923, Columbia pitcher

Lou Gehrig Henry Louis Gehrig (born Heinrich Ludwig Gehrig ; June 19, 1903June 2, 1941) was an American professional baseball first baseman who played 17 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the New York Yankees (1923–1939). Gehrig was renowned f ...

struck out ten Big Red players and hit a "legendary" home run, which may be the longest home run in Hoy Field history. A 2015 analysis suggests that Gehrig's home run was "the equivalent of hitting a home run either to the top of Rhodes Hall, or over it into the woods behind it." In 1947 it was proposed that the

School of Industrial and Labor Relations The New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University (ILR) is an industrial relations school and one of the four New York State contract colleges at Cornell University, located in Ithaca, New York, United States. The ...

be housed in a new building that would be built partly over the field, but protests from students and alumni blocked the project. In 2006, the grass turf was removed and replaced with FieldTurf, which has many grass-like properties. In 2012, the field hosted the 2012 Ivy League Baseball Championship Series, in which Cornell defeated Dartmouth two games to one.

References

External links

Cornell Big Red: Hoy Field
College baseball venues in the United States Sports venues in New York (state) Cornell Big Red baseball Cornell Big Red sports venues 1922 establishments in New York (state) Sports venues completed in 1922 {{NewYork-baseball-venue-stub