A New Home Base

At a February 13 banquet dubbed Dinner on the Diamond, around 500 Hurricanes fans, supporters, donors, and, of course, media turned out to see the impact of honorary alumnus Alex Rodriguez’s $3.9 million gift, made seven years ago to renovate the stadium.

For the past decade, the New York Yankees All-Star third baseman trained for the start of the baseball season at the stadium now known as Alex Rodriguez Park at Mark Light Field.

“Mark Light Stadium was our Yankee Stadium,” recalled the Miami native during the preseason event. With its new dugouts and lighting as well as a new clubhouse, weight room, and press box, a renovated grandstand area, and many other improvements, the remodeled stadium will “transform everyone’s game-day experience,” said Athletic Director Kirby Hocutt.

Rodriguez’s gift is also expected to transform the life of a Boys and Girls Club member, by way of a University of Miami scholarship.

After another stellar season in 2008, Coach Jim Morris’s 2009 squad was one of the youngest he’s assembled but remained highly ranked. Nine players from the 2008 team—the most during the coach’s record-breaking 16-year ­­­­tenure at UM—signed professional contracts. “The expectations are always the same at UM, getting back to Omaha,” he said, referring to the site of the College World Series, which UM has won four times.

The Baritone of Baseball

The table stood only a few feet behind home plate, an unusual place for a piece of furniture. But back in 1969 and for a good part of the early ’70s, that was exactly where Jay Rokeach sat, working his vociferous magic as the announcer for Miami Hurricanes baseball.

“No press box, just a table behind the backstop with a turntable and seven or eight records,” Rokeach, A.B. ’72, recalls. “We used to play ‘Three Blind Mice’ when the umpires came out to home plate. Obviously they had more of a sense of humor back then.”

Occasionally, a strong gust would blow one of his records to shortstop and someone would have to retrieve it. “It was a little embarrassing,” he says.

Today, Rokeach no longer spins the tunes at the ballpark; that job’s been taken over by someone else. And the digs from which he announces the starting lineups and serves as official scorer for home games is the new press box in Alex Rodriguez Park at Mark Light Field. But his baritone calls still excite fans and motivate players.

“His voice has so much electricity and power in it,” says head baseball coach Jim Morris.

An admirer of legendary Yankees announcer Bob Sheppard, the Brooklyn-born Rokeach took over the mic as a UM freshman in 1969, stopping by the stadium one day to ask then-head coach Ron Fraser if he could do anything to help.

“Baseball was not that popular back then,” Rokeach says. “By the end of the day I was washing team uniforms. And then I became the baseball team manager and the announcer for the baseball program.”

More than 1,000 games and 41 years later, Rokeach has no plans to hand over the mic.

“As long as I still have good health and my voice holds up,” he says, “I’d like to continue until somebody says, ‘It’s time to go.’”