Baseball
Boise State played intercollegiate baseball through the 1980 season. Their first season in the Big Sky Conference was 1971, with all eight teams split into two divisions and a best-of-three series between the division winners to determine the conference title. The Broncos and fellow newcomer Northern Arizona joined Idaho State and Weber State in the Southern Division. Montana State dropped the sport after the season and Montana in 1972, so Boise State was moved to the Northern Division in 1973 with Idaho and Gonzaga. Following the 1974 season, the Big Sky discontinued its sponsorship of baseball (and four other sports), and Southern Division champion Idaho State and three-time conference champion Weber State soon dropped their baseball programs. The three Northern Division teams joined the Northern Pacific Conference for the 1975 season and competed against Portland State, Portland, Seattle U., and UPS (and later, EWU). Due to budget contraints, both BSU and Idaho discontinued baseball following the 1980 season.
Boise State played on campus through the 1979 season, until displaced due to construction of the BSU Pavilion (now Taco Bell Arena). The final baseball field's infield is now occupied by the tennis courts; center field was to the northeast. The Broncos played their home games in 1980 at Borah Field (now Bill Wigle Field) at Borah High School.
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Famous quotes containing the word baseball:
“It is a mass language only in the same sense that its baseball slang is born of baseball players. That is, it is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be within the grasp of superficially educated people. It is not a natural growth, much as its proletarian writers would like to think so. But compared with it at its best, English has reached the Alexandrian stage of formalism and decay.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“I don’t like comparisons with football. Baseball is an entirely different game. You can watch a tight, well-played football game, but it isn’t exciting if half the stadium is empty. The violence on the field must bounce off a lot of people. But you can go to a ball park on a quiet Tuesday afternoon with only a few thousand people in the place and thoroughly enjoy a one-sided game. Baseball has an aesthetic, intellectual appeal found in no other team sport.”
—Bowie Kuhn (b. 1926)
“One of the baseball-team owners approached me and said: “If you become baseball commissioner, you’re going to have to deal with 28 big egos,” and I said, “For me, that’s a 72% reduction.””
—George Mitchell (b. 1933)