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Ever wonder
why baseball looks so good under the lights at Bob Wren Stadium?
If so, you may find some of the answers here – and then some.
In 2003,
some Copperheads Board Members received permission to raise the monies necessary
to light Bob Wren Stadium so that nighttime baseball could occur for both the Southern
Ohio Copperheads and Ohio University Baseball.
As the
plan was being formulated, the question arose, “To what specifications should we
light the field?” It was decided to
use the television industry’s suggested lighting specifications for “A” & “AA”
ballparks. This means that the infield
would be at 50 foot-candles and the outfield at 30.
This spec is better than most collegiate fields.
To accomplish this, a system design was created utilizing six light poles
(two 125’, four 90’), each boasting twenty-eight 1,500 watt energy efficient high
intensity discharge metal halide lighting fixtures.
That’s a total of 252,000 watts producing 2,185,079 foot-candles or 23,520,000
lumens! But who’s counting, right?
But in spite of these
staggering numbers, the cost to burn these lights is less than you might think. It is $15.12 per hour (2007 rate).
Now that
we have a plan, we can now attach a price tag.
The cost was approximately $380,000 and in late spring 2004, Copperheads
Board President
John Wharton
announced that the goal had been met.
$275,000 was raised from ten local businesses and/or local supporters of baseball,
another $55,000 from various other sources, and the remaining engineering and installation
costs were provided in-kind by local private and university engineers and electrical
contractors.
A computer
created an exact drawing of Trautwein Field identifying the precise focal point
for each of the 168 light fixtures determined in a manner to create the least shadows. Then the drawing was transferred to
the field with markers placed on the turf.
Each light fixture is laser-pointed to its respective marker.
The whole thing looks something like this:
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Incidentally,
each bulb costs about $50, is 16” in length and lasts an average of 3,000 hours
use. The whole installation was completed
in the fall of 2004.
One of
the reasons why these lights are considered energy efficient is that electric rates
are largely based on demand. In other
words, the most expensive moment of electric usage is when they are turned on. These lights are cost effective because
when you turn them on, they take up to 15-minutes to fully power up so the “demand”
is more gradual. That’s the good news. The bad news is that if you are playing
a game and there is momentary power failure – even if for just a second, the bulbs
recycle time is nearly 20-minutes (10 in total darkness followed by 10-minutes warm
up) before the field would be fully lit again.
Perhaps
more than any other sport, baseball lighting cannot take advantage of the many improvements
now available to minimize spurious luminance – often called
light pollution. Have you ever
noticed how many more stars you can see when out in the country and away from city
lights? Is it any wonder that many
astronomers are not baseball fans?
You see, fly balls can travel as high as 250 feet and the ball must be seeable on
its entire path up and down again to play the game properly, not to mention safely.
All this
effort is so that 30 games can be played at night each year at Bob Wren Stadium
(15 Copperheads, 18 Bobcats and 6 American Legion State Tournament).
So, the
next time you are enjoying a nighttime baseball game at Bob Wren Stadium under its
wonderful lights, perhaps you’ll have a better appreciation of how amazing it is. Incidentally, do you know where and
when the first nighttime baseball game was played?
It was in
Fort Wayne
,
Indiana
, in 1883 – just four years after
Edison
invented the light bulb!
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