-
Minnitti Field
The revered home of TCC Titan baseball is one of the premier baseball facilities in the Northwest Athletic Conference. Minnitti Field seats around 500 fans, and sits alone on the farthest point Northeast of the TCC campus. Minnitti Field boasts fairly symmetrical dimensions from foul pole to foul pole – 320’ down the lines, 360’ in the alleys and 390’ to dead center.
The playing surface is all natural, from a pristine grass infield and luscious grass outfield, to all dirt surfaces around the base paths, home plate and pitcher’s mound. Coach Ryan Mummert, coaching staff and players have worked tirelessly to bring the Titan baseball facilities to the elite level and turn it into one of the top facilities in the Northwest.
This season, TCC baseball will be retiring their historic Kingdome bleachers that have served their purpose for the last 17-years. These bleachers aren’t just any bleachers, as the cold metal seats have been through a lot. The bleachers were present for the incredible 1995 season of the Seattle Mariners, the only championship the Seattle Super Sonics ever won and the inaugural year of our Seattle Seahawks.
In the last five years, Minnitti Field has undergone major renovations including:
- Brand new bleachers (2017)
- $150,000 sprinkler system installed
- New wind screen on the outfield fence
- New concrete staircase and sidewalk leading to the entrance of Minnitti Field
- 16 tons of red infield mix and 75 tons of red cinders for the warning track
- Infield grass and aprons were reseeded
- New turf walkways and halo were added
- 9-inning scoreboard, state of the art with LED numbers and wireless controls
- Outfield top-dressed
- Leveling and re-sodding of the infield lips
History
The field is named after Sam Minnitti, a groundskeeper and head of maintenance at TCC in the early ‘70s. “Sam was a bigger than life kind of person”, according to Tom Pantley, a former TCC student and friend of the Minnitti family. “He was the large Italian man with the moustache who…would joke and shout, and those whom we acknowledged would be happy for at least 15 minutes after”, wrote Pantley in a letter to The Challenge in 1973. He died an unusual death on April 19, 1973 at age 46. According to Ron Magden, one of the faculty members, Minnitti was a member of the staff bowling team. The team was playing a league match, and Minnitti was the last bowler in the line-up. It was the 10th frame, and they needed a strike to win. Sam Minnitti bowled that strike and died of an aneurysm in the bowling alley.
Students and faculty alike wanted something on the campus named after him that would fit his personality, according to Pantley. The library was suggested at one point, but because Minnitti was a little league coach it was decided the baseball field would be more fitting. The Titans played their first season on Minnitti Field in the spring of 1979.
