Butch Cassidy

Ray Birmingham grew up in Hobbs playing baseball.

That’s all you need to understand as you field his pitch.

For the UNM baseball coach, it’s not just about transforming Lobo Field, although that’s part of it.

It’s not just about building a UNM team good enough to play in Omaha, Neb., on the last days of a college baseball season.

It’s about who he is — a New Mexican — and what he loves — baseball.

“My dream is to bring the whole state together,” Birmingham says. “I want a united New Mexico, which we’ve never had, have we?”

He calls it his “little dream,” his “little deal.”

“What if I can put together a team that has a Farmington pitcher and an Eldorado catcher and a Roswell first baseman, and we go to Omaha? Does that not pull us together?

“It’s going to be really, really hard, but if we pull it off, I’ll buy you a beer.”

Birmingham grew up in Hobbs playing baseball, and that’s where we start.

“We’d go to Texas to play,” he says, “and I would watch the way they looked at us because we were from New Mexico.

“And I coached high school in Las Cruces, and we’d go to Arizona and Texas to play, and the way they looked at us, like we were lesser than. It bothered me. It’s always been a bur in my saddle.

“So when I went to New Mexico Junior College, I got more of the same. I started beating everybody in the country, and we got a little respect, and I went, ‘Yeah, we ain’t so bad in this state. We’re pretty good people.’”

And that’s the attitude he carries as UNM baseball coach. It’s part of his pitch as he tries to convince folks to donate to the renovation of Lobo Field.

The first stage is set with about $2.3 million in hand.

“We’ve got the ability to move forward up to $3.6 million on this particular phase of the project,” UNM athletic director Paul Krebs says. “… It’s our job to figure out how to raise the necessary moneys to ultimately build this field in its totality.”

New bleachers, dugouts, playing surface, scoreboard and renovation of the outfield wall are included in the initial phase.

Proposed projects involve locker rooms, batting cages, a press box and concessions stands. The whole bill would be about $12 million.

Birmingham is the lead salesman, but it’s hardly his first sell. First he had to convince Krebs to hire him.

“When we were hiring a new baseball coach a few years ago,” Krebs says, “I got a call from Hobbs, New Mexico. We interviewed coach Birmingham and he said, ‘I’m going to take this team to Omaha.’

“I wasn’t thinking vision at the time. I was thinking, ‘This guy’s crazy. Do I really want to go forward with this interview, because I think this guy is off his rocker.’

“But what Ray has, and continues to have, is a vision.”

What Birmingham didn’t envision was a political storm erupting after he secured a $1 million donation from Hobbs businessman Johnny Copes.

“Of course I ran into some issues,” Birmingham says. “They came out of, excuse the pun, right field. I went, ‘Wow, where did that come from?’

“I didn’t know what was going on there, so I just said, ‘OK, whatever. Move forward. I’ll keep trying.’”

Cope, who pulled back the $1 million after the school abandoned plans to rename the renovated Lobo Field after him, still was one of the donors mentioned at the groundbreaking news conference earlier this week. Former Albuquerque High basketball coach Jim Hulsman was another.

It helped that the 2010 Legislature had allocated $2 million to the project.

Sen. John Sapien of Corrales was one legislator who backed the project. He says Lobo baseball has a statewide impact.

“There hasn’t been any conversation or request for future dollars for future phases,” Sapien says. “My sense is that once this project gets off the ground and construction starts, you’re going to have a lot of private investors, and I say investors in the sense of a legacy, a lot of private people wanting to be part of Lobo baseball.”

Krebs hopes so. He looks at Lobo Field holding similar value to the community as has the renovated Pit.

“It’s not only a testament to Lobo baseball,” Krebs says, “but a facility that is accessible to APS, that is accessible to the NMAA, that really advocates and creates opportunities for all of baseball in the state.”

Birmingham says no other sport has produced as many New Mexicans in the pros as baseball, but baseball gets short shrift.

“There has been new football stadiums,” Birmingham says, “new basketball arenas, in every town and every place.

“But baseball got the chicken-wire dugouts and the chicken-wire fence, the wooden bowl with the old lights on them. So that has been with me my whole life. Now I’m 56 years old and have a chance to do something about it.”

Before a recent game, a man approached Birmingham and asked to talk to him afterward.

The Lobos lost, and Birmingham had all but forgotten about the man. But long after everyone else had gone, the man was still there.

His name was Johnny Martinez and he told Birmingham he was a disabled worker from the city of Las Vegas, N.M.

“I believe what you believe in,” Martinez told the coach. “I believe in New Mexico. I’m disabled, and I don’t have much money. But here’s a hundred dollars and I want to buy home plate at that new baseball stadium. And I want every baseball player in the state of New Mexico to touch it.”

They were a couple of New Mexicans talking baseball — a down payment on Birmingham’s little dream.
— This article appeared on page D1 of the Albuquerque Journal