Morris: USC needs to make a few changes for Carolina Stadium fans

There cannot be a finer college baseball stadium than the edifice on Williams Street in downtown Columbia. The home to South Carolina baseball is stunningly beautiful.

There are also changes that need to be addressed to make the stadium more of a baseball park, one to be enjoyed by all fans, not just an elite group of Gamecock Club members.

Eric Hyman, USC’s athletics director, says the stadium has been a work in progress since it opened in February. His staff is to be commended for handling what could have been a horrific problem with parking: The $1.50 per person, roundtrip fare for taking a shuttle from the Colonial Center is well worth it.

Hyman says his staff will sit down at the conclusion of this season and address any other pressing issues with the stadium. That said, here are five suggested changes:

Cap season-ticket sales

USC sold 5,200 season tickets for the inaugural season at Carolina Stadium, leaving only the bleacher seats beyond the left-field wall for walk-up tickets.

The bleacher seats are a good deal at $6 for adults and $4 for children under 18, but contrary to what Hyman says, they are not good seats. The stadium’s lone scoreboard is located behind the bleachers and most of the action in left field cannot be seen from that vantage point. When grandstand seats become available in the middle of the fifth inning, the bleachers empty.

What has happened for the majority of home games is the grandstand area from foul pole to foul pole is seldom filled with fans. More often than not, a majority of the seats are empty. Season-ticket holders attend one, maybe two, games a homestand.

When USC and the City of Columbia were negotiating a possible shared ballpark, the city insisted in one plan that at least 1,500 seats be set aside for walk-up sales. It was a way of ensuring non-Gamecock Club members would have a chance to enjoy the stadium.

A solution is to cap season-ticket sales at 3,500. In order to generate the same amount of revenue from season-ticket sales, USC should increase season-ticket prices significantly. Make season tickets a treasured commodity and continue to have Gamecock Club members carry the freight for paying off the nearly $40 million stadium.

By capping season tickets, the average fan or family of fans will be able to purchase tickets in the grandstand area for any game. Thus, the average fan or family of fans will be more likely to attend games.

Institute a buy-back policy

With a buy-back policy, season-ticket holders can put individual game tickets on sale to the public. For instance, if a holder of four season tickets behind home plate does not plan to attend USC’s game today against Auburn, he or she could go through the athletic department to put those tickets up for sale.

“We do that with other sports,” Hyman says. “We’ve done that with football and basketball. Baseball, we’re working through it.”

Add a student section

Because the stadium is so expansive, there exists virtually no home field advantage for USC. The only time the crowd became part of Friday’s game was when USC pitcher Sam Dyson was within one strike of a complete-game victory.

A student section of 500 or so behind or adjacent to the visiting team’s dugout could help create a college baseball atmosphere.

Bring in an organist

Put someone behind the keyboard who knows baseball and — presto — you’ve got a little atmosphere. Baseball fans want to enter the stadium to ballpark music, not the synthesized noise USC spews out over the public address system. The canned organ music now used rarely generates staccato clapping or helps ignite a USC rally.

Tweak concessions

Carolina Stadium needs a distinctive item, a food not sold anywhere else in the country. Whether it’s a former player opening a barbeque and ribs stand (Boog’s Barbeque at Camden Yards comes to mind) or the offer of a Gamecock swirl ice cream cone, every park needs one specialty item.

Next, reduce the price of all concession items by $1. Frankly, $3.25 for a soft drink smacks of price gouging. A family is more likely to buy two soft drinks at $2.25 each than one at that exorbitant rate.

A family of three attended Friday’s game and spent $25.25 on concessions that included four hot dogs, two drinks and one bag of candied almonds. Include the $16 for tickets and $4.50 for shuttle service and the evening at the stadium cost $45.75. For a college baseball game, that’s too much.

USC needs to make sure when it secures naming rights for the stadium, the site is forever known as a park. Along with the other suggested changes, USC will then be playing baseball in a park instead of a stadium.

Listen to Morris Tuesdays from 4-5 p.m. on ESPN Radio 93.1 FM