Complex dedicated for the `love of baseball'.

Byline: Mark Baker The Register-Guard

Mel Krause loves baseball. Ted Norman loves baseball. And, yes, Matt Myrmo loves baseball, too.

However, Krause, the last baseball coach the University of Oregon ever had, and Norman, who played for Krause at Eugene's Sheldon High School in the mid-1960s, have been loving the sport a lot longer than Myrmo.

After all, Myrmo plays Cal Ripken Baseball for North Eugene, and he's only 12.

But if it were not for the efforts of Krause and Norman and a whole bunch of other folks who want to see youth-league baseball not only survive, but flourish, in Lane County, Myrmo would have been loving baseball somewhere else Saturday, instead of at the Willamette Valley Babe Ruth Complex in Bethel.

And that would have been a sad thing, because he thinks the four-field complex is "awesome."

Out of the mouths of "Babes."

Myrmo and his mother, Mickie Myrmo, were on hand Saturday as the baseball complex just west of Belt Line Road was officially dedicated Saturday, complete with Eugene Mayor Jim Torrey throwing out the first pitch, red, white and blue bunting everywhere, and 40 Babe Ruth and Cal Ripken Baseball teams playing the great American pastime all day long.

"It's simply giving back to the kids so they can have an opportunity to enjoy baseball like I did," said Krause, 75, who lives in Wilsonville now and, besides coaching the Ducks for a decade, also coached at Willamette and North Eugene high schools, in addition to Sheldon.

Krause, a board member of the Willamette Valley Babe Ruth Complex Committee, is credited with helping raise much of the $2.5 million that has gone into the complex, said Norman, chairman of the board. And that money helped pay for recent additions to the complex such as the handsome brick dugouts, scoreboards and a two-story clubhouse that sits in the middle of the complex's four fields that first opened for play three years ago.

That money also helped put two of the fields in the names of two men who were longtime baseball supporters in the Eugene area, former UO baseball coach Don Kirsch, and former Eugene Emeralds president Bob Gilbert. Anyone who donates $100,000 or more, gets a field in their name, Norman said, but Krause raised the money in honor of the two men.

A sign on the scoreboard of each field held the names of Kirsch and Gilbert on Saturday as the fields were dedicated in front of both their families.

"He'd be speechless," Bob Gilbert Jr. of Riddle said of what would have been the reaction of his father, who died eight years ago. "He loved baseball. He was always a supporter of anything to do with baseball."

Raising money for the complex began in the mid-1990s after Norman, who was then coaching Babe Ruth Baseball for Sheldon, asked Krause if he would help raise money for the team's facilities.

But Krause said he wouldn't do it unless it was for all Babe Ruth Baseball teams in the Eugene area.

The idea was hatched. They would raise money for a new Babe Ruth Baseball complex.

Babe Ruth League baseball is a national youth-league organization that started in Hamilton Township, N.J., in 1951.

Every spring, almost a million children play on some 44,200 teams in 6,700 leagues across the nation.

In 1999, the organization's Bambino Division for players ages 12 and under changed its name to the Cal Ripken Baseball Division, in honor of the Major League Baseball great who ended his career in 2001 and first played baseball as a child in a Babe Ruth Baseball league.

Children 13 and older still play in the Babe Ruth Division, including teams in Lane County.

Norman's 14-year-old son, Josh, plays Babe Ruth Baseball for Sheldon. "We built this to preserve baseball in Eugene," Norman said of the complex. "Mel taught me the love of baseball, and I want to be able to pass that on to other kids."

HOW TO HELP

What: Willamette Valley Babe Ruth Complex

Where: West of Belt Line Road, off Barger Drive, next to Meadow View School

Why: Despite having raised $2.5 million over the years to build the top youth baseball complex in Lane County, another $280,000 is needed. For more information, call Ted Norman at 343-2263.