It is in the proverbial rough, still being mined, cut and polished, but quite useable. It has produced a much-needed gem for Heurfano County kids who love playing the game. It's as if Superman grabbed a hunk of coal, squeezed it and then turned over a rock fit for a queen. The Redskins' value never has been higher. You hear a lot of these stories.
Some towns just adopt a baseball team, start a field.
Basically, that's what we've done, in addition to the school coming around. Little more than an hour drive southwest of Pueblo, La Veta was without prep baseball for years before the sport was reintroduced at the high school in the late 1980s. Even today, La Veta, which has about 750 residents and might have fewer than 90 high school students in the 2001-02 academic year, battles a lack of numbers in a numbers game. Fay, who donates his salary, teamed with players, parents and some businesses as they dug in - literally. At one time the site for the field had been a railroad yard, and it showed.