You didn't need to be a genius to figure out that the water was coming this way.
At the same time many parts of Iowa were experiencing some serious flooding earlier this month, the Hannibal Baseball Group, owners of the new Central Illinois Collegiate League franchise that will call Clemens Field home next year, turned the first dirt at the park.
A flooded field wasn't even an option.
"Nah," Larry Owens non-chalantly said when asked if he worried about the park being overtaken by a flood.
Owens, one of the Hannibal owners who is overseeing the multi-million dollar renovation of Clemens, is probably a little more concerned now than he was on June 10 when he met with the media at the groundbreaking.
For all of the plusses with the group's involvement in bringing baseball back to Hannibal, this may be the only fly in the ointment. There's really nothing the group can do when Mother Nature takes over.
Because of its proximity to Bear Creek, flooding will always be an issue at the field, which was built in 1938. Earlier this spring, water encroached onto the first base line at the field. As you can see from the picture above, the Flood of '08 has done a number on the park and will delay some of the work planned for the stadium this summer.
Owens said the team has a plan for flooding.
"Down in the belly of the stadium where we'll have the possibility of having water, we're going to use EcoCrete," he said. "It's an ecologically-friendly product that's molded different. You hose it out and go on down the road. You can make it look like marble, granite or whatever you want to do with it. We'll use a lot of that stuff. It's a beautiful product."
All of the EcoCrete in the world isn't going to protect Clemens from water like this.
"If we do get flooded, we'll hose it out, clean it up and move on," Owens said.
"The 100-year flood plan gets updated about every six years, I don't know how that works. Once we're done with it, there might be the possibility of talking with the Army corps or somebody and go ahead and levee there so that when it does come back up, it doesn't come this way.
"The government has a lot of money for less-worthy projects, so maybe they will do that for us. I think baseball is worthy."
Life without Tiger
The news of Tiger Woods' season-
ending knee surgery ruined many a future summer Sunday. Gone is an automatic husband excuse.
"Honey, I can't do that right now. Tiger's playing, and I have to watch."
Without Tiger to move the needle, the PGA Tour is now the NHL.
Sure, the die-hard fans will care about who wins the British Open and PGA Championship, but the winners of those events will always have to deal with the fact Tiger wasn't in the field. They won't slap asterisks next to the winner's name in record book, but they may as well.
The Phil Mickelsons of the world aren't going to draw the casual fan into events. And this would be an ideal time for Lefty to firmly establish himself as the World's second-best player. He's had a good year so far with a pair of wins and five top-10 finishes in 14 starts.
Maybe (and this is a big maybe) Mickelson could be the guy to draw in the casual fan if he's able to win the British and PGA, lead the U.S. to a Ryder Cup win and win the FedEx Cup title and figure out how to get fuel prices down to $2 a gallon. Maybe then, people will tune in.
For all practical purposes, the 2008 golf season is over.
Powers(ing) up for next week
OK, there's at least one more professional golf tournament this year that will intrigue Quincyans. Quincy Notre Dame product Emily Powers will play in the U.S. Women's Open next weekend in Edina, Minn.
Powers, a 20-year-old amateur who will be a junior at the University of Kansas next fall, will be part of a low-key grouping her first two days. She'll tee off at 9:01 a.m. on Thursday at Interlachen Country Club with pros Hee Young Park of South Korea and Janell Howland of Boise, Idaho.
Park is in her rookie season on the LPGA Tour with two top-10 finishes in 14 starts. Howland is a member of the Futures Tour who played one season on the LPGA Tour in 2005.
The trio will have a late tee time on Friday, starting at 2:31 p.m.
We'll have full coverage of Powers' U.S. Open journey starting with a preview in Wednesday's paper. I'll have daily updates from the tournament in The Herald-Whig as well as whig.com and live blog posts on my blog, DOBservations.
-- dobrien@whig.com/221-3365
