ROSCOE VILLAGE — Lake View High School baseball coach Brett Bildstein gathered his players before the start of Monday's season opener against Mt. Carmel, a perennial Catholic League powerhouse, and offered his team three simple words of advice:
"Enjoy this moment."
Through pure luck of the draw, Lake View became the first Public League team to claim home field advantage at Kerry Wood Cubs Field, a gleaming new stadium more than a decade in the making.
Located at 3457 N. Rockwell St. on seven acres of land sandwiched between Lane Tech College Prep High School and DeVry University, the field is the only diamond on the city's North Side to meet state high school standards.
Bildstein handed the start to junior Ben Collazo.
"I'm not nervous, I'm actually really excited," said Collazo, who's been waiting since his freshman year for construction to wrap up on the field.
"I want to take everything in," he said.
If Collazo was cool, calm and collected, Michael Kelly, the Park District's general superintendent and CEO, was giddy.
"I've been working on this for 10 years.... I have goose bumps," Kelly said, before throwing out the ceremonial first pitch.
Monday's game would have been unthinkable a year ago, he said, after the weekend's heavy rains. Traditional Park District fields would have been a muddy mess but the turf at the new diamond was dry as a bone.
In fact, Bildstein said, CPS teams typically had to wait until April for Park District fields to become available for play, meaning the first 15 games of the season were held at opponents' stadiums.
"We always went to Mundelein," he said. "I won't miss the bus rides."
Neither will Rebecca Velez-Collazo, Ben's mom, who was among the dozens of fans in the stands on Monday — a far cry from the usual handful.
"It's about time we got something like this on the North Side," Velez-Collazo said. "It's a bus stop away. It's an Uber ride. It's awesome."
Leveling the literal playing field between CPS teams and their Catholic League and suburban counterparts was precisely the point when Kelly and Kerry Wood first dreamt up the idea for the ballpark back in 2004, Kelly said.
The former Cubs great was living near Oz Park at the time and couldn't believe the playing conditions of CPS students compared with fields in his native Texas, Kelly said.
"The nicest thing I can say about Kerry and his wife [Sarah] is he stuck with us," Kelly said of the long road to get the field built — during which time Wood played for Cleveland and the Yankees before returning to the Cubs and then retiring.
"You'd think he'd forget" about the field, "but he never did," Kelly said.
The history of the field was the last thing on Collazo's mind as he took to the mound. He just wanted to prove that last year's Cinderella season for Lake View was no fluke.
"I think I know how to pitch them," he said of Mt. Carmel's lineup, many of whom he's played with on travel teams.
Collazo got off to a rocky start, giving up a long double that missed being an over-the-fence home run by just inches to the first hitter he faced.
But he quickly settled down, pitching his way out of the inning and holding Mt. Carmel scoreless.
Lake View notched a pair of runs in the bottom of the first on just one hit and an uncharacteristic four errors by the Caravan.
If Hollywood were scripting this story, that's where the game would have ended. Instead, Mt. Carmel roared back to an eventual 17-3 victory.
Bildstein knew his team faced an uphill climb, drawing last year's state championship runner-up for its first game.
"That in itself is tough," he said. "At least we don't have to go there."
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Lake View H.S. players stand at attention during the national anthem. [All photos DNAinfo/Patty Wetli]
Lake View fans filled the new stadium, a far cry from the handful who typically travel to cheer on the team.
Mt. Carmel played the unaccustomed role of visiting team.
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