Staff Photo/Gary Cosby Jr.
The new Sewell-Thomas Stadium at the University of Alabama is a jewel, a facility that lifts Crimson Tide baseball from the back of the baseball-facility pack among its rivals to a status of "equal to or better than." In a guided tour a couple of weeks ago, I got to see every aspect of the new stadium. Strictly technically speaking, it is a renovation of an old facility, not a "new" one but there is little that connects the current Sewell-Thomas from its previous incarnations, going back to the days when it was little more than a collection of aluminum bleachers, concrete dugouts and a press box that appeared to have been made from plywood left over from the 1932 homecoming parade.