The Cavaliers’ stadium, which was renamed Disharoon Park before the 2018 season, is 332 feet down each line, 370 feet in the gaps, and 404 feet to center. The Dish’s dimensions are similar to those found at Charles Swab Stadium, which hosts the College World Series every June in Omaha, Neb.
Womack’s players didn’t have benefit of hitting in such an intimate setting at home. Until the fences were brought in after the 2005 season, Davenport Field was 352 feet down each line.
“So [a home run] was a little bit of a poke,” said Lindner, who hit right-handed. “I remember at Georgia Tech, I thought, ‘Man, if I played in this field, there’s like 10 or 15 balls that were caught on the warning track [at Davenport Field] that would have been home runs.’ ”
Benick, a switch-hitter, transferred to UVA after one season at Auburn. Virginia’s competition for Benick included Richmond, whose Pitt Field was considerably more favorable than Davenport Field for power hitters.
“I used to kid Jon,” Womack recalled. “I’d say, ‘Benick, if you had signed with Richmond, you might have hit 50 home runs.’ There’s some balls that he hit at UVA that would have probably been home runs in most other ball parks.”
Benick said: “It was always a little frustrating. You’d see [Mark] Teixeira at Georgia Tech hitting 30. You’d go down there and the park was like 300 feet all the way around the fences, and we played in this monster park.”
A Charlottesville resident, Benick hit all of his collegiate home runs as a Cavalier. He hadn’t been tracking Gelof’s ascent in the record book, “but I knew he hit a ton [of homers] last year,” Benick said.
After college, Benick played in the minor leagues for five years. When he played at UVA, the baseball team did not receive the maximum number of scholarships (11.7) allowed under NCAA rules, but the level of support has increased significantly over the past two decades. Under O’Connor, the Cavaliers have made five trips to the College World Series, and they won the NCAA title in 2015.
“It’s just too good of an institution to not have a good baseball team once they invested in it and moved it along,” Benick said.
Lindner attends the team’s Step Up to the Plate event most years and follows the program closely.
“It’s definitely on a whole different level than when I played,” Lindner said. “It’s been fun watching Virginia baseball become one of the elite programs in…