This was a difficult day at the ballpark for one high school baseball head coach

SOUTH BEND — For the better part of the last 27 years, the dandy of a diamond along Lily Road on the city’s northeast side helped serve as a soundtrack to South Bend Community School Corporation spring sports.

The ping of a baseball off a bat. The sound of ball hitting glove. The cheers and the boos from fans around the aluminum bleacher stands. The sun high in the sky overhead or playing peek-a-boo along the western tree line as it set. The sights and the sounds and the smells of ... baseball.

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If it was high school baseball — if it was Clay High School baseball — Reinebold Field was the place. Until it wasn't ever again.

At two minutes after seven on a warm Saturday evening — the hottest day to date as Mother Nature would have it — a harmless popup to third ended the Colonials’ run at Reinebold this season. And forever.

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Retired quietly in the fifth, Clay dropped a 12-2 decision to West Noble in the championship game — the only game — of the annual Reinebold Colonial Baseball Classic. When out No. 15 was made, it marked the end of the final home sporting event in the proud sports history of Clay High School, which closes at the month’s end.

For Joel Reinebold, the son of the man who the field is named for, knowing that Saturday was it was a little emotional and overwhelming in the magnitude of the moment. Reinebold looked toward left field from the third-base coaching box with two outs in the bottom of the fifth and let out a deep sigh.

He’d known for months and weeks and days that the end was coming sometime this spring. His Saturday began at the field at 7 a.m. Drag the infield. Cut the grass. Line the batter’s box. Details. It was always about the details.

When this game ended, none of those details mattered. The end didn’t either. Reinebold was too busy doing what he’d done for the last 11 seasons — 10 if you count the non-playing COVID year of 2020 — coaching up his Colonials. Being encouraging here, being critical there.

Doing something he loved nearly every day he’d done it at Clay, the same school where his father won 503 games in his 25 seasons. Doing something he hopes to continue doing into the future. Coaching. Teaching.

The job of coaching and teaching helped the 64-year-old Reinebold avoid getting too deep in the weeds about what it all meant. Here’s a hint — everything. When he finally padlocked the gate that night, maybe around 9 if he could get all the post-game field maintenance done, that was it.

No more Clay baseball games at a place once was known as Clay Field, even though he planned to return Sunday to cut the grass.

“It’s really hard to comprehend,” he said. “You spend so much time out here, you do what you love to do, and then it’s gone.”

This was not another high school game about how starting Clay pitcher Dominic Damp might work out of an early jam and find his flow. It wasn’t about seeing right fielder Misael Gonzalez, who hadn’t played the game since the fifth grade before being coaxed to give it a try this spring, make two catches on deep outs look routine. It wasn’t about recognizing Clay’s two seniors, Jeremy Cleveland and Noah Fernandez (no, it was).

This was about all the plays and the players that came before them all those years ago for a proud program that enters sectional play this week with a staggering 1,015 career wins.

This was about looking out toward center and recalling former Clay standout Aaron Bond run down every potential extra-base hit.

This was about looking across the infield and remembering how former Clay third baseman Joe Stukenbourg vacuum every grounder that rolled his way.

This was about seeing former Clay catcher Joey Lange crush a fastball out beyond the 346-foot marker in left center.

This was about staring out toward the third-base coaching box and remembering the late Chad Hudnall, a former Colonial baseball coach and player and basketball state champion, flash the hit sign on 3-and-0 on his way to a sectional championship.

Close your eyes and you could almost hear Clay superfan “Derb” leading the cheers from behind the backstop.

That was Clay baseball.

It was about the memories. It was about the moments. It was about the people. It was about that place. Reinebold said it best as he headed out to coach third base in one of the earlier innings.

“Colonial for life, dude,” he offered once, twice, three times.

Sounds like a tattoo.

Give him time.

The park became like a second home

It’s been a struggle for Clay to field a competitive team the last few years, as evidence of a minimal record (4-4) that doesn’t count all the forfeits. Still, when you walk into the park and see the Reinebold Field press box there right ahead, you’re reminded that before those struggles, there was so much success.

Like 12 sectional championships and four regional titles. A semistate championship. And there in big, black numbers, the year — 1970 — Clay was crowned state champion.

What would the father say to the son to put the final bow on Clay baseball?

“It goes back to the compete thing,” Reinebold said. “He had some great teams with some average players, but they all wanted to compete. He would’ve been proud in that sense.

“He expected perfection, and often got it.”

Reinebold was raised at Clay Field back when it sat closer to Lily than its current site. He lived his childhood playing at the park and running over to the field to watch his father’s teams play — and often win — while he dreamed of being a baseball player.

“This,” Reinebold said as he looked around Saturday afternoon as he waited for his players to arrive, “was everything to me.”

Long has been. Every day, rain or shine. It didn’t matter if the Colonials were challenging for a Northern Indiana Conference championship or trying to figure out a way to properly field a team of nine competent and capable players, Reinebold embraced everything the park and the job offered.

Tough days were many, but the park — the yard, as Reinebold calls it — was an elixir to everything.

“This is hard,” he admitted three hours before the first pitch. “I didn’t think it would be this hard.”

It got harder as the day got longer, as the game got shorter, as the end appeared in sight. In the bottom of the fifth, everyone in the Clay dugout got ... quiet. Nobody talked up the hitter at the plate. Nobody said much of anything. It was as if they were all doing what Reinebold was doing — trying to process it all.

“The closer it got to game time, it was like, this is it — the last one,” Reinebold said. “These guys are so young that they don’t understand that it’s going to be taken away from you for the last time.”

Usually as affable and agreeable and accommodating as any high school coach in the area, Reinebold went radio silent this week. He insisted Saturday that it was because he’d been battling the stomach flu — and still feeling it as first pitch neared — but he also didn’t want to talk about Saturday.

He didn’t want to admit what it meant. It’s the end of an era for him at Clay and the end of the connection he carried on with his father since Jim Reinebold’s death in 2017 at age 87.

For the younger Reinebold, it wasn’t ever about wins and losses and chasing NIC championships, especially the last few years. It was about staying close with his mentor, his idol, his best friend. His father.

On Saturday, just as Reinebold did every game for years, he’d step close to the third-base bag just before it was time for the Colonials to hit and outline a 4 — Dad’s number — in the dirt with his left foot.

“I can’t believe anyone saw that,” he said.

Reinebold Field is still arguably the nicest natural grass surface around. The infield grass receives a consistent cut. The infield dirt is raked and manicured to perfection. You go to Reinebold Field, you want to grab your A2000 and your Adirondack wood bat and shag some flyballs. Field a few grounders. Take several swings in the cage.

Put me in, Coach, I’m ready to play.

That it may go to waste is a crime, something the SBCSC cannot possibly let happen. If for no other reason than pride. That’s a column for another day.

It’s been a laundry list of lasts for Clay sports throughout the school year. Last football game, last basketball games, last softball game, last sporting event. This week will bring the last baseball game when Clay faces host Marian in an opening-round regional game. Come Memorial Day weekend, gloves, baseballs and bats will be packed away. For some, forever.

The memories will remain. Heading north up Lily and looking to your right one last time, you see Reinebold Field and the memories come flooding back.

That’s life. That’s baseball.

Follow South Bend Tribune and NDInsider columnist Tom Noie on X (formerly Twitter): @tnoieNDI. Contact: (574) 235-6153.