Wichita State Athletics

When baseball was revived at Wichita State, Shocker Field was constructed in an empty grass lot along 21st Street on the east edge of campus. The Shockers' home boasted an AstroTurf infield, a chain-link fence and a modern electronic scoreboard with message capabilities, but little else.

Over the years, many improvements have been made to Eck Stadium - Home of Tyler Field. 

Most recently, Phase V of stadium renovations was completed in February 2020. The fifth phase includes a new 10,000-square foot performance facility that features a strength and conditioning center, two athletic training rooms, student-athlete locker room, coaches locker room, media room, refueling station, classroom, offices for coaches and staff, equipment and laundry room and a ticket office. It also includes a new Shocker dugout on the third base side. The project was completely funded through donor contributions and the construction contract was through the WSU Foundation.

A new, state-of-the-art Major Play artificial turf surface was installed on Tyler Field in the fall of 2019, replacing the old AstroTurf suface that had been at the stadium since 2009. 

Phase IV, completed in 2000, included the additions of the Southwestern Bell Press Box, Coleman Hill, Hap Bledsoe Plaza, skyboxes and the Virginia H. Farah All-American Club.  

Wichita State University, with help from various private contributions, opened Shocker field late in the 1978 season. The facility housed little more than a playing surface and a scoreboard, and seating was not available until 1979.  In 1981, the 36 members of the Home Run Club helped fund the construction of concrete dugouts.

Limited seating became possible in 1983 with the addition of a 320-seat bleacher purchased with gifts made to the athletic department by the late Gladys Wiedemann.

Eck Stadium was built around Shocker Field in the spring of 1985 at a cost of more than $700,000. Substantial gifts from Eck and Todd Aikins and a large amount of funding from the WSU-ICAA helped secure the purchase of five sections of aluminum grandstands from the city of New Orleans, where they were used in the 1984 World's Fair by the dolphin tanks exhibit.  Also, the funding was able to pay for the lights obtained from an Iowa outdoor-lighting company at a discounted price.  A clubhouse connected to the third-base dugout was built, housing coaches offices, a reception area, a locker room and a conference room. This area now houses an expanded ticket office and rooms for visiting teams and umpires.

Phase II expansion, which included the renaming of Shocker Field to Tyler Field, took place in the winter and spring of 1988. The $425,000 renovation project included as its major focus the installation of an astroturf surface, a rubberized warning track, the addition of 292 box seats behind the home plate area.  Also added was  wood fencing for the stadium and the color-coordinated painting of the stadium. Ron and Linda Tyler,  Wichita State alumns, funded most of the Phase II project.

The $1.6 million "Phase III'' expansion project completed in 1992, entailed the addition of the largest on-campus scoreboard in the country, and helped to solidify Eck Stadium- Home of Tyler Field's place among the finest college baseball facilities in the country.  In the winter of 1994-95, the press box was expanded to include four broadcast booths, a game operations booth, a writer's booth, and an overflow area.

The Phase III expansion included the construction of of the tri-level Gerald Michaud Pavilion behind the first-base dugout. The lower level houses the Joe Carter Players' Locker Room, a "team room,'' and training facilities for the Wichita State athletics training department. The middle level, which overlooks the field, houses the Dwane L. Wallace office complex and the Coastal Hall of Fame Room. The upper level houses an indoor workout facility for the Shockers, complete with batting and pitching cages.

The project was funded with substantial contributions from the WSU student body, the general public through a grass roots campaign in the spring of 1991 by Gerald Michaud, Velma Wallace, Joe Carter, Rusty Eck, and Coastal Corporation. 

The expansion also included the installation of 1,871 seats, including 401 box seats, increasing the number of box seats to 793 and the stadium seating capacity to 5,665.  Another two-hundred seats were added in the winter of 1994-95 when sections of the original grandstands were filled in.

In January of 2016, the Shockers replaced the old scoreboard and video board with one of the top-five boards in college baseball. The display measures approximately 20.5 feet high by 63.5 feet wide and features a 15HD pixel layout to provide crisp, clear imagery with wide angle visibility to appeal to every seat at Eck Stadium. It features variable content zoning which allows it to show one large image or it can be divided into multiple windows to show a variety of live video, instant replays, up-to-the-minute statistics and game information, graphics and animations, and sponsorship messages. The new board replaced the 10-year old board, which was originally constructed in 1992 and updated in 2006.

Eck Stadium-Home of Tyler Field has been the site of numerous baseball events, including the NCAA Midwest Regional each year from 1990-92 and in 1994-96, as well as 1998, 2002 and 2007, 26 Missouri Valley Conference tournaments, and the first-ever International Baseball Institute in 1989. The National Baseball Congress holds state and national tournament games in the stadium, and the Wichita Broncos, NBC champions in 1989 and 1990, have used the facility during the summer months since 1988. Additionally, Wichita State played host in March 1992 to an international exhibition game featuring a team from Dankook, Korea.