"This place was a little village unto its own," Vaughn says, "and when you stepped through those gates you were no longer a programmer, a plumber, an executive—you were a softball player."

After 18 years in business, the sports complex is beginning to show its age. And while management plans to give the place a facelift, longtime users of Twin Creeks' softball fields say the problems at the Sunnyvale facility are more than just skin-deep.

"I have great memories of it, although I've seen transitions over the years," says Jim Colvin, a Sunnyvale resident who's been playing at Twin Creeks since it opened in 1985. "It seems to be fading. It's a facility that's a central location for ball fields, and that's it."

Vaughn says, the festival atmosphere has given way to the bottom line. "When you're driving here on [Highway] 237 and you see all those lights, it's still pretty dazzling," he adds. "But if you look closer, it doesn't quite hold up. In a way, it feels like we're cash cows."

Sunnyvale resident Todd Adams, another long-term Twin Creeks player, is more blunt in his assessment of the sports complex and its owner, Ray Collishaw. "They say they're always trying to improve, but they're not," Adams says. "The guy just wants to make more money."

Eyeing the bottom line

Collishaw's son Dave, who is Twin Creeks' general manager, says the place should, in fact, be making more money. According to a 1985 article in the San Jose Mercury News, Twin Creeks was expected to bring in at least $12.5 million annually within 10 years. Instead, Collishaw says, "my dad built the complex for $9 million, but we haven't gotten a return on the original investment."

To build the complex, Collishaw leased 60 acres on Caribbean Drive from Santa Clara County. He pays the county rent and a percentage of the complex's gross revenues.

Dave Collishaw says revenues from Twin Creeks' day-to-day operations—particularly gate fees, league fees and facilities rentals—balance out the rent and other expenses, such as salaries for its staff of 10 and the costs of maintaining its 10 lighted softball fields, two new soccer fields and other facilities (see sidebar). Gate fees went from $1 to $2 in July. For adult leagues, softball fees are $635 per team; for soccer, $895; and for flag football, $795.

About 1,600 games are played on each softball field every year, Collishaw says. "Since we've been open 18 years, you can see the damage and the wear and tear," he adds. "It's costing us more to bring it back to where it was.

"The only extra revenue we get is a percentage of concessions," Collishaw says. "It's really our only revenue source."

To keep that revenue source vital, Twin Creeks' clubhouse is set to be refurbished next year, and Collishaw has started to take bids for a new concessionaire.

When Twin Creeks first opened, Colvin says, there was as much action in its clubhouse as on its softball fields. "The bar used to be hopping," Colvin recalls. "Women would come out dressed to kill. That's dissolved within the last seven years."

No league of their own

Twin Creeks has also dissolved its upper-level A/B leagues in recent years, a move Colvin says had an impact on average D-level players such as himself. With no league of their own, the more skilled players have joined D-level teams, giving them what some view as a competitive edge and others view as an unfair advantage.

"It sort of squeezes out the true D-level players," Colvin says.

Adams, who plays at the A/B level, says the discontent about Twin Creeks' league structure cuts both ways. "All these guys want to do is play, and Twin Creeks took away the leagues they had," he says. "They started blowing off upper-level players."

Collishaw says there just aren't enough upper-level softball players any more to constitute a league. "So-called A/B players—above average—have now scattered to other teams and made it unfair for lower-level teams to participate."

Collishaw says Twin Creeks will change its league structure in 2004, possibly issuing membership cards that reveal players' league status. "There would be fees involved, and that's what we don't want to get into," he adds. "We know players pay a lot of money to play here."

While he acknowledges that league teams should be made up of similarly skilled players, Collishaw says it's difficult for Twin Creeks' staff to check up on each of the 1,300 athletes who come through the gate every weeknight. "There may be an [A-level] player on a D-level team," Collishaw says. "It's hard to control that."

Youth movement

The skill level of the teams might have changed, but the volume of players who come to Twin Creeks each week remains high. The complex hosts about 320 adult teams on Tuesday­Friday evenings from April to December. "We still get 80 to 100 teams a night," Collishaw says. "When we opened 18 years ago, we had no idea what to expect. There's no way we knew we'd end up with this many teams.

"The biggest surprise has been the youth teams," Collishaw adds. "They've become a dominant factor."

Twin Creeks hosts 70­80 youth teams three weekends a month, both girls' fast-pitch softball and boys' baseball. Collishaw plans to adapt Twin Creeks' batting cages to accommodate this burgeoning business, and he's eyeing the complex's two new soccer fields. "I think it'd be ideal to add a couple backstops and use them as additional youth fields," he says.

As girls' fast pitch has risen in popularity, adult slow pitch has declined. "Slow-pitch softball is dying in this area. There are no sponsors, and it's hard to regulate," Adams says. "The guys who used to play it are getting older."

Fight club

Age notwithstanding, having so many competitive types in one place has led to many fights and game-related injuries over the years. "There have been broken bones, concussions and even a reported case of the loss of an eye," Colvin wrote in his report on Twin Creeks for a sports management class at San José State University. "The facility is really not geared up to handle security issues."

"'It used to be way worse when the bar was hopping," Colvin remembers. "I haven't seen the number of fights I used to, but [staff] said it's still pretty prevalent."

Collishaw says Twin Creeks is taking steps to curb violent behavior at the complex. "When there's a fight now, we kick the players out. Before we'd be a little lenient, and families don't like to see that," he adds. "Those [aggressive players] discourage other teams from playing here."

Collishaw credits the Sunnyvale public safety officers with helping curb the fighting, and he agrees with Colvin that teams don't drink as much as they did in the late '80s and early '90s.

Umpires are often called upon to play the peacemaker with players who dispute their calls, but game officials at Twin Creeks have had their own disputes with management, which resulted in a walkout in June.

They're out!

Adams, an umpire as well as a player, was among those who walked out. The central issue, he says, was the source as well as the amount of the umpires' pay.

"We got paid $10 a game from each team, and they took a little of that," Adams says of Twin Creeks' management. When each team's payment was raised to $12 a game, he adds, the umpires took home the same amount, and the extra $2 went into Twin Creeks' coffers.

Following the walkout, Twin Creeks reorganized its umpire program in July and hired a new chief umpire. The sports complex is currently accepting applications for umpires affiliated with the American Softball Association. Collishaw says Twin Creeks hires its umpires as independent contractors. "We'd have to raise league fees [to $750 or $800] if we ended up paying their workers' comp," he adds.

A fee increase wouldn't sit well with some longtime players who say their teams are already paying more than enough to play at Twin Creeks. "Their fees seem to be high compared to what you get," Colvin says. "I wouldn't deliberately organize a team to play at Twin Creeks. I have no attachment to it now except that teams that ask me to play with them play there."

Adams used to play at Twin Creeks five or six nights a week. Now he only plays there when he's asked to substitute for another player. "I'm tired of the way they continue to treat the players who helped them build it up to what it was," he says.

All ears

Collishaw says he's aware that some longtime players are unhappy with the way Twin Creeks is run. "They notice when the batting cage isn't working," he says. "They notice if a certain team always gets a certain game time. Now I'm getting more compliments than complaints because people in the office are listening.

"For 18 years my door's always been open to anybody," Collishaw says, adding that there's no quick fix for Twin Creeks' troubles. "It just takes time."