The Associated Press

PINE BLUFF, Ark.—Los Angeles Angels outfielder Torii Hunter has offered the university in his Arkansas hometown $500,000 to help build a new ballpark, officials announced.

The new $9 million University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff facility will be known as the Torii Hunter Baseball Complex, said university athletic director Skip Perkins. He said Hunter finalized the details of the donation Friday morning, the largest ever to the university’s athletics program.

“We are very, very grateful,” Perkins told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “We’re ready to rock and roll now. That was a huge component to our fundraising efforts.”

Hunter, a two-time All Star who previously played for the Minnesota Twins, never played for his hometown university. The 1993 graduate of Pine Bluff High School was a first-round draft pick for the Twins just after graduating.

Currently, the UAPB baseball team plays its home games at the city’s Regional Park. Discussions about building a new park began two years.

The complex, which is expected to be built in phases, will include an indoor training facility, a baseball field and stadium, and a softball field that can be used for statewide Little League baseball tournaments.

Delta Natural Kraft, a Twinsburg, Ohio-based company that manufactures brown paper for use in bags at its Pine Bluff plant, donated 12.5 acres of land for the complex, which will be near the university’s new $12 million football stadium.

“This encourages us as we move forward to a better day of athletics at UAPB,” Chancellor Lawrence Davis said. “We’re grateful to Mr. Hunter for his support, and we’re going to develop a complex that he will be proud of and that our city and state will be proud of. We hope to use it as a mechanism to give youngsters a better opportunity in baseball.” Last year, Hunter hit 28 home runs and had a .287 batting average. During the offseason, he signed a five-year, $90 million deal with the Angels. In February, the 32-year-old was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.