Park board leaving diamonds in the rough, baseball officials say
Scores of high-school-aged ballplayers in Vancouver could miss their season openers this weekend due to sluggish field work by park board staff, Vancouver Minor Baseball organizers say.
The league officials are crying foul because the city tore down a dilapidated backstop at a ball diamond in Nanaimo Park earlier this year, but won’t replace it in time for the start of the season on Saturday.
The league’s usual backup diamond is also under construction, and while parks staff have offered an interim field at Gordon Park for it to use, organizers like league president Mary McCann protest that it’s in disrepair.
“Now we are really in a pickle, to put it mildly,” McCann said. “They’re going to have no place to play baseball because of the park board’s inability to pull through.”
Compounding the frustration of organizers is the fact that the backstop in question is being replaced after the league fundraised $35,000 to help pay for the work, McCann said.
Donnie Rosa, director of recreation at the park board, said work on the diamond, including the new backstop, irrigation work and a fresh asphalt surface for spectators, was held back by weather delays.
“Our goal is to put kids on fields and ice and in pools. For us, we feel horrible about it,” Rosa said of the unfinished diamond. “These kinds of things happen in a project and as much as our planning was in order, you can’t plan for some of that stuff … it’s one of those things. We really don’t set out to do it this way.”
The league has held games at Nanaimo Park, at the corner of Nanaimo Street and East 46th Avenue, for 61 years. By McCann’s estimate, the backstop in question may have been the oldest in the city and it had been repaired by league organizers and parks staff several times.
It degraded into a safety concern to league staff, and for many years they pressed the park board to replace it, McCann said. But the board “didn’t consider it a high priority,” she said.
After the league raised cash for a new one, it and the city reached a deal on the work, including assurances that it would be finished by this weekend, McCann said. The old backstop was torn down in January, she said, but then work slowed to a crawl.
“It’s now been sitting with them, working with a crew of maybe one or two people, periodically, weather permitting. They ’ve been working on it ever since and it’s still not ready,” she said.
A full work crew was on the field Tuesday and they were slated to be there next week as well, Rosa said. But outstanding tasks like paving remain dependent on weather.
Workers were also sent to Gordon Park on Tuesday to level the playing surface on at least one of its diamonds. That park would be ready for baseball by this weekend, Rosa said, and in her opinion it would be suitable for the minor baseball games if the league chose to hold them there.
“My hat’s off to the volunteers and the many people who spend hundreds of hours fundraising and preparing, and I get that they want to be at their home diamond. I want them to be at their home diamond, and if there was any way at all, we would have made that happen,” Rosa said.
“If any message could come shining through, it’s how much we appreciate the volunteers and the fundraising they’ve done.”
Missed games could be played later if the league decides to prolong the season, McCann said.