The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
PLAY BALL!
Miracle League set to welcome back athletes, families
After a one-year, coronavirus-caused hiatus, the Miracle League of Lake County of Eastlake will welcome back its athletes and their families with an Opening Day celebration this weekend.
Games will start at 9 a.m. July 31 and be followed by a national anthem performance and ceremonial first pitch by a couple of the league’s athletes at Lake Health Miracle Field, located at 35200 Vine St.
Miracle League teams play on custom-designed, rubberized turf that accommodates wheelchairs and other assistive devices while helping to prevent injuries. Miracle League buddy systems pairs players with able-bodied peers to make the game of baseball accessible to specialneeds athletes.
“There’s definitely a spring in the stride this year with everybody coming out of the year we just had,” said League Commissioner Mike Piper. “This year, we’ve grown another four teams, so we have 12 teams now.”
The Miracle League typically follows a regular baseball season schedule, but the decision was made in February and March to back Opening Day to July to let the novel coronavirus pandemic play out a little bit more, Piper said, which has worked well.
“As soon as we opened up registration, it’s been an avalanche,” he said. “A lot of these families were in the house for a year. This hit everybody hard, but the special-needs population — you have a situation where there was serious isolation. Our ages go from 5 to 65 right now, but if you look at a typical kid who maybe has a driver’s license who could get to the park with families — in our situation, sometimes transportation is limited and everything else.”
One of the strengths Miracle Field has is the fact that it’s a single field and nothing else other than games goes on there, Piper said.
“The idea is to try to stay away from 45-minute activities,” he said. “What we’re looking to do is you could come to the game, use the fully adaptive playground and go to concessions for lunch. A lot of our families will end up spending two to three hours there on a Saturday. That fosters friendships, and it gives the parents a break in the summer.”
As soon as athletes and their families arrive, the athlete is aware that they aren’t there for their brother’s game, a market or concert. They know they’re there for themselves, Piper said.
“It creates an atmosphere that’s hard to describe unless you’ve been there,” he said. “It’s almost like a different world, and it gets you away from a lot of the nonsense that’s going on.”
In 2016, Executive Director Mark Rental of the Lake County Port Authority and Eastlake Mayor Dennis Morley approached the Lake County Captains about the creation of a Miracle League field. After two years that saw pro bono design services performed by CT Consultants and financial support from Lake Health and community partners, the field became a reality in 2018.
“As soon as we opened up registration, it’s been an avalanche.” — Mike Piper, league commissioner