Let there be lights
Coplay’s Balliet Stadium will light up again for night baseball
One of the Lehigh Valley’s most historic sports venues has received a helping hand.
Coplay’s Balliet Stadium, once a mecca for local baseball at a variety of levels, will be getting its lights back.
Shut off for nearly a decade since Superstorm Sandy added the stadium lights to its long list of casualties in late October 2012, state Rep. Jeanne McNeill took a swing at the problem, and in the eyes of the Coplay and local baseball community, has hit a home run.
She has helped to secure $243,545 in funding from the state department of community and economic development specifically to fund new lights for the stadium that hosted league and district high school baseball championships for years and is still the home of Allentown Central Catholic varsity games and a variety of Coplay Sports youth teams.
The funding is expected to be completed in time for lights to be installed in time for the 2023 baseball season.
Coplay Mayor Steve Burker vowed the lights will be turned on next spring in what he hopes will be “one heck of a celebration.”
“We would like to get a lot of players who played here at one time or another back here for the ceremony and make it a special night,” Burker said. “This place is special. It has always been special for the entire community.
“I was here when the lights went out, and we knew it was not going to be easy to get them turned back on.”
Balliet Stadium is named in honor of legendary baseball coach Sammy Balliet, who led Coplay to six state American Legion championships and countless league crowns in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s. He was also one of the most renowned baseball personalities in the area, with dozens of baseball people visiting him at his Lehigh Valley Sporting Goods store in Coplay.
Even though he died in 1974 at the age of 69, his legacy lived on through the stadium named in his honor.
“Jeanne has helped us many times and this was something I spoke to her about,” Burker said. “She went to bat for us in Harrisburg and met with the head of the appropriations committee, and she made it happen.
“Some people might say she gets a lot of stuff done for Coplay, but everybody in her district benefits from her . ... There are no strings attached for this.”
Numerous efforts have been made to get the lights back on the past decade, including multiple fundraisers.
Nothing came close to raising the money needed for an extensive project.
“I follow Coplay Sports on social media and I am friends with many families who participate with Coplay Sports, and they were posting fundraisers they were doing to bring the lights back,” McNeill said. “They posted the amount needed and I knew it was an exorbitant amount of money they needed. I know they have to raise money just to keep their program going [and] I just started thinking that maybe I could help them get some grant money.”
She said she reached out to her appropriations chair who is “a big baseball lover” and emailed him the history of Sammy Balliet Stadium.
“I told him why they needed the lights,” McNeill said. “A few weeks later they said they found a source for the lights. They said the money was going to come.
“It’s going to take a little time to jump through some hoops and do all of the paperwork, but they said it was OK to announce it and say it was a done deal.”
Balliet Stadium has made several improvements in recent years with a brand-new infield that came with an assist from the Lehigh Valley IronPigs and a new scoreboard.
However, Balliet Stadium without lights was a little bit like a backyard barbecue without the grill.
For years the place was an attraction for baseball fans just wanting to see a game, no matter the level, and the concession stand always was humming to take care of those in attendance who might have missed dinner at home.
“We talked to people in the community a lot and they missed the lights,” said Coplay Sports President Wes Christman. “When we’d have games here for our Connie Mack and legion program, people would come walking down the street and come eat at our concession, and they’d always ask if the lights were going back on.
“They just wanted to come here on a Friday night, relax and enjoy a ballgame. That was very heartfelt. This is something we felt we had to do.”
Christman said Coplay Sports, a nonprofit organization, offers numerous teams in numerous sports. The baseball program has more than 100 kids involved ranging in age from 4-20.
“We took this over two or three years ago and some improvements needed to be made and it has been a long process, but we do have a very dedicated group of guys who want to bring this place back to what it was and make it nostalgic and as vintage as possible,” Christman said. “We want to make Sammy Balliet proud and the community too.
“We want this place again to be a centerpiece in Coplay, where the community can come together at any time and enjoy a night out.”
Burker said events at Balliet Stadium aren’t limited to baseball.
“We can have concerts, all kinds of things here,” he said. “We want this place to come alive again. Now the next thing we need back are the bleachers on the first-base side.
“One thing at a time.”