Is Baseball Getting its Due?

On the heels of the announcement that the athletic facility company Sportime is planning to reconstruct the sports complex in Harbor Island Park, not everyone was happy with their proposed plans.

Last week, Sportime's managing partner Claude Okin presented the company's plans to the Mamaroneck Village Board of Trustees. The idea is to expand and add practice and game space by September of next year. But while the soccer fields are going from four to six, the number of baseball fields are staying the same.

David Fishman, Town of Mamaroneck councilman and former president of the Larchmont-Mamaroneck Little League, is one who feels that the plans need to change.

"[The LMLL] baseball program is always short shrift; too often all the benefits have gone to soccer," he said. "In fact, baseball's been hammered, which is a shame because the high school team won the state championships two years in a row."

Okin said that the company would look into this concern, but doesn't see any way to increase the number of baseball fields without compromising the soccer fields; and those appear to be more important in the plan.

"I find Okin's comment that baseball coaches want baseball fields and soccer coaches want soccer a cop-out because we did a huge study through Fields for Kids that shows there's a huge need for baseball," said Fishman.

Fields for Kids defines itself as a "community-based organization whose mission is to advocate and raise money for the adequate number of safe and up-to-date playing fields for students participating in school-related and community-run sports programs" in Larchmont and Mamaroneck.

According to Fields for Kids President Jim Hanley, a report was commissioned a few years ago that found that there was a desperate need for more baseball fields.

"We hired a consulting engineer—Ward Associates—and surveyed all parks and athletic fields in the village and town of Mamaroneck in fall 2006 and spring 2007," he said. The study supported the argument that not enough was being done for baseball.

For years, coaches in the baseball and softball programs have complained about the lack of fields available for their teams to play and practice.

There are four baseball/softball fields in Harbor Island Park.  Years ago, the village made an agreement with LMLL that they could maintain one, Goetze Field.  All others must be maintained by the village.

A long time coach explained the problem: "If it rains, we have dedicated coaches and parents who go out early on weekend mornings to work on the fields and make them playable." But they can only do this with Goetze, and since employees don't work weekends, any games scheduled for other fields will be postponed.

Sportime's plans also call for a multi-sport indoor center for in-line skating, indoor soccer and other sports, as well as increase parking in the area.

At the meeting, Village Manager Richard Slingerland reinforced Okin's statement, commenting, "We have been engaged in negotiations with Sportime for ten years; as I understood it, the community's top priority was to increase soccer fields, but we could be wrong."

LMLL members hope to change their minds before the final plans are made.

Elizabeth Hedrick contributed to this report.