Story time: .........I remember the first baseball field I watch die, it was something that did not make sense then, and 40 years later it is still one of the worst things that can happen to a town.
In 1980 my home town built a brand new little league field, it was awesome, official size, with concrete block dugouts, bleachers and best of all......lights. They also built a high school size field next to it, but it lacked lights. That was ok, because our school's field had lights. Over the course of one summer, we went from having 1 field that everyone shared to three fields. Life was looking up......
Then the school's superintendent, ordered the school janitor to use a chainsaw to cut down the lights on the high school field, and destroy the dugouts....... WTH. The town should have ran the man out of town, regardless we were down to just 2 fields.
Over the last 50 years I have watched countless homes be built..... thousands, but I don't remember the last time I saw a new baseball field come to life. The population has grown, and the number of parks has not kept up..... Oh, wait I do remember some new baseball parks being built. Yes, the town of Chesterfield, Missouri built new baseball parks in the last few years.... they are nice parks, and if you pay $1500 you can play 4 games there.......
Remember when a day at the park was free? Well, those days are long gone. Baseball is an expensive sport these days.....if your son wants to play in St. Louis, expect to pay between $2000 and $5000, and even then don't expect many practices. In the early 1990's I coached kids, we routinely had 4 to 5 practices per week.....today kids are lucky to get an hour, maybe two per week.
About 5 years ago the Kirkwood Athletic Association (KAA) went belly up. The KAA was ran poorly, but somehow it managed to field many teams every year. When Brody (now 17 years old) was 5, the KAA had over 20 5U teams..... Today, after sitting vacant for half a decade the fields are overgrown, trees are growing in and the weeds are head high. Rumor has it, soccer fields are soon to replace the abandoned baseball fields....thus sealing their fate for all time.
The news today announced yet more parks are on the endangered list the Ellisville Athletic Association doesn't have a plan to exist past this summer. This means 7 more baseball fields will be lost...... With Kirkwood and now Ellisville losing parks that is 15 baseball fields gone from the St. Louis area since 2020.
I first coached baseball at the Ellisville fields in 1995, I remember we rotated where we played each week. Between Ellisville, Manchester, Pond, Kirkwood and Ballwin we found a tournament every week from March through August.
Manchester and Kirkwood are gone...... It looks like Ellisville will follow, which makes you wonder, in 20 years will any towns have baseball fields for the kids to enjoy...... If only we had strung up that school superintendent all those years ago..... I am joking of course, but if we had made him an example.....maybe we would still have ball parks....
