Public Employee Press

Diamonds in the park

By DIANE S. WILLIAMS

Before the first pitch of the season sails across home plate, DC 37 members in three locals rebuild many of the city’s ball fields and make them safe for play.

Spring fever hits New Yorkers where they live — in neighborhoods from the Rockaways to Riverside Drive — and starts six months of softball, Little League, and baseball that can leave the fields bedraggled by October. More abuse comes from soccer, cricket, and football teams, often without Parks Dept. permits, and from erosion by New York’s harsh winter storms.

They will come
Parks Dept. crews with the motto, “If we build it they will come,” are the cure. Decent parks are a treasure to cramped city dwellers. In neighborhoods from Arthur Avenue to Sunset Park, players and parents count on the crew — Associate Parks Service Workers in Local 983, City Parks Workers in Local 1505 and a Supervisor in Local 1508 — to rebuild their local ball fields.

“We haul about 1,250 cubic yards of soil and deliver it to 109 fields in the Bronx alone,” said Vinny Morrone, a Parks Supervisor in Local 1508. “We do a great job preparing the fields because we know it’s a service to the community to make the parks usable and safe for players of all ages.”

The workers use dump trucks to bring tons of soil from City Island and other city depots, graders to spread it and hand tools to finish the job, explained DC 37 Council Rep Bob Gervasi. It takes weeks of intense grading, seeding, aerating, raking and mowing to bring each city field to life as a well-manicured baseball diamond suitable for regulation play.

And then, say the crews, they will come. They come for the love of America’s favorite pastime, ballplayers and fans, to see local leagues from little tykes to adults take a crack at bat.

“We take our work serious, as if it were Yankee Stadium,” said APSW Gregory Domenech, who drove a tractor to prep the infield at Harris Park in the Bronx before Jobs Training Program participants, also represented by District Council 37, packed down the softened clay with hand trowels.

“Part of the job is the love of the game, we’re all big baseball fans,” he said. “But more important, kids need a safe environment. I want to make this park as safe as I would if my own kids were going to play here.”

Play ball!
On summer nights, many of the fields host outdoor concerts. The next morning the crews return for damage control.

“We give it that New York Yankee baseball look,” Domenech said proudly. “Our knowledge is passed on from supervisor to crew, person to person. After a while you just develop a feel for how the work should be done.”

And as summer heats up, New Yorkers are back at city ballparks from the Bronx to Brooklyn. Fire up the hot dogs, pass the peanuts and “Play ball!”