The little league baseball fields at Mead Park are getting a privately funded upgrade that advocates say will create a more attractive, stadium-like setting.
New Canaan Baseball will spend about $3,600 of its own money for top-of-the-line mesh windscreens that soon will drape the outfield fences at Mellick and Gamble Fields.
Looking along the outfield fence at Gamble Field with Mellick behind it.
The Park & Recreation Commission unanimously approved the measure at its April 9 meeting, held in Lapham Community Center.
When a fellow commissioner asked if the height of the fences would be raised as a result of the project, Richard Kilbride said with a smile: “Only when the visiting team bats.”
In truth, the fences themselves will stay the same, said Brian Rogers, a New Canaan Baseball board member who presented the project.
“The fences, some of the areas are beat-up and unsightly,” he said. “So we wanted to improve the aesthetics of those fences by putting a windscreen from the foul pole to the foul pole on both of the baseball diamonds.”
This is what the mesh will look like. The fences at Gamble and Mellick Fields in Mead Park are far shorter.
The windscreen—a sample of which is pictured at left—is the most expensive version of the product, Rogers said (more than three times the cheapest option), and it’ll additionally help players focus because they won’t see others walking back and forth through the chain link fence as they do now.
Said commissioner Matt Konspore: “I’ve seen it as a done product and it looks very nice and clean. I think it would dress it up down there.”
Park & Recreation Commission member Matt Konspore (far left) with the rest of the group, at its April 9, 2014 meeting, held at Lapham Community Center. Brian Rogers of New Canaan Basseball standing.
Asked whether the league would post advertising on the screen, Rogers said no.
“It’s not permitted by the town,” he said. “We would at some point like to have a New Canaan Baseball sign up, but that’s another issue.”
To give the league time to purchase and install the windscreen prior to the season’s end—practices are underway now—the commission overrode its usual practice of waiting a month to decide on a newly introduced matter, and gave it the OK.
Recreation Director Steve Benko urged New Canaan Baseball to take the mesh back down after each season.
“What happens in the offseason, the ice will tear at it in the winter, maybe kids will cut it, so I think to get your money’s worth, take it down at the end of the summer season and put it back up next spring,” he said.
New Canaan Baseball/Softball Inc. is a 60-year-old nonprofit organization. According to documents filed late last year with the IRS and signed by the organization’s president, Mike O’Neill, its net assets come to about $211,000.
Help players focus. How did anyone focus the last 50 years?
It sounds like sort of the same idea of having the black seats out in CF in the big leagues. The exact quote from the meeting is: “So, basically to improve the aesthetics, to hide some of the unsightly parts of the fencing, to create more of a stadium environment for the baseball diamonds, to act as a backdrop when the batter is up so there are no distractions of people walking by, we would like to put up a windscreen on both of those fences.”
I have no problem with screens but the players are not distracted. Remember the old wood scoreboards had kids sitting on them keeping score.