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KEARNS -- A struggling baseball field in Kearns has a fresh makeover Saturday thanks to the help of a Boy Scout.
It is something wonderful coming from something that could have shut down the field entirely. Someone deliberately set fire to the snack shack which raised money at every game to keep the field going. But the community decided the season isn't over.
It's near impossible not to like baseball or at least what it represents: warm nights and a feeling of nostalgia.
Bruce Field dates back to World War II, when soldiers at Camp Kearns used to play on this land. When they left, neighborhood kids like Bob Anderson took it over.
"In those days it was the neighborhood, everybody in the neighborhood. If you didn't play ball here you just weren't part of us," Anderson said of growing up in the neighborhood.
Times change and so did Bruce Field. With no public funding the weeds grew as fast as the graffiti. Pony Baseball League President Leslie Dejong couldn't keep up.
In those days it was the neighborhood, everybody in the neighborhood. If you didn't play ball here you just weren't part of us
–- Bob Anderson
"I put my heart into it and it's hard to see it turned so bad from the weeds growing up to the disarray when the season is over," Dejong said.
When vandals burned down the snack shack last month --the source of funding to keep the park going --it seemed like the third strike for Bruce Field. Until Lincoln Barlow stepped up to the plate. He focused his Boy Scout Eagle Project on the field after seeing the story on the news. And today, more volunteers built new bleachers, cleared weeds, and picked up trash.
"It used to be a beautiful ballpark and we're hoping to make it look like that again," said Barlow.
Usually just nine people are allowed on a field. Lincoln Barlow got 110 to show up. Giving a struggling ballfield, and a struggling neighborhood another shot --another inning.
"It's pretty hard to have gang problems when every is playing ball," said Anderson.
Email:sdallof@ksl.com
