They built it for those who come; volunteers, Cheney employees help build field of dreams
By JOHN McCALLUM
Editor
In the movie “Field of Dreams” a voice in a cornfield tells former-hippie and Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella that, “If you build it, he will come.”
Build what and who will come Kinsella asks? He eventually figures it out, plowing under choice Iowa acreage to install a lighted baseball field.
Who comes? Hey, do I have to answer all your questions? Watch the movie!
In 2004 a group of West Plains folks dedicated to developing local baseball asked roughly similar questions, except in a somewhat different order. If they build a Little League organization will kids come and play? If so could they someday build their own field of dreams?
West Plains Little League was born and the answer to the first question was yes. The kids did come – about 250 that first year and eventually over double that within five.
Eight seasons later the answer to the second question has also finally come to pass. On Opening Day this Saturday, thanks to league volunteers and employees at the city of Cheney, the league will inaugurate the first two regulation Little League fields in Spokane County.
With all the recent field construction around I found this hard to believe, so standing on the new fields at Salnave Park last Friday evening I posed the question to current league president Adam Smith and long-time volunteers and coaches Rob Beamer and Mark Dixon: In the entire county?
Beamer said there is a field at Liberty Lake's city park, but it's very rough and lacks a few things.
“It's an attempt at this,” he said, spreading his hands and gesturing around at the lush, newly laid infield turf.
“When you put it all together, fences, scoreboard, nobody has it like this,” Smith said.
The league has grown from a couple dozen teams those first years to almost 40, spanning majors and minor league baseball and softball along with juniors, ages 13-14 baseball. After a high of 586 a couple years ago, Smith said the numbers dipped, but appear to be heading upwards again with registration currently at 535 players, not including juniors.
The league's goal of building regulation baseball fields has almost followed the same track. Originally there were thoughts of a baseball/softball complex on land out along Brooks Road north of Medical Lake but needing places to play immediately they worked with Medical Lake and Cheney to use the softball fields at Waterfront and Salnave parks.
There were other fields too, arranged through both school districts for games and practices, but Waterfront and Salnave are the marquee venues. With the county owning Waterfront there wasn't much leeway for changes, but in Cheney city officials proved receptive to league upgrade requests if the league furnished the materials while the city did the installation, at least most of it. Over the years that arrangement has worked well.
First, regulation 200-foot home run fences were installed at Salnave's two diamonds. Next came scoreboards and finally an irrigation system, infield sod, regulation 6-inch high pitching mounds and covered dugouts.
The dugout covers are still pending, but the irrigation system is in, thanks to the city, and the sod is laid, thanks to league volunteers and contributors.
Smith said Action Material donated 14 truckloads of dirt in exchange for sponsorship promotions while Basin Sod sold 30 pallets and 15,000 square feet of turf at way below cost. Between 12,000 and 13,000 square feet was used on the fields, with the excess going to the city for some sod work near the Cheney Pool.
“The city donated so much on this that it was no big deal to make sure they got something out of it,” Smith said.
League volunteers spread the dirt around to build up the field before laying the sod. Fifty-pound clay block “slugs” were laid in the batters and catcher's boxes and underneath the new pitcher's mound to keep the soil from getting dug up.
Beamer said they pounded large nails in lines into the ground to help lay the sod straight and save time. The process start to finish on the first field took four hours.
“We had the first one, infield area, done in just 50 minutes,” Beamer said.
Also contributing a lot on the project, Smith said, was Cheney's Jarms Hardware. Help from Parks and Recreation director Paul Simmons and Parks Supervisor Rick Engel proved invaluable.
The league takes pride in noting that field improvement funding came not from player registrations but through a raffle drive that produces $5,000-$7,000 annually.
All this and the league still might not be done. When I mentioned lights to Beamer, he pointed to a power pole just beyond the fence in left field with a new city-installed electrical panel and noted the power is there.
That would be a truly Midwestern-style sight to see, pulling into Cheney from Tyler or the back way on Salnave Road and seeing the soft, all-encompassing glow of baseball field lights on a warm, early summer Friday night.
Thanks to some hardworking volunteers and city employees all with the same vision, that would truly be a community's field of dreams.
John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].
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