St. Pat's Ball Park is a treasure, but these days, doesn't look the part

Sports scene -

The old ballfield, the last vestige of the way sports were in this town a long time ago (with the exception, perhaps, of the Forum at St. Bon's and Quidi Vidi Lake), is showing her age.

St. Pat's Ball Park, our very own Fenway Park and Wrigley Field, still holds a gleam to one's eye, at least from afar. Nestled in a valley off Carpasian Road, with the tall trees beyond the outfield fence and behind home plate, it's still a sight to behold, eye-candy in so far as sports facilities go.

There is nothing, actually, quite so tantalizing to a sportsman's eye as a near-empty baseball park, with its brilliant white foul lines, freshly-cut grass, packed infield earth, the sound of ball hitting bat, the scent of pine tar in the distance.

St. John's minor soccer's little ones today use a portion of the Ayre Athletic Grounds, home to the great Holy Cross teams of yesterday, and the physical wars that were more akin to rugby than 'football' (can still hear 1950s-era Crusaders' Hall of Famer Alf Breen talking about the Holy Cross teams of the 1980s: "We'd whip the shit out of them!").

Down near the old Fort Pepperell site, turnips and Kraft Dinner are peddled at Memorial Stadium, where St. Bon's dominated, St. Pat's shocked and Howie Meeker intimidated.

But the ball park remains, still home to local St. John's baseball.

The game took a respite from St. Pat's back in the early '70s when the senior and junior leagues moved to the wind tunnel that is known as Wishingwell Ball Park. It returned 'home' following the 1977 Canada Summer Games when St. Pat's was refurbished and attracted more paying customers than just about any other sport in the Games back then, when the Canada Games actually mattered on the national sporting stage.

Problem is, there hasn't been a whole lot done to the ball park since.

Today, the bleachers resemble something out of a Santo Domingo sandlot, though they remain in better shape than the deplorable Pearlgate diamond stands in Mount Pearl (did we mentioned wind?), where some of the kids out there are forced to play minor baseball.

Plate is actually below infield level

The St. Pat's infield has more dips and drops than a St. John's street. Peer into home from the outfield and you notice the plate is actually a few inches below the infield.

And then there's the mound.

For years, the St. Pat's hill was but a bump. But the boys in St. John's baseball are trying, trying to get the diamond up to scratch, at least as best they can.

Sean Janes is a pitcher with Holy Cross, and a volunteer St. Pat's groundskeeper through the summer, when he's laid off from the city as a heavy equipment operator.

Fed up after pitching on regulation 10" mounds on the mainland with the St. John's Capitals, Janes took it upon himself to reconfigure the St. Pat's pitching area. Last month, he arranged for a loader to come down and scoop it all up, or at least the front part of the mound.

"It was maintained every year, but it needed to be wiped out and redone," he said.

Over the years, sand was poured and packed in and around the pitching rubber. Fine at first, but sand eventually breaks up and the pitchers at St. Pat's more often than not throwing out of, and landing in, craters.

So Janes and some of the guys got to work, using a combination of sand and dirt laced with calcium and talcum, slowly building up the mound, layer by layer.

"We'd put an inch or so on, shape it, water it, tamp it down, roll it and water it again. Then we'd let it go for a few days," he said.

And then process of adding another layer would start all over again.

"It's pretty solid now," Janes said.

Today, it actually looks like a pitching mound, and may in part be the reason for some pretty good pitching performances through the early part of the 2010 season.

But the park needs a lot more work, and unless St. John's bids on and wins the right to play host to a senior or junior national baseball championship, don't expect the city to spend a lot of cash on St. Pat's.

So maybe it's time the baseball people take things a step further, and start a fund-raising campaign with the aim to upgrading St. Pat's. Look at field turf, at least on the infield portion.

Improve the clubhouse and seating. Get minor baseball onside, and make, as suggested a long time ago from this corner, St. Pat's a hub for both adult and minor baseball.

Soccer did it with King George. Rugby's done it.

It's time to do it at St. Pat's.

For if not, there may come a day when the city will start eyeing St. Pat's as a diamond ready to polished into a real estate gem. And our Fenway may go the way of old Yankee Stadium.]

Robin Short is The Telegram's Sports Editor. He can be reached by email rshort@thetelegram.com