Why do they do it?

I have been coaching with a travel softball team, So Cal Mirage. This weekend, for the big Halloween Showcase Exposure tournament in Southern California, another team merged in with our girls because they did not get a berth in time. More correctly our two girls merged in with their team.

Saturday went well. Our games for Saturday and Sunday were at Tewinkle Park in Costa Mesa. Or at least they were supposed to be. Not receiving a message from the other coach, I drove down to Tewinkle for a 4:30 game. When I got there, the fields were empty. There was one groundskeeper with his Costa Mesa truck. He told me he had canceled the games at 9:00 AM that morning.

I asked him why you would cancel a 4:30 game at 9:00 AM. He said that it was raining then and he didn’t want anything to happen to the fields. Then he quickly added, “well, the two fields on the other side had some mud on them up against the dugouts.” Give me a break.

I used to have the same problem with the city of Garden Grove when I first started coaching at Brethren. They would cancel games scheduled for 3:15 PM because the fields were wet at 10 AM.

HELLO….this is Southern CALIFORNIA.

These fields soak up a whole lot of water. Artesia Park got a lot more rain the Tewinkle Park did and they were playing games. The difference is that when Artesia is wet, Bobby Medina gets his coaches and his crews out there and they do everything they can to make the field playable.

This guy was worried about his fields. How about worrying about the people that drove hundreds of miles from Las Vegas, Washington, Arizona, etc. so their girls could be seen by the college coaches.

Two years ago my daughter’s travel team went to ASA Western Nationals in Las Cruces, NM. In the 24 hours before the tournament started Las Cruces received around 7 inches of rain. They got more when we were there. Our afternoon game was interrupted by a downpour. The Las Cruces grounds crews stayed up all night, scraped the infields down 2 inches, and brought in new, dry dirt. How’s that for customer service.

City Halls, don’t just let your regular landscaping crews take care of your softball fields. Make sure you have someone who is very knowledgeable about field upkeep, and how to make a field playable after a little sprinkle. Please care more about the teams and players that play on your fields. It doesn’t do any good to have a great field if you shut it down to easily. Costa Mesa, you’ve done a great job remodeling Tewinkle Park. That used to be my home field. Saturday was the first I’ve been there since the remodel. Now go a step further and do everything you can to make sure games play. Maybe you have to delay them. Maybe you have to cancel a few games. But put the time and effort into serving the teams that use your fields (and pay you for that use.)