Greenwich Wants To Shut Down Wiffle Ball Field
The fiel dof dreams 10 years later. The Hollywood script about to be penned, an abandoned lot owned by town of Greenwich, teens clear it of weeds and added fencing. Then the Greenwich political flunkies get into the mix and say no permission, no mas. From the Advocate:
Taco Bell Field?
Representatives of the fast-food chain famous for its chalupas and gorditas tried to reach out yesterday to offer their support to a group of local teens who are facing eviction from the Wiffle ball field they built on a vacant town-owned lot in Riverside.
The field, which has been ordered to be shutdown by the town, features a 12-foot-high replica of Fenway Park’s famed Green Monster with signs atop it advertising Taco Bell’s Frutista Freeze. A pitcher who surrenders a home run off the signs must buy the batter one of the slush drinks under the ground rules of the field.
Taco Bell, which is part of the Louisville, Ky.-based Yum Brands Inc., would like to do something nice for the teens in return, Will Bortz, the chain’s public relations manager, said in an e-mail yesterday.
From the fast-food chain to local police, many are rallying around the teens, most of whom go to Greenwich High School.
“It’s nice to know that people are behind us on this,” said Brett Atkinson, a rising junior at Greenwich High who helped build the field.
About 10 to 15 teens spent three weeks clearing the lot of dense thicket and erecting plywood fences in the outfield. Some of their parents helped donate the supplies for their project. They painted the fences green, put down bases and hung a large American flag from a tree in foul territory down the left field line.
But town officials said the teens never asked permission to use the wooded half-acre parcel, which is accessed by a narrow grass pathway between residential properties at 96 and 100 Riverside Lane. They have also received a pair of nuisance complaints from neighboring homeowners about noise coming from the property, which has a fair market value of $1.25 million.”The position now is that they cannot stay there, but that’s always subject to review,” said Selectman Peter Crumbine, who is acting as first selectman this week.
Messages seeking comment were left again yesterday for the neighbors who made the complaints.
If the public outcry over the teens’ eviction builds, Crumbine said the Board of Selectmen would take up the issue and rule on whether they might be able to stay.
Neighborhood resource officers from the police department helped deliver the bad news to the teens this week. Feeling sorry for them, they contacted the Boys & Girls Club of Greenwich about organizing a Wiffle ball tournament, police Chief David Ridberg said.
“We’re looking at some other options,” Ridberg said. “We didn’t just want to go there and rain on their parade.”
A number of the teens spent about four hours yesterday playing Wiffle ball, which was invented in Connecticut, on the field.
source: Advocate, Outcry over the outfield, By Neil Vigdor, 07/04/2008
