Renovated Prospect Park Baseball Fields Reopened

PROSPECT PARK, BROOKLYN — Baseball and softball are back on fields 6 and 7 in Prospect Park.

Elected officials, park workers and little baseball players were on hand Friday for a ribbon-cutting at the two ball fields, the latest in Brooklyn's Backyard to get some much-needed upgrades.

The new-and-improved fields have new dugouts with benches and water fountains, fresh fences and dugouts and new infields. A hill was also built just behind the third-base line on field 7 so parents and spectators can watch the action, which Brooklyn's Parks Department Commissioner Marty Maher called "God's skybox."

The infields will give more flexibility for scheduling games in the park, as they can now hold both softball and baseball games of several different sizes. Younger kids, for example, need a shorter distance between bases and between the pitcher and home plate.

"When you have 194 teams, scheduling 194 teams every week is real chore, because the fields in most of Brooklyn are not really in great shape," Eddie Albert, President of the Prospect Park Baseball Association told Patch. "Now that these fields can accommodate every size, from softball all the way out to hard ball, 90 feet, we have the flexibility to do so much more."

The PPBA's 194 teams include 2,700 kids who play on the park's seven fields on Saturdays and Sundays. Field 1, closest to Bartel Pritchard Square, got similar upgrades last year, and the four remaining fields are scheduled to be renovated to round out the process.

Another upgrade for the fields: improved drainage. Instead of rainwater pooling up across the Long Meadow, the water now drains out underground and into Dog Beach, which also got some work done as part of these renovations.

When it would rain, "Third base would be a pond," Albert told Patch, pointing out to third base on field 7. "The water wouldn’t go away, it would just go to third base."

The project was funded with $2.4 million from the city council and City Councilman Brad Lander, who represents Kensington, Windsor Terrace, Park Slope, Gowanus, Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill.

"They came out great. They look beautiful," Lander told Patch, sitting in one of the dugouts and wearing a custom Parks Department baseball jersey. "It's the kind of work you have to do to take care of the park. It’s not the same as some new building or playground. They were fields before and they’ll be fields after. But if they’re going to serve that next generation of kids and users you have to re-do them every so often."

Lander continued: "We talked at the time about whether to fancy them up. And we decided not to because when [Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert B. Vaux] designed [Prospect Park], they designed it to be Long Meadow. The goal here is to have it fit into this 150-year-old park and be here for another 150 years."

Images by Marc Torrence, Patch