Play Ball!
Coaches from Lake Cowichan’s midget minor baseball team asked for reassurance from town councillors that the new ball parks at Centennial Field will be regulation sized so they can play their league games there.
They got it.
Wayne Rees led a delegation to the March 6 Lake Cowichan public works committee meeting, saying, “If they are not built to specification, it means unfortunately we cannot play league games. We would have to travel to Chemainus for home games. This would include 90 foot base paths, 60.5 foot pitching mounds and we’re going to need either a real or an artificial pitching mound so we can play league games there and possibly — hopefully — host tournaments.
“That’s really all we’re looking for is that one of those fields is built to specs for minor baseball and not be built to softball specs because a baseball team cannot play league games on a softball field. The other way around is OK: softball teams can play on a baseball field. It would be like commissioning a hockey arena and building a curling arena. Can we get confirmation that we’re going to have a ballpark for the kids?”
Mayor Ross Forrest said, “I’ve spoken to Wayne on the phone about this. Field One is called the Dawn Coe Jones Field, it will be ready for baseball, it will be for the midgets. The bases will be 90 feet. As soon as the weather dries up a little bit and the additional infield mix can come from Kamloops, we will be cutting out the infield larger so the 90 foot bases can go down there. So, that’s not a problem. The pitching mound will be at 60 feet, six inches like it is for baseball, with a 10 inch pitching mound for midgets.”
He referred to a paper and told Rees, “What we have here, in writing from Minor Baseball, is a request for a portable pitching mound, and two other ones for bull pen mounds by the dugouts. That’s their request. After I spoke to you last week, I phoned BC Baseball head office and I spoke to them. They don’t have a problem. I spoke to the president of minor baseball and he has been in contact with the league they’re going to be in. They have no problem with a portable pitcher’s mound. It’s cheaper for us to build a mound but a portable mound is what minor baseball has requested.”
Rees was pleased.
“That’s as good as it gets,” he said.
