You can’t lose what you don’t have

Roger Carlson

Being perceived as someone who doesn’t like cheese isn’t a good

thing for politicians these days, if you follow the ad business on

television.

In real life, a reputation for being anti-baseball and anti-youth isn’t

so good, either.

So you see, the Costa Mesa City Council has an interesting problem

tonight when it is scheduled to vote upon a proposal to extend and build

on an already-spent $30,000 for more advice on how to shred TeWinkle Park

and re-do it for four softball fields, at an expense said to eventually

be in the $2-3 million range.

There will be no baseball, at all.

But in reality, baseball isn’t losing much. You can’t lose something you

don’t have in the first place. The recreation department has already

taken care of that over the past few years with shameful acts of

non-performance to virtually kill whatever baseball could get out of the

facility’s baseball field.

The fact is if you were to get permission to play at TeWinkle you would

wish you hadn’t, because of the conditions of the delapitated facility

and grounds.

Then there was last year. Remember?

Costa Mesa and Estancia high school baseball teams arrived to play their

Pacific Coast League game under the lights for their fans on a Friday

night, only to be turned away when there were no lights. Seems there was

but one key to get to the switch, and the person with the key was

conveniently “out of town.”

They wound up playing the game the next day at Costa Mesa High, in the

rain.

What the council is going to see tonight are a lot of very frustrated

fans of baseball, who are sick and tired of the Costa Mesa Recreation

Department and the runarounds they have endured with it.

In the long run, after the council most likely goes along with the

recreation department’s dubious numbers, those same people will probably

be better off in terms of their mental health.

One of the more depressing things is to drive around Aliso Niguel or

Mission Viejo, or Irvine, or so many other cities, and then return to

Costa Mesa and attempt to compare youth sports facilities.

How come it’s so obviously important to people elsewhere? And so

unimportant around here?

Rod MacMillian began youth baseball in the late ‘40s on a shoestring, and

30 years later, he barely had sandals for his Harbor Area baseball

program. Not a whole lot has changed in terms of civic support.

Out of all this, reportedly, has come forth a possibility from within the

structure of the council, that maybe Costa Mesa High’s baseball field

would be lit up by the city, and perhaps Davis Field, which has been

liquidated into a softball field by the recreation department, would be

altered to accommodate PONY (13-14 year-olds) baseball.

The cost: Probably about $250,000 for lights at Costa Mesa. Very little

for Davis Field.

If so, with control of those fields under the current high school

joint-use program withthe recreation department completely out of it, it

would be an awesome gift from the city mogus to the 13-14-year-old

youngsters of Costa Mesa, Costa Mesa High, and Estancia, should the

Eagles desire night games.

Baseball facilities in Costa Mesa will never be on a par with the deep

pockets of the South Coast, but when you’ve been working with shoestrings

for 50 years, black high-tops would be a blessing.

I’m just hoping that at some point three members of the city council will

smile, say cheese and sign a baseball for Costa Mesa’s youth. We’d take

the picture.