Talk Bronx New York

Allerton Ballfield in the Bronx renovated before All-Star Game

Cal Ripken Jr. works with Outsiders’ Edison Montalvo on his swing as Hall of Famer helps over revamped Allerton Ballfields with brother Billy and Bernie Williams

Emmanuel Fabre is a middle infielder from the Bronx, a wiry, 5-7, 140-pound kid who steals bases and hits balls in gaps, and is a key player for a fine youth baseball team called the Outsiders.

He is walking across the freshly renovated infield of the Allerton Ballfield in the Bronx, eyes wide with enthusiasm. The bumps and craters that made every ground ball an adventure have given way to evenly graded clay - the very same dirt used at that field a few miles away, Yankee Stadium. The new pitcher’s mound is pristine, the dugout benches upgraded and painted, the massive poison ivy patch climbing up the first-base fence a withering brown memory.

There may be a gala, and emotionally loaded All-Star Game, being played at the Stadium on Tuesday, but if you ask the Outsiders and the other ballplayers from the neighborhood, this $100,000 slice of urban renewal - courtesy of a public-private partnership between the city parks department and Nike’s Let Me Play initiative - is no small event, either.

“No more bad hops,” Fabre says. “They fixed the field totally.”

John Finck is the president of the Outsiders Baseball Association.

“The infield used to be a lunar landscape,” Finck says. “Now look at it.”

The new field - just off of Webster Ave. by 204th St. - was officially dedicated Saturday, after a whirlwind construction process that began on July 1 and was completed three days ago. Who says things can’t get done quickly in New York City? Of course, it doesn’t hurt when you have Nike capital and clout pushing for completion by All-Star weekend, or to have the services of Eve Burton - she’s VP and general counsel for the Hearst Corp., and John Finck’s spouse - navigating the labyrinth of city bureaucracy.

Bob Buono, whose company, Tri-State Athletic Fields and Services, did the contracting, says that it was one of the worst fields he has ever seen, not a surprise when you consider that the Allerton Ballfields, like most city parks, never get a rest, whether from soccer, baseball or softball.

Still, they got it done, and Nike was happy.

“When you promote sports and physical fitness, you make kids better and you make the world better,” says Nike spokesman Dejuan Wilkins. “That’s the philosophy behind Let Me Play.”

The ceremony Saturday featured Parks commissioner Adrian Benape, Bernie Williams, Cal Ripken Jr. and his brother Billy, and some 150 kids from various baseball clubs, including 40 Outsiders - almost entirely Latino kids from the Bronx between the ages of 16 and 18 who play in the competitive Westchester Baseball Association.

After the talking was done, the Ripken brothers and Williams ran the kids through a clinic. The kids got to work on their swings in prop-up nets, field grounders and shag flies.

“Every swing helps,” center fielder Eury Garcia of the Outsuders said. “Cal Ripken is helping us with bat speed, giving us tips - stay back, no lunging.”

Outsiders such as Emmanuel Fabre reveled in the care that went into the field. Edison Montalvo, the team’s star right fielder and cleanup hitter, imagined himself hitting his ropes and making his throws from right in a big-league field one day.

For now, the Outsiders play their home games at Roberto Clemente State Park. After the way the organization got the new field in, it has been assured of getting priority treatment when the Parks Dept. hands out permits next spring. There is an acute shortage of ballfields in the Bronx, and an even more acute shortage of good fields.

The shortage just got a little better, and you could tell just by seeing Emmanuel Fabre’s face.

“Compared to the way it used to be,” says Tony Reyes, the 33-year-old coach of the Outsiders, “this is like Yankee Stadium now.”

SOURCE

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

This Article Was Submitted By a TalkBX Reader.

If You Would Like an Article Posted on TalkBX You Can Send The Article To

TalkBox AT TalkBX.Com or VIA Our Contact Page

Who Says: We should have known this was coming. Just wait until the start tearing down the old stadium and find that the land is contaminated from an oil leak from the stadiums oil tanks..

Time and Cost Rise for Yankee Stadium Parks

 Anthony Santiago, left, and his twin brother, Christopher, playing in a temporary park at Jerome Avenue and East 161st Street.

 Cost estimates for eight small parks around the new Yankee Stadium have almost doubled.

The cost of replacing two popular parks where the new Yankee Stadium is being built has nearly doubled. At the same time, several of the eight new parks, which were supposed to be completed before the new stadium opens next spring, have been delayed by as much as two years, according to city documents.

The price of the new small parks — which are to replace tennis and basketball courts, a running track and baseball and soccer fields eliminated to make way for the new stadium — is now projected to be $174 million, almost one-seventh the cost of the $1.3 billion stadium itself. The original estimate had been $95.5 million. The increase comes amid skyrocketing costs for construction projects, both public and private, around the city.

The stadium is being financed by the Yankees with city subsidies, while the eight new parks for the South Bronx, which range in size from 0.24 acre to 8.9 acres, are being paid for by the city.

None of the replacement parks have been completed, and construction on several has not yet started; however, the parks department has built a temporary replacement park on a parking lot in the area, opened a ball field this spring at a school almost a mile to the east, and is building a sports field at a recreation center about a mile to the north.

The city was required to build the new parks after it selected the 28.4-acre Macombs Dam Park and a portion of the 18.5-acre John Mullaly Park as the site of the new stadium in 2005. State and federal law dictated that a similar amount of parkland nearby of equal or greater fair market value be built to replace the parks that would be lost.

Some residents have been critical of the trade-off. While Macombs Dam and Mullaly Parks were almost contiguous stretches of grass and trees amid the concrete topography of the South Bronx, the replacement parks are small parcels scattered around the area. The sites include sports fields atop a planned stadium parking garage and a park along the Harlem River, which is on the opposite side of the Major Deegan Expressway.

Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

Fordham Honors An Artful Dodger Broadcaster

You might say the signature call of baseball’s greatest living radio announcer is the sound of silence.

That ability to let the moment tell the story is one reason why, even though Vin Scully has spent the last half-century living 3,000 miles from his Bronx birthplace, he will be honored tomorrow night by his Bronx alma mater, Fordham University radio station WFUV (90.7 FM).

Scully’s voice, one of the many irreplaceable treasures the Dodgers took with them when they abandoned Brooklyn in 1957, has over 59 years called many of the most indelible plays from America’s best game.

It has not overcalled one of them. When Elston Howard grounded out to Pee Wee Reese on Oct. 4, 1955, giving the Brooklyn Dodgers their only World Championship, Scully said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the Brooklyn Dodgers are the champions of the world.”

When Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run in April 1974, Scully reported, “It is gone” and said nothing for 25 seconds, letting the cheers tell the story.

When Mookie Wilson’s ground ball went through Bill Buckner’s legs in 1986, Scully told TV audiences, “The Mets win it!” and then remained silent for more than three minutes as celebration erupted.

In 1988, when a crippled Kirk Gibson hit a two-out, two-strike, two-run ninth inning homer to win a World Series game off baseball’s best reliever, Scully again said, “It is gone” and remained silent for 67 seconds. Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

Miriam Chan once lived in a house a few blocks from the one that Ruth built.

“Oh, what a player that Ruth was,” Chan said recently as she pulled a Yankee cap over her head. “What a beautiful swing.”

Chan, who was 6 when her family moved to Manhattan from the Bronx, has been around to celebrate all of the Yankees’ 26 World Series championships, including the first in 1923, which came at the expense of the New York Giants.

“I’ve been a Yankee fan my whole life,” she said, “and that’s a pretty long time.”

When asked how long, she balked.

“Let’s just say I’m in my 80s and I’m lying about it,” she said.

Chan, a widow and mother of two who lives on the Upper East Side, still takes the train to her old neighborhood to watch the Yankees play, and she plans to visit their new house next season.

“It’s kind of sad that my guys are moving to a new stadium, but time changes everything,” she said. “I guess I’ll just take my memories across the street.”

Those memories stretch from Babe Ruth to Lou Gehrig — “Oh, that poor man, that’s all we could talk about when he got sick,” she said — to Joe DiMaggio to Mickey Mantle to Bobby Murcer to Don Mattingly to Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez.

Chan has been a regular at Yankee Stadium since the mid-1930s, when she was an art student at Hunter College. She later became a sketch artist in the fashion industry.

“One year, there was a fire at Hunter, so the students were moved to an unoccupied building in the Bronx,” she said. “On the train ride home from school, my girlfriends and I would pass Yankee Stadium. We started getting off the train and going to the games, and I’ve been a die-hard ever since.”

Chan spends a good part of her year at her home in Palm Beach, Fla., but is back in New York before the start of each baseball season.

“A good dose of the Yankees and a little of that New York pollution keeps my system going,” she said.

Through the years, Chan has seen a number of great Yankees come and go, but her favorite is Bernie Williams.

“He carried himself with so much class and dignity,” she said, “and he was such a graceful player, kind of like DiMaggio in that way.”

Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

?

Rivera will accept Yankees’ $45M offer

NEW YORK?Mariano Rivera is keeping his pinstripes, staying with the only major league team he’s ever pitched for. The closer, perhaps the biggest key to the New York Yankees’ run of World Series titles in the late 1990s, told the team he is accepting their $45 million, three-year offer.

Rivera, who turns 38 on Nov. 29, gets an average salary more than $4 million above what any other reliever currently makes.

Rivera’s agreement is pending a physical. The Yankees also have a preliminary agreement on a $52.4 million, four-year contract with catcher Jorge Posada and are trying to finish off a record-setting $275 million, 10-year deal with Alex Rodriguez, who won his third AL MVP award Monday.

“We’ve got everybody back,” Yankees senior vice president Hank Steinbrenner said. “It’s good to have both Jorgie and him back.”

Rivera was coming off a three-year contract that paid him $31.5 million. He had hoped for an extension before the start of this season, but the Yankees decided not to discuss contract extensions with any of their players until after the 2007 season was over.

At the start of spring training, Rivera said he would test the market if he became a free agent.

“Everybody has the same shot,” he said then. “The Yankees will not have an advantage.”

But the Yankees spoke loudly with their aggressive offer.

“Mariano is obviously someone that we can’t live without because he’s one of a kind and he’s so unique in what he does for us,” Rodriguez said during a conference call after he won the AL MVP award for the third time. “He’s such an unbelievable force in our clubhouse. In many ways he’s kind of the voice for a lot of people in there.”

Next, New York hopes Andy Pettitte will decide to pitch for the Yankees in 2008. Pettitte turned down a $16 million player option, saying he needed more time to decide whether he wanted to play or retire.

“If we get Andy, there’s no question that we’ll have better pitching than last year. We may have better pitching, anyway, but certainly with Andy back we will,” Steinbrenner said. “And of course, we’ve got the same lineup, which was a killer lineup. Everybody knows that.”

New York has not yet announced its agreement with Posada or a $4 million, two-year contract with backup catcher Jose Molina.

“We’ll keep doing whatever we’re going to do to improve,” Steinbrenner said. “The offseason isn’t over yet.”

New York remains interested in Johan Santana. The two-time AL Cy Young Award winner is eligible for free agency after the 2008 season, and teams expect the Minnesota Twins to make him available if they can’t work out an extension.

By retaining Rivera, the Yankees can proceed with their plan to have Joba Chamberlain in the starting rotation. Chamberlain was Rivera’s primary setup man late in the season.

Rivera had been in the Dominican Republic last week while the Yankees waited for word on whether he would accept.

“I was certainly hopeful,” Steinbrenner said. “It’s a good offer and an offer that was made because I wanted him back.”

Source: BOSTON.COM

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post