Greener Grass
Volunteers Take a Swing At Renovating Pecos Field
About 30 volunteers turned out Wednesday to help renovate the Dennis Carrillo Field in Pecos. Thanks to their help, and a $5,000 award from Ace Hardware, Pecos youth baseball players won’t have to navigate through weeds in the outfield next season or slide into home plate on gravel.
“I didn’t like it ’cause of all the weeds,” said Orlando Vigil, a third baseman and outfielder. “You’d fall and land in an ant pile.”
Issac Valencia, an infielder and pitcher, was helping Vigil and other teammates shovel soil conditioner onto the dirt. He’s had his own rough encounters with the field.
“That hurt, when I dove for a baseball and fell on my stomach,” he said. “I fell on a bunch of rocks.”
“He bounced,” said Michelle Valencia, Issac’s mom and the president of Pecos Little League. “It’s a big plus that they won’t hurt themselves anymore.”
Valencia said she was trying to learn more about youth baseball operations when she came across Ace Hardware’s “Fields for the Future” program, which has awarded money for field renovations to five Little League programs in each of the last four years. She wrote a short summary of the work needed at Dennis Carrillo Field (excerpt: “These poor and unattended fields have not been cared for properly, without the money required for year to year maintenance”) and sent along photos.
“It was unbelievable,” said Ace Hardware representative Lou Manfredini of the field condition. “It was an entire field of weeds, knee high. I don’t know how these kids play here. It’s not safe.”
Manfredini is Ace’s “Helpful Hardware Man” and a regular on NBC’s “Today” show. He flew from Chicago to lend a hand at Dennis Carrillo, the 18th field he’s helped renovate.
Work started early Wednesday, with a borrowed backhoe tearing through the weeds. The field was cleared so grass could be planted (“Hopefully, we get some good rain,” Manfredini said, eyeing dark clouds looming to the east). Some fencing around the field was replaced. Foul poles — the field’s first — were put up at the corners.
“It’s been a lot of fun,” Manfredini said. “We’ve had a good group of volunteers working non stop. A lot of times, people have big hearts but don’t really know what they’re doing. Here, things are getting done quickly.”
One crucial piece of the park in need of fixing was the bleachers. Modesto Benavidez was helping other volunteers replace and paint the boards in the bleachers Wednesday. He said his grandson is a Pecos Little Leaguer.
“We wouldn’t sit on the bleachers,” he said. “The slivers were horrible. We were all leaning on the fence. ”
Valencia looked at the rotted old boards banished to the ground around her and laughed.
“You’d fall through them if you sat down,” she said.
Valencia said Pecos hasn’t hosted many youth baseball games because of the sad state of its field. That should change now.
“We’ve gone to White Rock, Santa Fe, Española, and my sons love it,” she said. “They say ‘Mom, look at these fields.’ I’m hoping now we’ll have that. It does mean something, especially to the kids.”
