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Ball Fields Flipped, Shrunk to Allow for Construction In a couple of months, hundreds of Downtown Little Leaguers and their parents will return to the Battery Park City ball fields for a new season of play. Nothing, they will find, is the same. The fields will be “flipped.” That is, the infields of the two diamonds will be where the outfields were—and vice versa. The change, first planned for last season, is due to impending construction on the residential complex to rise on the west side of the fields. A 16-foot-high safety fence will be a barrier between the construction site and fields, with the outfields bordering the site. The configuration will shrink the field space by 20 percent and could dramatically alter the spectator experience for parents, whose “bleachers” will be located behind an outfield fence. “It’s going to be a very different place and I think it’s unfortunate,” said Mark Costello, the League president. The plan was developed during numerous conversations between the league and the Battery Park City Authority. It had been anticipated that Milstein Properties, developer of the two-tower apartment complex, which will house the neighborhood’s new community center, was to begin construction last spring, but there have been months of delay. James Cavanaugh, president of the Authority, told the Trib that he expects work on the site to be “well on the way” this month or next and the temporary field configuration to remain for two or three seasons. In the meantime, he said he anticipates that the Authority will make a decision in the next few months on a proposal to replace the grass fields with artificial turf. If it is approved, he said, it is uncertain when the new turf would be put down. Costello pointed to a number of problems ahead. There is, for example, the “boggy” condition that pitchers and batters will face on the eastern side of the field where it is lower and wetter. The field lights are coming down for the construction, so lighting the fields properly presents a challenge. And the tighter space and smaller backstops mean more danger from foul balls. “It’s one more way the neighborhood’s quality of life is being affected by the construction boom,” Costello said.
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