What could be a more perfect Montreal baseball experience than to smack a towering homer right towards the cross on Mount Royal?For decades anybody who feels inclined can grab a glove and head over to Jeanne Mance Park at Park and Mount Royal to join in on a weekend afternoon softball game and maybe crack a drive that challenges the mountain gods.
The vibe is friendly and people from all backgrounds, ages and competences enjoy a brotherhood on the diamond.
But this year the City of Montreal has advised the players that they're probably going to shut down the field, for this year at least.
Renovations of the adjoining tennis courts will require equipment to be stored somewhere and that somewhere likely is on the field of dreams that the boys of spring, summer and fall flock to for their softball fix.
Translator David Smith has been coming to the games since 1987, a time when he had dreadlocks to his knees. He is the most senior of the regular participants.
Others include a newly-arrived Somali stingy with his swings, several athletic-looking Latinos who favour leggings under their shorts, a beefy bartender-turned TV ad salesman and translator David Homel who has been coming since around 1990 and says that the outings are his form of social media.
Smith feels that it would be a shame for the games to be cancelled all summer just because construction equipment needs a place to get planted.
Another adjacent diamond could likely accommodate some of the action but it's often occupied with more official games and doesn't quite have the same magical allure.
So Smith and other players are meeting with authorities to see if some other arrangement can be worked out so that the summertime of softball fun won't be washed out.
"This is a major concern for the wonderful community that has developed over the years at and around the baseball diamond," he told Coolopolis on a sunny good Friday afternoon which saw a trio of games get played on the field.
I was there recently with my son and enjoyed an afternoon of local excitement...watching and listening to the mixture of languages and nationalities all having a great time...long live that field....
ReplyDeleteThis is a really important local issue and I am glad you are reporting on it. Are any of the other major outlets doing any reporting? I talked to some of the baseball people and tried to help them get organized, but they seem to be moving slowly. The city's perspective is that the northern field has never been designated a baseball diamond, but rather recreational space. The problem is that the other diamond always has the sun in your eyes (and it is farther from the Dep). Also, last year, a British woman got hit in the ear by a foul ball and she sent her medical bills to the city who then shut down the field for the second half of the summer.
ReplyDeleteBut what is so fucked about all this is that that space is used by hundreds of people throughout the good weather whereas the tennis courts, while super busy, only serve (pun intended) a few dozen at a time and take up all that space. Also, there is definitely a class and race divide between the baseball field and the tennis court and for sure that is a factor here. Do you think they would shut down the tennis courts to repair the baseball field? Can you imagine the outcry?
This, of course, is just one of the many proposed projects which fly in the face of what local residents want and need.
ReplyDeleteNow, imagine what our beloved Mount Royal would look like today if certain "developers" and "builders" had gotten their way back in 1959.
See the Montreal Gazette article with map for July 3, 1959, page 19: "Outremont Project Straddles Parkway" and "Opposition 'Nonsense'...Cedar Ave. Apartment Going Ahead--Builder".
See: https://news.google.ca/newspapers?nid=Fr8DH2VBP9sC&dat=19590703&printsec=frontpage&hl=en
This refers to plans for an 11-storey apartment building on the former site of the Children's Memorial Hospital formerly located at 1615 Cedar Avenue (currently vacant land) as well as a massive and truly outrageous land-grab of forested areas belonging to the Mount Royal Cemetery yet ostensibly not designated for any future burial plots.
So the opposition was full of "nonsense", eh? Thankfully, wiser heads prevailed and this so-called "progress" never materialized with Cedar Towers Corporation sent packing off to Toronto or elsewhere to erect countless high-rise monstrosities.