IT BEGAN to bug Jon Frankel this past October when, while driving by, he first noticed it. Man, it bugged him.
At 112th Street, between Madison and Park, there was a sight that would horrify many American boys well into their adulthoods: A grown-over, abandoned, garbage heap of what appeared to be the vestiges of a baseball field.
And that ain’t right.
Don’t just stare there, do something.
So Frankel, 45 and a correspondent on HBO’s “Real Sports,” began to make phone calls, ask some questions and even physically explore the site, which a dilapidated, mostly hidden scoreboard told him was once the home of the East Harlem Little League.
If Frankel wanted to lead a renovation project, hey, he could knock himself out; there was nothing and no one to stop him.
“What we needed from the outset,” he said, “was time, not money. Sure, we’d need money, eventually, but what was far more important at the beginning was genuine volunteerism.”
And Frankel got it from here, there, everywhere. Dan Cunningham, Yankee Stadium’s head groundskeeper, volunteered his free time and expertise to become involved — and in a big way. And Cunningham put Frankel in touch with Delea Sod, which tilled and graded the field.
Then there were the Liebhaber Construction brothers, Michael and Andrew, who hauled the junk, then constructed the benches and bleachers. And Kenny Creed, teacher turned wood craftsman. And Josh Weiner from Silver Lining Interiors constructed the dugouts. Mike Levine of
L & L Painting did the fences, backstops and whatever else needed paint.
On and on, and then on and on. People at their best. New York community service, not a minute of it court-ordered.
And when money was needed, $38,000 was raised from places such as Target stores and from regular folks who reached to throw a few bucks into the pot. And with the field about to be re-opened for baseball and the East Harlem Little League — Frankel figures in another two weeks — more dough will be needed to maintain this resurrected and newly polished diamond.
But don’t donate on the blind, and don’t take my words for it. Check out the before-and-after photos at HarlemDiamond.org.
Now, the address: A Diamond In The Rough, 101 Central Park West, Office #1, New York, NY 10023.
Play ball!
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Speaking of new ballparks, where was the mandate to make the big league baseball variety combinations of shopping malls, amusement parks, exercise trails, video arcades, beer gardens, restaurants, museums and petting zoos?
Has the combination of games that run 3:15 and the surrender to short attention spans — and the presumption of ants in our pants and cash in our pockets — created the further presumption that we’re unable to attend a game for the primary purpose of watching it? And watching it while staying mostly seated?
If I take a kid to a Mets game and he wants to go over to play in that Wiffle ball cage, the answer is, “No. We can play Wiffle ball at home.” If we get to the Mets game early, we watch batting practice. After that, we watch the game. We came to take in a big league game, not to play Wiffle ball and sample foods from 35 nations.
Then again, adults are worse than kids. I’ve watched big shots spend hundreds of thousands of dollars of stockholders’ money to lease luxury suites in Madison Square Garden, then sit in them during games, watching the games on TV.
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Oh, stop it! The NFL Network recently boasted it had landed NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell for an “Exclusive” interview. . . . A caller to Mike Francesa on Tuesday said what he had to say, then angrily hung up. Francesa scolded him for being “impolite.”
Report what you’re told to report: Though many Division I schools last week were eager to have the media report their good or improved academic standings as listed by the NCAA, inquiries about the academic course loads of athletes in the revenue-producing sports — football and basketball — are always met with, “That’s none of your business.”
Wisconsin reader Marc DiBernardo tells us that the Milwaukee-area media have credited Brewers coach Willie Randolph with the improvements from second baseman Rickie Weeks.
NBC Sports’ continuing concern over dangerous performance drugs in racehorses is admirable. But judging from NBC Sports boss Dick Ebersol’s longtime and continuing partnerships with Vince McMahon, such concerns don’t apply to humans.
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Cablevision will soon decide: Sell the Knicks and Rangers, or every
May 1 turn The Garden into a catering hall.
Meanwhile, and as always — always, as in the last 25-plus years — Cablevision’s sense of marketing reeks of dishonesty and disregard for those who know better.
Those TV ads boasting that Cablevision, unlike its competitors, provides all local teams in HD, doesn’t note that because Cablevision owns the Knicks and Rangers it won’t provide competitors — Verizon, DirecTV — the telecasts in HD.