With weeds infesting the infield, graffiti on the dugouts and the bleachers faded, Father Marinaro Park didn’t look much like a baseball field anymore.

It does now.

“This is a beautiful ballfield,” Jeff Potter said. “It just needed some TLC.”

So Potter and his ballplayers — in town this week as part of the fifth annual Potter Baseball Tour — provided it.

Potter, originally from Freeport, lives in eastern Maryland now and puts together a group of teens every year to travel throughout Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio and Virginia to play baseball, put on clinics and provide community service.

He became good friends with ex-Butler High volleyball coach Meghan Lucas in recent years. Lucas, who teaches at Center Avenue Elementary, is now operations manager for the Potter Tour.

Father Marinaro Park sits behind the school.

“I was in town last January and was visiting Meghan at the school when I noticed the field back there,” Potter said. “It looked like it needed some work.”

The ballfield has existed since the 1980’s, but the only organized team to use it in recent years has been the Butler City Colt team.

Butler City baseball manager Jerry Piroch maintains the field during the Colt League season. The field has received little attention otherwise.

“When they (Potter tour) called me and said theywanted to do some work on it, I said, ‘great, go for it,’” Piroch said. “I was glad to hear it.”

Potter and his players weeded out the mound and plate areas, mowed the grass, painted the bleachers and dugouts. Plans were in place to fix up the press box and smooth out the infield as well.

All of the funding and labor came out of their pockets.

“We’ve probably refurbished eight to 10 fields over the years, but this is the first time we’ve funded the project on our own,” Potter said. “We’ve probably sunk $400 or so into materials so far and we’re hoping to get some equipment out on that infield.

“I called the recreation board, talked to a councilman, just to make sure it was OK we did some work here and they gave us permission.

“You could tell this place hasn’t been painted for a long time. The fresh paint just soaked in at first and we had to paint over a lot of graffiti,” he added.

Three Butler area ballplayers who played on the Potter Tour last season — Isaiah Lucas, Reece Orlosky and Ryan Rebmann — helped out on the field as well.

Four members of this year’s tour — Jackie Ritzer, 14, of Chesapeake, Va., Ethan Brathuhn, 16, Chris Thomas, 15, and Evan Kalinski, 14, of Maryland were painting at the facility Monday.

“When I first got here, I was upset with it,” Thomas admitted. “I didn’t like seeing a baseball field in this kind of condition.

“We figure, if we get the field to look better, maybe they’ll keep it going.”

Kalinski said weeds “were growing in the dugout.

“Once we started making progress, we just wanted to come back and do more.”

Butler City’s Colt team played a game at Father Marinaro two weeks ago, but no work was done to the field since.

“The grass was three feet high along the fences,” Brathuhn said. “It’s satisfying to do a project like this.”

Potter’s goal is to bring a team back to Butler in the fall, find a few local teams willing to play and put on a four-team tournament at Father Marinaro Park.

“We’d love to come back and showcase this field, maybe get a scoreboard put in,” he said. “This is a beautiful park and a really nice baseball field.

“It should be used and enjoyed, not abused and neglected. Hopefully, people in town will begin looking at it like that.”