West Sunbury gives baseball a boost
WEST SUNBURY — West Sunbury Area Baseball received a double boost Saturday.
The 11-team organization had a dedication ceremony for its new American Legion, Colt and Pony League fields, followed by a visit from Pirates Charities commemorating a donation of $2,500 toward a new backstop for the Little League field.
"These happenings are going to boost interest in baseball among kids in our area," said West Sunbury Area Baseball president Mike Jewart. "We're already planning to add another Colt and Pony League team to our program next year."
The West Sunbury Volunteer Fire Department donated the land on which the Legion field sits. West Sunbury American Legion Post 243 donated $20,000 toward the field and is contributing another $10,000 for dugouts.
"Part of our charter is to support and assist the community," said Don Cunningham, commander of Legion Post 243. "We were going to use those funds to build our own field, but when we got word of this project, it only made sense to assist them."
Jewart said the ultimate goal is to make the West Sunbury Legion field "one of the best, if not the best, in Butler County."
"We've still got a lot of work to do, but we're pleased with where we're at right now," he added.
Pirates Charities' Fields for Kids program made its fourth stop in Butler County within the past two years. The program helped build the Miracle League field at Graham Park in Cranberry Township and made grants to youth baseball organizations in Meridian and Center Township last year.
Butler resident Patty Paytas, executive director of Pirates Charities, said the Fields for Kids program supplied 27 grants to 14 counties in Pennsylvania and West Virginia last year, donating $100,000 to those projects.
This year's program will spend about $125,000 on Fields for Kids.
"We're finding ourselves having to intensify our fundraising efforts because this program is growing more and more popular," Paytas said. "This (Little League) level is the grassroots of baseball."
Former Pirates relief pitcher Kent Tekulve, on hand for West Sunbury Area Baseball's Opening Day along with Pirates president Frank Coonelly and the Pirate Parrot, described Saturday's scene as "baseball in its purest form."
"There's no player contracts or agents ... just a bunch of kids who love to play the game," Tekulve said. "People who volunteer their time to coach, prep and take care of the field — it's about them, too."
The new backstop on West Sunbury's main Little League field replaced a 32-year-old structure that was rusty and not very high.
"Our concession stand (behind home plate) was getting peppered with foul balls," Jewart said. "That won't happen anymore."
Volunteer labor held down the cost for the new backstop.
"That's how our Little League field got fixed up when I was a kid," Tekulve said. "A bunch of parents got together, volunteered their time and effort, and gave the community a nice place to play ball.
"They didn't do it for their own kids. They did it for a lot of kids. That's what we're seeing here."
Coonelly agreed.
"The best part of the day is watching these kids take the field with smiles on their faces," he said. "This is community pride that we see every time we make a stop like this."
