This year, San Diego American Little League will mark its 70th anniversary at Memorial Community Park in Logan Heights. But in recent years, there hasn’t been much to celebrate at the city-owned park.

The 100-player league has been practicing and playing for years on rundown ballfields ravaged by age, neglect, disrepair, vandalism and vagrancy.

Over the past three years, San Diego American league President Maria Pelayo said she has repeatedly asked city officials to prioritize long-overdue maintenance issues at the park at 2975 Ocean View Blvd., but she made no progress.

So in October, she and Adrianna Flores, who runs the Barrio Logan Event Page on Facebook, enlisted community members and league parents in a grassroots phone and email campaign that finally hit a home run this winter.

On Nov. 9, San Diego City Councilmember Vivian Moreno, whose District 8 includes Logan Heights, sent a memo requesting “prompt action” on the Memorial park ballfields to Andy Field, the director of the city’s Parks and Recreation Department.

On Dec. 7, Field issued a three-page memo detailing the improvements his department is planning in the coming year. Some of the items on the list have already been completed. Pelayo, whose 6- and 8-year-old sons play for San Diego American, said she appreciates how the community and city came together to support the league’s boys and girls.

“I didn’t think it was going to work,” she said. “I was very hesitant to put it out there, but I’d been dealing with the city for years and nothing had been done. I’m hoping and crossing my fingers that everything will happen as promised.”

Among the many problems at the park’s three ballfields are burned-out field lights, a broken scoreboard, filthy restrooms, graffiti, litter, missing and stolen baseball equipment, homeless people and dogs relieving themselves near or on the fields or snack bar/storage building, bleachers so old and uneven that they tip when people sit on them, rotting and unpainted wooden benches in the dugouts and uneven outfield grass that can be a trip hazard.

As a result of the burned-out lights, teams can’t practice after dusk. Families also don’t feel safe using the restrooms, where a small community of homeless men often urinate outdoors and smear feces on the interior walls.

But one of the league’s biggest challenges was the loss of snack bar revenue that occurred after the city crews renovating the park’s playground in 2018 accidentally cut the underground water line to the snack bar building. Without the ability to serve hot items like nachos and hot dogs, the league could no longer earn the $500 to $600 in weekly snack sales income that it used to pay for umpires, park fees, insurance and equipment.

The first thing the city did was to restore the water line to the snack bar building. The city is also erecting a new fence around the building to protect it from taggers, thieves and people using it as a toilet.

The league has also gotten a big hand up this month from another local youth baseball league. In a Union-Tribune story published Nov. 14 about the league’s woes at Memorial park, San Diego American team mom Yvonne Garcia said the players on her sons’ team were always shocked at the excellent equipment and field conditions they encountered at other ballparks where they played league games.

“Other teams have so much that we don’t have,” Garcia said, in the article. “If you went to La Jolla or some other cities, they wouldn’t let their parks be like what we have.”

Scott Blumenthal, president of La Jolla Youth Baseball, read the article that day and was determined to help. On Jan. 16, , he and a couple dozen LJYB league officials, parents and players joined SD American families at Memorial park for an all-day field makeover session. The combined families pulled weeds, picked up trash, repainted the bleachers, replaced the rotting wood in the dugouts, used a tractor and rakes to refurbish the soil on the infield and carved new lines between the bases.

“The article hit a nerve with us,” said Blumenthal, whose LJYB Pony league has about 500 players. “Our league has its house in order, so we’ve been looking for opportunities to help others in our baseball family, and that extends beyond our league. Any time a member of our over-arching baseball family needs a lift, we can chip in to help out. We had some time and it turned out to be a great event for our kids and families.”

Pelayo said she was overwhelmed by how much was accomplished in just one day.

“The field looks so awesome,” she said. “Scott said, ‘We’re going to leave it like the field at Petco Park,’ and it’s getting there little by little. It’s a major improvement, and now the players can be proud to play at their field.”

Still to come are many city-funded improvements requested by Moreno.

“Councilmember Moreno is pleased with the work that has been done so far with the field renovations, water being restored at the snack bar, lights being replaced at the skate park, and is looking forward to more improvements while working with community members,” said Lisa Schmidt, Moreno’s chief of staff.

In his memo, Field admitted that the issues plaguing Memorial park are common in many aging parks in lower-income neighborhoods described in the city’s Parks Master Plan as “communities of concern.”

“Due to high use and limited resources, many parks in historically disadvantaged neighborhoods are not receiving the level of investment needed today to help improve access, reduce safety concerns, and increase recreational offerings,” he wrote.

Field’s park improvement plan was set to be introduced earlier this month at a meeting of the Memorial Community Recreation Group but the meeting was canceled due to COVID-19. Here are some of the efforts outlined in the memo:

Pelayo said the community campaign has had two other positive impacts on the league. To make up for the lost snack bar income last fall, she launched a GoFundMe campaign in October that has raised more than $14,000 in donations. And when San Diego American held signups for its spring 2022 ball season on Jan. 8, 30 children showed up to register. Usually only one or two kids register on the first sign-up day.

“It’s the most we’ve ever had on that day,” she said. “Usually we’ll end up with only maybe 10 players by mid-January, but we already have two teams ready to go. It’s been great.”

To sign up or volunteer, visit the San Diego American Little League page on Facebook.com.

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