Jesse Bethel High School baseball players want a field of dreams. What they have is a field of streams.
The Jaguars’ home field has suffered from poor conditions for years, but over the last two years, alarming deteriorations have prompted the team to install a temporary plastic fence that is approximately 230 feet from home plate — leaving around 80 feet of marsh between the new wall and the one that stands beyond it. The water comes from the flooding of a nearby creek at the base of a hill just behind the third base dugout.
When the baseball team held a playoff game last season, Vallejo Sports Hall of Famer and Bethel Physical Education teacher John Baptista’s first words over the P.A. system were, “Welcome to the swamp.”
It was not a term of affection.
There is grass growing in the infield dirt near third base, courtesy of sprinklers going off at the wrong times. Instead of Iowa corn in left field, this diamond has raised grass that stands taller than the mowed grass in shallow left field, center and right field. Any ball that does make it to this tall-standing grass has entered “The Swamp” — where all balls are ruled dead.
“Take a look at the field,” said Bethel coach J.R. Lindsey. “That should answer your questions on how I feel about it.”
The Jaguars have played 19 games this season — just two at home. The poor conditions also wreak havoc with the team’s practice schedule. Instead of running all over its own field each day, Bethel often practices on the blacktop on campus, using Wiffle balls.
“The players have complained because they have to travel more to other schools,” Baptista said. “It’s also hard to develop a good outfielder. Instead of having them running around catching fly balls, they work on something else. Plus, we lose so many balls into that grass and water and that ends up costing a lot.”
The Vallejo City Unified School District says help is on the way, but it may be too late to save this season. The district said on Friday that the “baseball field drainage remediation project started back in October but was postponed due to the inclement weather, which caused the field to be in accessible to vehicles and heavy equipment.”
The school district stated that as the weather improves and the area dries, the work will resume. At the same time, infield soils are scheduled to be delivered in May, which the district says is a “routing annual action.” That may be too late this year, however, with the last Bethel baseball game slated for April 23 against Vallejo. Playoffs usually begin in early May.
The difficult conditions don’t end with the baseball field. The tennis courts have enough cracks on them to wonder if the Loma Prieta earthquake of 35 years ago just hit.
The football practice field has new sod that was put in the middle of the field in four places, but the level of the grass is uneven, with many of the areas already sinking. The long jump pit has been unattended for awhile, and the track itself — one of the last in the area that is not all-weather — is not in good condition.
“If you’re playing on the practice football field it’s dangerous and your spikes can get caught and then you have ankles turned,” Baptista said. “I have kids that have fallen on the track and they have bruises that look like they just fell off a motorcycle. We come out here to jog slowly in P.E. classes but we won’t run hard on this track for fear of liability.
“It’s beyond me how we can let things get to this point.”
Although the football team has always played its home games at Corbus Field during its 25 years of existence, this past fall the Jaguars traveled to Corbus Field for practices each day for the first time. The Jaguars would usually hold their practices right after the Vallejo High football team would finish its practice session.
While the fields and courts are in dire straits, officials say help is on the way from numerous areas. After not having an athletic director for months, Bethel hired Carl Baynard in February for the position. While he’s just getting acquainted with the job and its many duties, he has spent much of his days looking over the facilities and getting them back into playable conditions.
“There are plans to just reallocated funds and get everything up to date,” Baynard said. “I am assuming we will be able to get them to the level they should be. We are making changes the past couple days and many people are looking to help. The teams and students have even been out here helping because they’re excited to want to play at home. The maintenance man is out here everyday and the principal has been out here, too.”
Baynard said he talked with a friend in landscaping and was told the flooding in the baseball field comes from years of drainage problems in the nearby creek.
“The porcelain in the tunnel has drainage issues, whether it be cracks or things jamming up and it’s been a huge undertaking,” Baynard said.
Baynard also said that in the future, the direction of the baseball fields, and possibly the nearby softball fields, could be changed. With the possible realignment, he’s hoping for a good 120 feet between the fields and where the water is causing problems.
The school district has also showed up on campus recently, with engineers stopping by the tennis courts on Thursday and Friday. The district told the Times-Herald on Friday that it has “been cleared to use LCAP funds for athletic facilities as they are classified as “supplemental,” although it wouldn’t state how much those funds were.
The district also stated that the “Operation Division has been working with multiple vendors to address the concerns with Jesse Bethel High School Sports fields/facilities while focusing on three main areas — the baseball field, the football practice field and the tennis courts.”
Concerning the football practice field, the district replaced 40 Hunter rotor sprinklers with 40 new Hunter 140 rotor sprinklers. They’ve also …
- Replaced 1 broken valve.
- Removed the distressed turf.
- Applied 20 yards of 50/50 soil blend.
- Applied 300 lbs of 6-24-24 XB fertilizer.
- Applied 400 lbs of Ryegrass seed blend.
- Installed sod in the severely damaged areas.
- Aerated and compacted the field.
Since the completion of the above actions, the football field has been monitored bi-weekly to ensure proper irrigation patterns and growth.
Concerning the tennis courts, there has been installed windscreen on all fencing, while Miller Pacific Engineering was on the site Thursday and Friday to install geotech sensors and to address the wall separation and cracks on the court surface. Repainting is also underway.
“It’s in our best interests to hopefully finish all these repairs soon because the whole community uses the fields and the courts,” Baynard said. “It’s not uncommon for people living in the houses nearby to have a family affair and use the fields on the weekend. So we want this done soon and I think it can happen.”
