The ball field is gone, but the memory remains

There’s something missing at Forest Park. The baseball field is gone.

Am I the only one who cares?

When I stopped by the Everett park Tuesday, kids riding pieces of cardboard had turned the slope overlooking the field into a summer sledding hill. Coasting to the bottom, they whooped with joy.

Missing were sounds of a game – a ball in a glove, a crack of a bat, a call of a strike. Those sounds may be gone for good.

There’s no longer a backstop, or metal bleachers, or a pitcher’s mound, or well-trod base lines. A new layer of dirt covers the old baseball diamond.

Hal Gausman, an assistant park director with the Everett Parks and Recreation Department, said the field hadn’t seen much baseball or softball use in recent years. It will be planted with grass and become open space, he said.

“A lot of the groups that used to play there weren’t using it,” Gausman said. “Most people playing down there were doing soccer, running around, doing family-oriented sports.”

Area leagues prefer field complexes at Kasch Park and the Phil Johnson Ballfields, said Gausman and Lori Cummings, another Everett assistant park director.

The Phil Johnson ball fields, on Sievers-Duecy Boulevard, are equipped with low-glare lights, sandy infields and a concession building. Kasch Park, near the Boeing Co. plant, has the Rowley Softball Complex, a four-field softball facility with lights and two Little League fields.

“What we’ve found is that open space is very popular,” Gausman said. “Grassed over, it will be a nice, even field. The other advantage, it will be easier to mow.”

I’ll have to think about that, removing a ball field because it’s easier to mow. I don’t dispute that Forest Park hadn’t seen much baseball or softball recently. I’m a frequent visitor, and I never see anyone play there anymore.

Teams used to play there. I know they did.

During my first summer in Everett, 1981, my fiance played on an Everett Parks softball team. Their home field was Forest Park. Those guys were too competitive for my taste, but I liked tagging along as a spectator.

That field had an old-fashioned, low-key feel to it, and the outfield was ringed by urban forest. It was, and still is, a beautiful place.

If you go there now, all that’s left is one of those memorial benches people donate in a loved one’s memory. Sit down and read the plaque on the bench, you’ll see why the field matters to me. It says: “This bench donated in 1999 in honor of Jim Muhlstein.” There’s a sentiment on the plaque; I wrote it myself. “Playing ball on Elysian fields,” it says.

Co-workers at The Herald donated the bench after my husband died in 1998. He had a heart attack at Forest Park after The Herald softball team played on the field that’s now gone.

I always hoped some literate baseball fan would sit on that bench and figure out the inscription. Elysian refers to the final, blissful resting place of heroes in Greek mythology. But it’s also a reference to my late husband’s beloved Dodgers. The address of Dodger Stadium is 1000 Elysian Park Ave., Los Angeles.

On Tuesday, litter near the bench showed someone had recently finished smoking a pack of Camel filters there.

At the parks department, Cummings said she’d heard no discussion of the bench being moved along with the ball field. “If we were going to move it, we’d contact the donor,” she said.

As head of finance and donor relations with the Greater Everett Community Foundation, Glenda Anderson works with families on bench donations. “We have moved benches at a donor’s request,” she said. In one instance, Anderson said, a site that was first requested became available at Grand Avenue Park, and a family moved a bench.

I’m not considering moving my husband’s bench, not now anyway. Open space is good, although that place will always be a softball field to me.

Elysian can also describe a place of paradise. When I saw the ball field was gone, I was afraid they’d tell me they planned to pave paradise – and put up a parking lot.

Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.