A patch of land can’t tell a story. An old baseball field’s renovation will bring back the voices of children and the crack of bats.

Who, though, can tell its story?

Ask those who were young when the land was changed from a swamp into a Little League ball field. Ask the ones who remember, who’ve remembered all these years.

Frank Erickson, 61, will be in Everett on Saturday for an 11 a.m. ceremony at the field on 12th and Pine streets, next to Wiggums Hollow Park. He’ll be there for his late brother, Bert Erickson, in whose name the field will be rededicated.

Once before, in 1965, the field on Everett Housing Authority property was dedicated to the memory of Bert Erickson. That was a year after the 17-year-old Little League coach died in a car crash.

“He was killed by a drunk,” Frank Erickson said.

Bert Erickson died Aug. 24, 1964, just weeks after graduating from Everett High School. His Little League team, sponsored by Everett Trust and Savings, had just won a league championship.

“He and his girlfriend and another couple were driving back from a dance. They were on I-5, near Smokey Point, and some guy who had decided to have a few drinks before going home hit him going 90 miles an hour,” Frank Erickson said.

“But the story is my little brother,” said Erickson, who now lives near Tacoma. “He had the personality that really attracted kids. They’d follow him anywhere.”

Jack Crossman of Arlington was a 12-year-old player on Bert Erickson’s 1964 team. He attended his coach’s funeral, along with many team members. They all wore their baseball uniforms. “For most of us, it was our first experience with death,” Crossman said.

Bert Erickson left far more than memories of a winning season.

When he and Frank were boys, they went to sign up for North Everett Little League. “I was already 12. They told me I was too old,” Frank Erickson said. Bert, who was 10, played two years.

Soon, Frank Erickson was filling in as an assistant coach. Through that experience, he and some friends from the low-income housing area then known as “the projects” started the new Federal Little League. “It was under the auspices of the old Everett Boys Club,” Erickson said.

In 1960, the Everett Housing Authority allowed the league to use its swampy property at 12th and Pine streets. The site was then a kind of no-man’s land between housing complexes then known as “the old project” and “the new project.”

The new league gave boys in the low-income area a place to play closer than Garfield Park, where North Everett Little League was based.

“The first year we used the swamp, only a small section was usable,” Frank Erickson said. “We used it for practices, but had our games at Hawthorne School. The trouble was, we kept getting kicked off by an adult softball league.

“We needed a place to play,” Erickson said. “So we asked Lester Beard, head of the Housing Authority, and he turned the swamp over to us. It was a brilliant move on his part, because it helped eliminate the rivalry between the old and new projects.”

Erickson said the swamp had been a place “for fistfights and worse.”

Dan Crossman, Jack’s younger brother, remembers the area before Wiggums Hollow Park, the Denney Juvenile Justice Center or the new Everett Boys &Girls Club were there.

“There was quite a bit of contention between the old and new projects. It sounds silly, but it was serious rivalry. I can remember going home from Hawthorne School and kids throwing rocks at us,” he said.

Bert and Frank Erickson not only helped form the Federal Little League, they coached and organized the field transformation.

Although just teens, they approached local businesses for donations of fencing and concrete.

“We brought in loads of sand from Smith Island and Ebey Island. Bert would talk to the kids, and get any dads who had pickup trucks. Then Bert would organize kids to unload sand and gravel, and smooth it out,” Erickson said.

A sign put up in 1965 with Bert Erickson’s name is long gone, and few know the story. “The field lost its identity,” Jack Crossman said.

That identity will soon be restored. Steve Anderson, a groundskeeper with the Everett Housing Authority, was working on the field Thursday morning.

“We’re replacing broken benches and adding topsoil,” Anderson said. “The infield was all weeds. Nobody’s played here in years.”

Still to be installed is a plaque with the name of Bert Erickson.

“He was a fantastic mentor for all of us kids,” Dan Crossman said.

Time hasn’t healed all wounds for Frank Erickson. In a time before tough drunken-driving laws, the driver of the vehicle that killed his brother had his license suspended for 100 days and was fined $100, Erickson said. It took a court fight for his family to be compensated by an insurance company – just $5,000 for Bert Erickson’s life.

For a generation of boys, his life was priceless.

“They idolized him. He was a hero to them,” Frank Erickson said. “I didn’t realize at the time, nor did Bert, the impact a coach has on a kid. We were just kids ourselves.”

It’s time now for new kids. It’s time to play ball.

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