Last game cancelled... it is now official :-(

[Mudisfun]

I had one lone hold out game on my schedule from one of the Trinity league schools... they just cancelled. Officially it is over, all hope is lost.

Man... this is a lot of red!

 

[kylehutson]

I feel ya.

It's 66 right now and supposed to be a high of 72 this afternoon. Perfect baseball weather. *sigh*

[beerguy55]

City of Calgary has cancelled all city-run events, and access to all city-owned fields, recreational facilities and parks, until June 30...no sports can be played or practiced on public fields until then.

With Provincial tournaments starting in early July, which act as qualifiers for Nationals in August - I think it's pretty safe to say that the 2020 baseball/softball seasons are done for Alberta, if not Canada...with the focus expected to soon shift to fall ball.

I think Little League World Series is a pipe dream. 

Same with Cooperstown Hall of Fame weekend.   Jeter and Walker will be doing their speeches to a camera.  (or it will be postponed)

 

[KenBAZ]

Let's start talking about when we will be working our first games again. I still have a double-header scheduled for May 24th. Be safe and stay healthy.

Sent from my SM-G975U using Tapatalk

[umpstu]

10 hours ago, Mudisfun said:

I had one lone hold out game on my schedule from one of the Trinity league schools... they just cancelled. Officially it is over, all hope is lost.

Man... this is a lot of red!

 

Brother we got that same red down here in the Coachella  Valley.  When does Gary post your schedules?

 

[stevis]

VA Gov closed things till June 10.  Spring permits end June 22...so Parks Department decided spring sports were done and told everyone to seek refunds.  This was news to the leagues who were not consulted, whose volunteers were not prepared for the deluge, and would be happy to run three weeks of glorified pickup games just as a respite from all this.

Said volunteers do a surprising amount of the diamond maintenance, so we've kinda had it with these jerks.

[Mudisfun]

14 hours ago, umpstu said:

Brother we got that same red down here in the Coachella  Valley.  When does Gary post your schedules?

 

I had games hitting over Christmas and New Years... I know he was still making assignments when this all hit, so there were more games out there... 

[The Man in Blue]

10 hours ago, stevis said:

VA Gov closed things till June 10.  Spring permits end June 22...so Parks Department decided spring sports were done and told everyone to seek refunds.  This was news to the leagues who were not consulted, whose volunteers were not prepared for the deluge, and would be happy to run three weeks of glorified pickup games just as a respite from all this.

Said volunteers do a surprising amount of the diamond maintenance, so we've kinda had it with these jerks.

I understand your disappointment, but June 10 - June 22 is 12 days.  From a business perspective, I would agree with the park district.

If things are cleared up by then,  go ahead and run pick-up games.  I think that is a great idea!

Or maybe I am not fully understanding the role of the park district and the relationship with the leagues.

[stevis]

11 hours ago, The Man in Blue said:

I understand your disappointment, but June 10 - June 22 is 12 days.  From a business perspective, I would agree with the park district.

If things are cleared up by then,  go ahead and run pick-up games.  I think that is a great idea!

Or maybe I am not fully understanding the role of the park district and the relationship with the leagues.

In our case, they're all county fields, which we have to share with another "12U" baseball org, their travel branch, an independent travel org, a softball org, and some overlap with soccer.  In a 26 sq. mi county with a vocal small group of old fogeys who want all youth sports obliterated and parks solely for their strolling enjoyment, which has resulted in fences being removed and then jackwagons running their dogs all over wet fields that are closed to us.  But I digress.  Usually the diamonds are left to unorganized activity over the summer--but since they're fallow now, we see no reason why we shouldn't keep going over the summer in these unusual circumstances.

Our biggest problem is it wasn't their business.  They get a user fee per participant from all of us, and they didn't announce or tell us they weren't collecting that--just told parents to start hammering us before we had our messaging in place.  We were days away from announcing policies ourselves.  (default keep as credit, offer refunds to those who explicitly ask, for the record.) Also, while I doubt the opening date will slide to the left, there was fundamentally little advantage to assuming that it won't.  When everyone could use a little sunshine to look forward to, they kicked everyone in the shins. 

Also, Parks and Rec isn't a business.  It's a government service--of the people, by the people, for the people.  If we can be open for 12 days, we should be.

Thank you for coming to my TED rant.  (Seriously, it was good to type that out, and sorry for anyone who read this far.)

[yawetag]

25 minutes ago, stevis said:

Also, Parks and Rec isn't a business.  It's a government service--of the people, by the people, for the people.  If we can be open for 12 days, we should be.

I watched that show, too! Great documentary.

[The Man in Blue]

Parks and Rec AND Shawshank Redemption = automatic post of the year.  

 

That did help shed some light on it @stevis.  So, the park district has NO standing in your program (other than you use their fields) and THEY sent out a message saying they were cancelling the spring park use permits, which would have gone through June 22.  What happens after the permit would have expired?  A free-for-all for the fields?  

Do you have a contract with the park district for the fields (maybe that is what the permit is)?  Sounds like you are probably in a bigger area than I am (or at least contending with more entities), but when I ran our local softball and t-ball programs, we had a contract with the village (no park district, just a "parks department").  It provided us the use AND CONTROL of the two fields in the main park in town from April though the end of July.  We paid the utilities (which are village owned) and took care of the fields (cleaning and maintenance), and that gave us exclusive use of the fields and concession stand.

The baseball program was run separately, and every so often either they or a Village Trustee that they got a hold of would try to start some shenanigans.  We would pull out the contract and go to Village Hall to shut it down.

[stevis]

6 hours ago, The Man in Blue said:

Parks and Rec AND Shawshank Redemption = automatic post of the year.  

 

That did help shed some light on it @stevis.  So, the park district has NO standing in your program (other than you use their fields) and THEY sent out a message saying they were cancelling the spring park use permits, which would have gone through June 22.  What happens after the permit would have expired?  A free-for-all for the fields?  

Do you have a contract with the park district for the fields (maybe that is what the permit is)?  Sounds like you are probably in a bigger area than I am (or at least contending with more entities), but when I ran our local softball and t-ball programs, we had a contract with the village (no park district, just a "parks department").  It provided us the use AND CONTROL of the two fields in the main park in town from April though the end of July.  We paid the utilities (which are village owned) and took care of the fields (cleaning and maintenance), and that gave us exclusive use of the fields and concession stand.

The baseball program was run separately, and every so often either they or a Village Trustee that they got a hold of would try to start some shenanigans.  We would pull out the contract and go to Village Hall to shut it down.

Nope, we don't have control.  When they close the fields, we are closed (although we sometimes win arguments and get them to re-open them.)  We have a number of fields that don't drain well and are closed for multiple days in the sun after a good rain.  You know so they don't get ruined.  Dude, they're already ruined, that's why they're like this, give us an incentive to work oon them at least. And of course, now, the damn people exercise their dogs on while we stay off of them.

We have permits, and honestly we took the lead in organizing the other youth baseball/softball to present a unified plan to share the fields among ourselves each season, so we looked more like helpers and less like a problem they have to sort out.  Every year we end up suspending a game when the lights go out a half hour early one time despite our curfew never changing.  We don't even control the concession stand at the big park so we lose that and they just didn't open it last year.  (To be fair, we share fields there with the other leagues pus there's a soccer field.) Something about the water being broke and it never got fixed.

Every time I get upset about coaches or my teen umpires, I remember that at least I'm not in charge of dealing with those guys.  Honestly they're more overworked and understaffed and dealing with NIMBYs than jerks, but eh.

Of course, what I wouldn't give for those to be problems I was dealing with right now.

[The Man in Blue]

LOL ... sounds like the park district in the city by me.  They have far more land than they can manage, so they just manage it all poorly (or not at all).  I don’t live in The City, so I have no say (and cannot run for their Board) ... but my take is that they need to get rid of significant amounts of real estate or repurpose lesser used parks into relevant and usable spaces in the areas they are in.  Instead, there are a plethora of untouched “baseball fields” that amount to nothing more than a backstop fence in the middle of a grass field in a neighborhood.
 

As a PARK DISTRICT — meaning an actual governmental taxing body — they really should be the ones organizing and providing community programs!  That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for other organizations ... but the park district should be leading and providing direction, not making teams/orgs have to go fend for themselves and fight amongst each other.  (Edited before posting: Removed political commentary.)

[yawetag]

@The Man in Blue, it's possible that land you want to sell can't be sold and they're just stuck with it. Someone could have donated the land with a "can't sell" clause. Or, like the town I used to live in, they had something in their laws that if they ever sold park property to someone, the town would have to designate another area of equal or greater size as a new park.

[stevis]

We definitely don't have too much space--too little in a growing county and growing school district.  The schools need land and are only starting to figure out they have to build up--and they fouled that up at my daughter's new school something fierce with respect to ADA issues.  (I would have said requirements, but they blew past so many of those I can't fathom how permits were pulled if they were.)  DPR does run some programs, like flag football (which I wish they would kill--no need to train kids for concussionball), but the soccer and baseball are running under the "franchises" of the big youth orgs (LL for us, Ripken/Ruth for our competitors, AGSA for soccer.)  The travel is whatever nonsense that is. (I was once invited to work with "Future States Prospect Association" which had a 7U division.  Nobody is a prospect at those ages. yikes.)

A lot of our t-ball/coach pitch fields are at schools, with one ratty backstop and no seating.  Fine for those ages, to be sure. But occasionally lost to trailers.

[The Man in Blue]

41 minutes ago, yawetag said:

@The Man in Blue, it's possible that land you want to sell can't be sold and they're just stuck with it. Someone could have donated the land with a "can't sell" clause. Or, like the town I used to live in, they had something in their laws that if they ever sold park property to someone, the town would have to designate another area of equal or greater size as a new park.

Good point ... I didn’t think of that!  
 

My village pissed off some nuns in a deal like that.