By Jennifer Jenkins
When the batter popped a fly ball toward right field, Larry Glick, alert and ready in the outfield, was pretty sure he had a handle on it. And on any other diamond he might have made an easy catch. But playing on the Leif Ericson Park baseball field, Glick lost sight of the baseball and could not spot it again – until it hit him square in the face.
“With all of the dust and bad lighting, sometimes it was hard to even see the ball,” said Glick of the dilapidated Bay Ridge field that for years could quickly be transformed into a swirling funnel of dust, dirt and grime with one mere gust. Glick, a 43-year-old property manager, said that he had fallen victim to the rundown field more than once in the 15 years he has been playing there. Fitting, local residents nicknamed it the “Dust Bowl.”
“It looked like an old Western movie, you know when a tumbleweed blew across,” said Michael Nocera, who has played at the park for years. “There was no grass, there were ditches, there were holes and any time the wind would blow, it would turn into a dust storm.”
But after a yearlong, expansive renovation of the park’s athletic fields, the park’s nickname no longer applies.
In June, the city unveiled a $2.8 million rehabilitation of the athletic fields at Leif Ericson Park, located near 65th Street and Eighth Avenue in Bay Ridge. Among the new features are improvements to the fencing, drainage system, benches and bleachers, as well as overhauls of the soccer, football and baseball fields, including new pitcher’s mounds and backstops. In addition, improvements were made to the nesting platforms that house Brooklyn’s wild Quaker Parrots.
Leif Ericson Park – which over the past year has undergone playground and landscaping upgrades in addition to the recent improvements to the athletic fields – is one of the latest New York City parks to get a facelift. Over the past five years, the city has added more than 300 acres of new park space and spent millions of dollars renovating outdoor areas, as part of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s PlaNYC sustainability plan.
Currently, the city is home to more than 1,800 parks, playgrounds and recreational facilities across the five boroughs.
Perhaps most-prized by many of Leif Ericson Park’s frequent visitors, the dusty field that for decades refused to grow grass has been covered with synthetic turf. Newly installed lighting will finally allow for night games again.
“It’s a state-of-the-art field now,” said Lou DeForte, who has run the Baseball Expo league, which plays at Leif Ericson Park, since the 1970s. “The players love it.”
Longtime park visitors said the upgrades will make a huge difference during sporting events. Testing out the new field on a Sunday afternoon in June, Jared Rosenblum, a 27-year-old gym teacher who has played at the Dust Bowl for more than eight years, said that while he was enjoying luxurious additions like the water misters for hot days, he was mostly excited that he no longer needed to worry about dangerous debris hidden under the dirt.
“The field was horrible, I used to hate pitching there,” said Rosenblum, who helped his team win a league championship in 2002. “The pitcher’s mound was like a crater, a huge hole that could break your ankle if you landed wrong.”
The park – named for 11th century European explorer Leif Ericson – began development in the mid-1920s, and then dedicated to Ericson in honor of the area’s large Norwegian population at the time. Longtime residents said over the years, the neglected field became more and more run down.
“For whatever reason, they never really maintained it, so it was terrible, but also great,” Glick said. “It was always one of the best places competition-wise, but now it’s also a great place to play.”
The renovation of the athletic fields was spearheaded by Councilman Vincent Gentile, who grew up playing there. He allocated $2.6 million, in addition to a $165,000 grant from Mayor Michael C. Bloomberg. Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz has earmarked an additional $800,000 to begin work on restrooms later this year.
Councilman Gentile, who has lived in Bay Ridge his entire life, remembers going home to his mother covered in dust after playing pickup baseball games there as a child. The yearlong renovation project was a long goal of his, he said.
“Over the years, the complaints about the Dust Bowl I heard growing up were echoed by families I represent in the City Council,” Gentile said. “I was in a position to make a permanent change for the good of local families.”
Now that the field is considerably less dusty, Gentile is holding a contest to rename it. Local residents can submit suggestions until August 1, and then the top three submissions will be put to a public vote. A naming ceremony will be held in early September. The councilman said that he has already received nearly 100 submissions.
“We’re all looking forward to the park-renaming day,” said Gentile. “It’s exciting to think that a person from our neighborhood will be able to rename the park, and that that name is going to be on that improved field forever.”
Not everyone thinks that the park’s physical upgrade should mean a new name.
“It definitely earned its name,” said Robert Chopak, a 46-year-old meat manager who said he has played baseball at the Dust Bowl since the 1970s. “It was a wreck, there were holes all over the place and anytime the wind blew, man. But I don’t know, it’s home.”
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