Thorold Minor Baseball just keeps on growing, and now—after a long hiatus—they’re back in Port Robinson East Park.
“They converted the diamond over for us, from stone to dirt,” says the league’s president Chris Green, in an interview with ThoroldToday. “We’ve been using that diamond since the beginning of June. It’s been good so far. We’re usually there Monday through Thursday, [and] some Fridays.”
In spite of recent reports of vandalism at the park, damage to the diamond itself has been avoided thus far.
“We do notice there is some ruts in the outfield that are left from ATVs,” Green says. “They create permanent hard ruts where kids can either roll ankles or balls take weird bounces. We haven’t left any equipment out there at this point because we’re really nervous about it being stolen or vandalized. It’s putting an extra strain on our coaches and myself to have to keep running equipment out there each night.”
Green is soliciting local businesses to raise funds for a fence around the baseball diamond, to protect it from any damage.
“We would love to see if they would step up and support with anywhere from 300 dollars to 1000 dollars of sponsorship,” he says. “We would return that by having their banners up on the fences. A lot of them didn’t get back to me which is a little bit disheartening but I’m not giving up. Now that they see us out on the diamond almost every night hopefully they’ll realize we’re here for good and we would really like their support.”
The local businesses who did get back to Green have been boosting team morale.
“We’ve partnered with Bridge 12 Pub across the street,” Green says. “After our games they allow the teams to send over the two players of the games from each team to go get free ice cream.”
The revitalization of minor baseball in Port Robinson is another testament to the fact that the league is experiencing a boom.
This year, Thorold Minor Baseball registered around 260 players, whereas they only had around 87 a mere three years. To meet this growth, the league is always looking for more space.
“We need a couple more diamonds for our players age 13 years old and younger,” Green says. “Our goal is to find where in Thorold do we build another Sullivan Park. Every single team that comes from out of town that sees Sullivan Park falls in love with that baseball diamond and wishes they could play there all the time.”
At the end of the day, Green is proud of how well Thorold Minor Baseball is doing.
“We’ve done a lot of work to bring it back,” he says. “The best part is that a lot of players that have left Thorold have all started to come back. We’re doing great and we’re competing at all levels. We’ve got some pretty good ballplayers here.”
If you're a business in Port Robinson and you would like to support Thorold Minor Baseball, you can send Chris Green an email.
