MOUNT VERNON — In fall 2021, the Mount Vernon baseball field began renovations to move the backstop behind home plate back, as well as getting new dugouts among other changes.
Nearly three years later, the Mount Vernon Mustangs look to debut the completely revamped ballpark, including a brand-new backstop, in-ground dugouts, a sprinkler system, and a grass infield.
Player and manager of the Mustangs, Deric Denning, felt that these renovations were necessary to keep up with surrounding towns, as well as opening up the possibility of hosting teener and Legion state tournaments.
“The main reason for the renovations is that we were all dirt (infield) so you can’t host a state tournament,” said Denning. “We were kind of playing catch-up, you know, a lot of these other towns are going to turf so we felt like we had to get something done on our field as well to keep up.”
Mount Vernon’s baseball field is right next to a city road, limiting how far back they’re able to move the backstop.
“The backstop was really close to home plate, so you really couldn’t score on a passed ball, and we’re a little space-challenged there with the field being on a city block right next to the road,” said Denning. “We put it back as far as we could, you know, the backstop, with it being close to the road and stuff like that.”
Denning says funding for the renovations wasn’t easy, with Mount Vernon being a smaller town and its proximity to Mitchell making it difficult to find businesses to sponsor and help with the funds.
“We’re not like a Parkston or a Salem,” Denning said. “Some of these towns that have these really nice fields. Obviously good for them, but we just don’t have the same amount of people, or, with being so close to Mitchell, we don’t have a lot of businesses, so we don’t have a lot of tax base. We’re revenue challenged, so we kind of have to scrape everything together and count every penny to make sure we have enough to get those types of things done.”
When they got enough funding for the renovations, they broke ground in 2021 and completed the first round of renovations in the spring 2022, which included in-ground cement dugouts, and a new backstop.
But the newly renovated backstop just wasn’t what they had in mind or envisioned.
“It was just supposed to be wider,” Denning said. “We knew it was going to be slim-ish back there. It was just supposed to be wider. I’m not very construction apt, but for whatever reason it just didn’t turn out like we wanted and had to turn in a different direction.”
So they came back this past offseason to renovate the backstop once again, ultimately rounding-off the previously narrow and square backstop, while also adding the grass infield and sprinkler system.
“We just put concrete across and knocked out those three, weird, whatever you want to call that thing back there, knocked those out,” said Denning. “And so, it’s just straight across now.”
Denning says the work and labor for the renovations have mainly come from volunteers, which has included long nights spent at the ballpark, even into the early morning hours.
“We’re not hiring companies to do it, it’s people just donating their time and kind of doing the best we can,” said Denning. “There’s some trial and error with that, but I think we have it in a pretty good place. When we put the sod in, I think we were out there until like 1:30 in the morning, you know we’ve got people coming in after work, laying the sod down, staying till 1:00 a.m., and then getting up and going to their jobs. So, it’s been a group effort from that standpoint.”
The Mustangs hope to debut the newly renovated ballpark on Thursday, June 20, against the Corsica Horned Frogs barring any rain, which will be their first real home game of the season, having their two prior home games at Cadwell Park in Mitchell.
“Cadwell’s been good about letting us use their ballpark since they haven’t had as many games,” said Denning. “They’re a little bit more open, so we played two home games at Cadwell which, anytime you can get on Cadwell is nice, so it’s worked out well.”
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