Mansfield still a place for kids Stadium shines despite lots of use

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BANGOR – Less than 24 hours after the conclusion of a seemingly endless stretch of games and practices running from late April to early August, Shawn T. Mansfield Stadium was at rest.

No outfielders shagging fly balls, or pitchers warming up in the bullpen, or hitters in the batting cage.

No games today, just preparation for what is to come – in this case the Senior League Baseball World Series scheduled to start Sunday.

On this day, a contractor was high above the diamond, cleaning the lens and bulb of each of the 128 lights that turn the dark of night into an illuminated baseball wonderland for those who have traveled from throughout Maine and now well beyond for the last 12 years to partake in the national pastime on the field Stephen King built.

Elsewhere, a mix of baseball-minded volunteers and summer employees replace the worn sod between home plate and the pitching mound, and make other repairs where the infield grass meets dirt.

“It’s always the same people around fixing the same spots on the field,” said Ron St. Pierre, a former Bangor High schoolteacher and coach who serves as the volunteer field director, overseeing the stadium’s physical plant as well as the scheduling of games and practices. “It’s the things you do every season.”

With games and practices involving numerous youth teams from the Junior League and Senior League through the American Legion ranks, the Bangor and John Bapst high school teams, countless regional and state tournaments and, for the third straight year, the Senior League World Series, Mansfield Stadium may be the most utilized baseball field in Maine.

On a typical summer weekend, for example, Mansfield hosts four games on Saturday and four more on Sunday.

“From April to October we have the equivalent of more than 200 baseball games,” said St. Pierre. “We’ve had 72 games scheduled in July, 60 scheduled in June, and another 20 high school games in April and May.

“Then we’ve got the World Series, which is another 23 games, and in the fall we’ve had a club team come down from the University of Maine, although I haven’t heard from them yet this year, and we’re thinking about having fall baseball here.”

Occasionally a team has to be turned down, but only because the schedule is already filled.

“There’s really no time off at all,” he said. “It’s been like this for 12 years. The only time it slows a little is the off-year when we don’t run any state tournaments.”

It’s a rite of summer that taxes the field’s Kentucky bluegrass, and to an extent those who maintain it.

But that’s as it is should be, say those who operate the stadium.

“We can’t utilize it much more than it’s being used, but I think that’s a healthy thing,” said Dave Mansfield, president of Bangor Baseball-Softball Inc., part of the Bangor West Side Little League that oversees the stadium. “We’ll put down more sod, keep fixing it. That’s what this field is here for, to be used by the kids and to be a benefit to the city. There should be something here every night.”

‘A place for Bangor kids’

Mansfield remembers the conversation that led to the stadium named after his son, Shawn, who died after a lengthy battle with cerebral palsy.

It was the summer of 1990, the year after a Bangor West team that included current pro Matt Kinney and King’s son, Owen, had won the state Little League championship (ages 11-12).

Those 12-year-olds were now 13, and it was time to move up to a regulation-sized field. For the Bangor kids, that meant a trip out to a field on Union Street, where game-day maintenance often was the responsibility of the parents, including Stephen King.

“We were out there one day after it rained,” said Mansfield, “The field was soaked, and Stephen was brushing the water out of the shortstop hole. He looked at me and said, ‘David, we’ve got to do something about this.’ I said, ‘What do you want to do?'”

What evolved from that conversation was a $1.2 million donation by King for a new, state-of-the-art stadium in city-owned Hayford Park – essentially in King’s back yard, though 12 years later the grown-up trees beyond the outfield fence obscure the view from King’s West Broadway home.

A committee of local baseball enthusiasts, including Mansfield, St. Pierre, King, John Stubbs, Joe Ferris, Dennis Libbey and former Bangor Parks and Recreation director Dale Theriault was formed to run the stadium.

“The goal was simply to provide a place for Bangor kids to play baseball,” said Mansfield. “It’s as simple as that.”

Since the stadium opened on June 20, 1992, when Webb’s RV defeated WZON 10-6 in a youth league game, it has served as a focal point for youth baseball in Bangor and beyond.

While Mansfield Stadium may lack the tradition the Bangor Auditorium has for high school basketball aficionados, its status as a destination for young baseball players throughout the region is growing.

“It’s definitely special,” said James Ramsdell of Pembroke, who plays high school baseball for Washington Academy of East Machias as well as for an American Legion team based in Calais. “Playing under the lights in a stadium like this is great, and sometimes we get pretty big crowds. It’s definitely a big difference.

“This is the big place to play baseball. It’s definitely one of our goals to get here and play. It’s like the Bangor Auditorium in basketball. There’s more pressure, and you’ve got to win.”

St. Pierre, who grew up playing baseball in northern Aroostook County, relates to that sentiment.

“Of course, there’s nothing like going to the Auditorium,” said St. Pierre, currently chief financial officer for The Fitch Company, a Bangor engineering firm. “But I think if you’re going to play baseball, this is the place you want to come, mainly because everything here is done with a professional feel.

“It doesn’t matter who shows up to play, whether it’s 13-year-old kids or 18-year-old Legion kids, we try to provide the identical playing surface for everybody.”

Funding the field

Mansfield Stadium offers stadium seating for 1,500, but has played host to as many as 3,000 fans this spring when Mount Ararat of Topsham star Mark Rogers – the No. 5 pick in June’s amateur draft by the Milwaukee Brewers – pitched the Eagles past Brewer in the Eastern Maine Class A championship game.

There’s a full concession stand and public restrooms for fans, an automated sprinkler system and a large tarp to protect the field from the sometimes harsh elements.

Stadium operations are funded by a combination of city funds ($25,000 a year, according to Mansfield) and concessions, ticket sales and rental fees.

Rental rates typically range between $100 and $300 per game, depending on a number of factors that include whether the game is played at day or night. St. Pierre estimated that lighting for a night game costs $80.

City funds pay for lighting, water and staff, while the other monies pay for ballpark maintenance, field materials such as sod, topsoil and fertilizer, as well as the occasional capital purchase, such as a tractor or field aerator.

“Any equipment purchased here belongs to the city, but remains at the ballpark, and any funds generated at the ballpark are to be part of the funds that we use to run the ballpark, maintain it and improve it,” said St. Pierre, who estimated the annual budget for the facility to range between $50,000 and $60,000.

A variety of improvements have been made to the stadium since it opened, among them the installation of a flagpole that sits just inside the outfield fence in center field, media accommodations, and tarpaulin backing for the outfield fence and the fencing behind the stadium seats.

But the field itself is the focal point, with the goal of keeping the grass healthy, green and true to the bouncing balls and the players who catch them.

“A lot of maintaining a field like this is common sense, and a lot of it is being able to take a look and analyze what is going on with the grass and asking people who know if there’s something you don’t know,” said St. Pierre.”

A community resource

Twelve years after hosting its first game, Mansfield Stadium remains a source of pride to the city’s baseball community as well as an economic asset for its capacity to draw players, teams, families and fans to Bangor from throughout Maine, New England and, for the last two years, the world.

“Someday somebody will do the demographics of what this actually brings the city, and it’s substantial,” said Mansfield.

When Bangor Little League officials made its bid to bring the Senior League World Series to the Queen City beginning in 2002, the presence of Mansfield Stadium played a significant role in the success of the endeavor.

“I thought the facility was a strong selling point for us,” said Mike Brooker, the SLWS tournament director. “One of the things they looked at was that it is a high-caliber ballpark in an area that isn’t overly populated.

“They said we have a tremendous facility, as good a facility as there is north of Boston, but in an area where the World Series becomes a much bigger fish than it would be in a place like Orlando or St. Petersburg.”

And that’s why Dave Mansfield, Ron St. Pierre and others like Jimmy Owens, Chris Grant, John Stubbs and Skip Black have donated considerable time to the field this week, to ensure that Mansfield Stadium is at its best when the Senior League World Series returns to Bangor.

“People know when they walk in here that they are getting the chance to play on a field that is probably second to none,” said Mansfield. “We have a good group of workers, and the work that’s being done to get ready for the World Series, for example, is work done at the top of the scale.”

And to those who have seen Mansfield Stadium through from the first turned shovel of dirt through the Senior League World Series, that philosophy wouldn’t be any different if the next game was between Webb’s RV and WZON, as it was on opening day 12 years ago.

“Stephen built this for kids who normally wouldn’t have a chance to play on this type of facility, and we never want to refuse any chance that a kid may have to play,” said St. Pierre. “So we put up with some occasional abuse to the field – and then we fix it.”