Ballfield Dedicated At Joyner-Kersee Center
Cardinals Care Helps Build Edgar Renteria Field In East St. Louis
Field Is Group's 1st In Illinois
William Lamb Of The Post-Dispatch
August 12, 2002
The Edgar Renteria Field that the Cardinals shortstop dedicated at the Jackie Joyner-Kersee center last week is a shimmering expanse of green grass ringed by a bright yellow fence, a new scoreboard and a pair of covered dugouts.
The field is the sixth that the Cardinals Care organization has built or refurbished over the last two years and its first in Illinois.
The field is even more remarkable for what it replaced - a pair of baseball diamonds that at times were covered with so much litter that they were not suitable for play.
"They were substandard," said Dave Dorr, the center's marketing and communication director. "The fields were littered with trash and broken glass, and the grass was mowed only occasionally. And yet they served as the home fields for the East St. Louis (Senior) High School teams."
Next season, however, the East St. Louis Flyers will call the well-kept Edgar Renteria field home, along with members of the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Center and an adult team, the East St. Louis Colts.
If all goes according to schedule, the teams will have the option to play at night beneath lights that the center plans to install sometime next year.
The Edgar Renteria field was paid for with $200,000 from Cardinals Care, which gets money for such projects from Cardinals players, team owners and fans who chip in at Busch Stadium. Renteria donated an additional $75,000.
The field is the centerpiece of a collection of new playing fields, including one additional baseball diamond and two others that double as softball and Little League fields.
In addition, two football fields now under construction should be ready for use by fall. The idea, Dorr said, is to link all the fields with a lighted walking and jogging trail. Batting cages and restrooms also are in the works.
"There's room at the far corner, by the MetroLink, for two more fields," Dorr said, gazing eastward from the Renteria field's visiting-team dugout. "And they could be practice fields or soccer fields or whatever they want to do with them in the future. But this is going to be quite a complex."
The new fields, which eventually will cover about 34 of the center's 37 acres, are part of an ambitious $4.1 million project that the center is paying for with donations from individuals and groups, such as AmerenUE and the I Have a Dream Foundation.
Just as enthused were the students who were among the first to play on the new fields when they were dedicated on Thursday.
After Joyner-Kersee and Renteria threw out the ceremonial first pitches, the East St. Louis Junior Flyers defeated the Mascoutah Junior Indians, 2-1. "It invites people and baseball players to come here," said Keith Smith, 13, an eighth grade student at Clark Junior High School. "They'll see that it's not ugly or anything. It's a pretty nice place for kids to play in."
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