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Photograph by Paul Myers
Keith Simon, the president of the Saratoga Little League and a board member for the local PONY League, stands on Field One at Congress Springs Park where PONY games will be held this spring.
PONY League finds temporary home at Congress Springs Park
By Oakley Brooks
Saratoga teens competing in the PONY baseball league will finally have a home in the city at Congress Springs Park. At least for this season.
Snubbed by West Valley College, Saratoga High School and El Quito Park neighbors in their quest for a field, PONY (an acronym for "Protect Our Nation's Youth") leaders got a concession from the city council recently when it approved plans to convert Field One at Congress Springs into a combination PONY/Little League field. City and PONY officials said they hoped to have the field ready by Jan. 1, 2002.
The council approved the modification only after stipulating that the Congress Springs field would be a temporary solution.
"I'm willing to support this only if we continue to look for another solution," Councilwoman Ann Waltonsmith said Oct. 3 before she voted in favor of converting the Congress Springs field.
Preparing the field for 13- and 14-year-olds in PONY League involves moving home plate 50 feet farther back from the Highway 85 sound wall and installing seven more feet of netting above the wall. City and PONY officials say they believe that the modifications will prevent any balls from flying onto Highway 85.
That threat, along with the added space required by a PONY layout, had originally led the Congress Springs task force to leave a PONY field out of improvements it recommended to the city council in September 2000.
When the city approved the upgrade of fields and facilities at Congress Springs without a PONY field last year, officials committed to find a home for the league elsewhere in the city.
But negotiations broke down with West Valley College and Saratoga High School on accommodating a PONY layout--larger than a Little League field but smaller than a high school or college diamond.
El Quito Park neighbors were opposed to adding another permanent user group to the park.
And last month, as the early spring start of PONY play approached, Saratoga Parks and Recreation commissioners called on the city council to find a field for the league.
In a matter of weeks, Public Works Director John Cherbone hastily assembled a plan to put a PONY field back into Congress Springs, where the league had held games up until recent construction began this past spring.
Cherbone did not have time to run the proposal through the parks and recreation commission before bringing it to the council, although he said he discussed it with commissioners individually.
Commissioner Nick Seroff said before the council's vote Oct. 3 that placing the PONY field at Congress Springs--which will supplant a planned plaza area--would compromise the park's aesthetics.
"I feel that shoe-horning it into Congress Springs is too much of a compromise of the efforts of [the park's] task force," Seroff said, referring to the design group he served on.
But council members saw no other option Oct. 3 and approved the PONY plan unanimously.
"We're at a rock and a hard place and this is probably the best solution we're going to come up with," Councilman Stan Bogosian said.
Cherbone had estimated the cost of the improvements to be somewhere around $76,000 on Oct. 3. But discussion between Cherbone and Keith Simon, Saratoga Little League president and a PONY League board member, last week led to a reduced estimate. Simon said he thinks $60,000--half of what the two baseball leagues have pledged for Congress Springs--will cover modifications to Field One.
Simon said last week that Little League officials were ready to sign off on the changes. Because Saratogans in PONY League also compete in Los Altos, Sunnyvale and Cupertino, he said Little League would be able to work with PONY League's schedule.
Simon said the smaller Little League diamond would sit within the PONY diamond on the new field. The two leagues would use the same pitcher's mound, and bases from the diamond not in use would be pulled and the ground anchors covered with rubber caps.
Cherbone pledged Oct. 3 to bring a finalized plan back to the city council for a final review "before the first ball is hit" next spring.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
