Going, Going ... Gone!

This appeared June 11, 2006


This was supposed to be a column about the monstrosity township officials in West Goshen are attempting to pass off to the unsuspecting public as their latest "park" - that steel-caged nightmare motorists on Route 100 can view under construction just outside West Chester.

That is, if they can stand the sight of it without screaming and shielding their children's eyes, like you would a particularly grim traffic accident.

And it still is about that, in a way. But more, it's about backyard softball, shady summer evenings, hitting your first home run and an inevitable loss of innocence.

Oh yeah, and beer.

Back in the middle of the Reagan Era, I used to play softball in a coed league with colleagues from the Daily Local News and various friends. The league didn't have a field of its own, and many of the games were scattered across the county - Lionville, Embreeville, a lot across from Schramm's manufacturing plant on Virginia Avenue near Henderson High, wherever.

But the favorite place for all of us to play was a lot we called Ashbridge Field, located in the Green Hills Farm section of West Goshen on, appropriately enough, Ashbridge Road.

We affectionately nicknamed the place "The Bandbox," because of its relatively tiny dimensions. People who had never dreamed of ever being able to jack one over the fence looked at the field and started doing their best Babe Ruth imitation.

It wasn't a formal baseball field, really. I thought of it mostly as some guy's backyard.

Sure, it had a backstop and benches for the players, a few bleacher seats and cutouts for home plate and the bases. But it was a little lopsided and you had to park your car on the grass, and every once in a while a foul ball would find its way into the next-door neighbor's hedges and you'd have to go root around for the ball for 10 minutes or so while everybody else waited.

In other words, it was the perfect place to play a softball game on an August night, then spend 45 minutes replaying the game over a few cold beers as twilight came on.

I decided to visit the field recently for the first time in decades, my idea being to compare its informal glory with the new Park on Route 100. But to my dismay, Ashbridge is gone.

In its place is Richard C. Cloud Park - Mr. Cloud, I assume, being the guy who built the field in his backyard. Ashbridge had been taken over by West Goshen, and is now part of its Recreational Gulag.

As I pulled into the new macadam parking lot and stared in disbelief at the concrete block dugouts, steel fences and regulation baselines, I spotted with horror the ultimate symbol that the party was over for my Field of Dreams: A sign grandly proclaimed the field's "Rules and Regulations."

Closed at dusk. Crowds must register with township. No open burning. All goofing off prosecuted. And, most depressingly: "Alcoholic beverages are prohibited in the parks."

Driving away from the field, I remember President Reagan once saying something about government being the problem and not the solution. Never have I agreed with him more.

The only benefit I took away from the change? One of the rules of the field stated plainly:

"Golf is prohibited."