CALABASAS : Pony League Players Break In New Fields

Young baseballers in the Agoura area have gotten the payoff pitch--four newly completed fields paid for with more than $300,000 from candy sales, donations and other sources.

The Agoura Pony Baseball league fields, built on 11 acres next to the Lupin Hill Elementary School in Calabasas, provide much-needed playing space for the 7- to 14-year-old sluggers, who had been bouncing from field to field with nowhere to call home.

Three of the four were used for the first full days of play this weekend, about halfway through the league’s 10-week season.

Before the fields were built, the pony leaguers had to compete for limited space with softball, adult baseball and soccer, said Bruce Beck, a league board member. “We’re trying to develop a place for kids to congregate,” Beck said. “Here’s a facility where kids can not only play, but they can watch their friends play without having to get in the car and drive to some other field.”

During the regular season, games will be held in the early evenings on weekdays and all day on weekends, Beck said. The league hopes to rent the space to tournament organizers and others the rest of the year, he said.

The fields eventually will include a snack bar and electronic scoreboards. They were built after the league’s 950 players and others brought in $17,000 from chocolate bar sales and more than $170,000 in donations and free labor. The league’s coffers were tapped for about $100,000 more.

Although the new fields may allow the league to accept more players and offer more games, the number of baseball facilities in the Agoura and Calabasas area is still too few for the hugely popular sport, Beck said. “The facility makes a dent, but it still doesn’t cure all the problems of finding a field,” Beck said. “So we’re still looking for more fields.”