Posted on 07/21/2008 10:53:44 AM PDT by Graybeard58
The demolition of the makeshift Fenway Park, carved by young Whiffle-ball enthusiasts out of a vacant municipal lot in Greenwich, was inevitable. In contemporary America, the ball field, right down to the U.S. flag flying in the outfield, was as The New York Times described it: a "liability nightmare, inappropriate usurpation of green space, unpermitted special use (and) drag on property values."
Traffic and drainage were issues, too. So were the NIMBY neighbors whose first impulse upon arriving home from work to the sounds of kids playing outdoors — getting exercise, learning valuable life lessons, having old-fashioned, unsupervised fun and hurting no one — was to call their lawyer. No, in contemporary America, we have laws and codes and ordinances against such things. Against fun.
Today, it's national news when kids put down their video-game controllers, suspend their ceaseless text-messaging, back away from their computer keyboards and turn off their bedroom TV sets to invest themselves in a community project. But what took them three weeks to create out of nothing was reduced to nothing in minutes by the lawyers, the NIMBYs and the bureaucrats. What these kids did was illegal, you know, and frankly, they ought to be grateful they weren't arrested or sued. For being kids with ideas and initiative.
The town isn't entirely heartless. It will build them, no doubt at many times the cost of the makeshift Fenway, a legal Whiffle-ball field at the neighborhood elementary school. And until a kid breaks a leg sliding into second, everyone will pretend the new field doesn't present the same liability issues that led to the demolition of the illegal ball field. Still, it won't be the same. The new park, like youth sports, will carry that sterile, structured, supervised, suffocating nanny-state stamp.
Ping to a Republican-American Editorial.
If you want on or off this list, let me know.
these kids were so entheused about their achievement - and it WAS an achievement - the city had virtually abandoned the property. one wonders what sort of damping effect this would have upon these kids and their willingness to get involved in the future.
i hope the neighbors enjoy their victory because that lot is gonna be vacant once again, and will attract a less desireable crowd now, only those kids won’t be around anymore.
And this comes as a surprise to who?
I thought all the anti kids having fun cadre had been shipped off to Florida. They all seem to be here.
Typical leftists in rich areas.
It seems the purpose of the modern welfare state is to destroy every last vestige of individualism, innovation, initiative, risk-taking, pride, and dignity and replace them with a suffocating smog of uniformity, control, and collective obeisance.
If some homeless had squatted there they would still be there.
What is Whiffle-ball??
Two of my grands are outside playing under the lawn sprinkler right now. They asked my permission and I said, Sure you may..... but don’t get wet!”
I believe I’m gonna join them. Grampas know how to have fun too.
especially if they turned it into a drug haven, and it reeked of urine and garbage.
I hope that happens,and these prissy neighbors get to enjoy the whole experience.
Damn shame.
Played like base ball but with a hollow plastic ball with holes in it and a light weight plastic bat. Usually played by younger children.
I played organized ball from the time I was 5 until I graduated from high school. Not one experience in all that time measured up to the fun and joy of pick-up whiffle and/or cup ball games.
I was recently thinking that, when I was a kid — lo, these many years ago, almost every spat between kids eventually produced the line, “Yeah? It’s a free country, ya know!” I haven’t heard that in just ages — does anyone still say it? Used to hear it all the time . . . of course, it used to be truer . . .
Skinny, smiling kids all day long.
I live in Los Angeles, it was fun to take my kids up to the creek, Templin Hwy, and go trout fishing until we went to where the Mexicans were washing their kids diapers in the creek, they had evidently made this place home. Mind you, this is not just anyplace, you have to drive about 5 miles up a dead end road.
After that incident California went and made going to a national park a crime unless we had paid for a pass. Now when we are traveling thru a national park, we dare not stop for fear of getting a ticket and California has a lot of interesting places to stop. We have stopped at a few places but the ticket is always in our mind. California sucks, avoid it whenever possible.
Nowdays they require children to get an offroad vehicle license. As if some smuck cares more about the kids than their parents do.
KMA, I don’t know if this is an acronym but it should be.
Seems? No it is “the purpose of the modern welfare state is to destroy every last vestige of individualism, innovation, initiative, risk-taking, pride, and dignity”
Back in 1964 we used to skateboard in my friends empty swimming pool. One of the major skateboard dealers lived next door and gave us free skateboards. We had no idea that we were being taken advantaged of.
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