Baseball is Back A Home Run for the Community Love is the most important thing in the world, But BASEBALL is pretty good, too.
– Yogi Berra For the love of the game… For the love of a whole new team of students… For the love of our community… Play ball!
I
n spring of 2022, the Bushnell Beacon men’s baseball team will be back in business. After a fifty-year layoff, a consortium of community leaders have come together to build a new baseball stadium in Springfield, with Beacon Baseball as the central player in the game.
It started with an honest pursuit of rented fields. There just weren’t enough of them in the Eugene and Springfield communities to make room for an NAIA level team. The pursuit led to various bare patches of ground, with the hope that a field of dreams could grow there. Finally, in a partnership between local businesses, Bushnell University, the Springfield School District, and a cluster of baseball-minded people, the deal came together as the Springfield Baseball Project. Hamlin Middle School in Springfield has a well-situated, under-used ballfield that needs artificial turf, dugouts, bleachers, and all the other amenities to become a 2,000 seat stadium to house the Beacons, the Springfield Drifters wood bat summer league team, and other competitive teams that use a regulation-sized field. (continued on pg. 20)
NCC Baseball Team, 1950
18 The Beacon / VENTURE FORWARD / Summer 2021
