On a recent afternoon, two kids played basketball at the eastern end of North Harford Park, off Hamlet Avenue. At the other end, on Laurelton Avenue, two school buses slowed a stop and a dozen kids poured out. They milled around a nearby apartment complex for a while, teasing and chasing each other.
Sitting between the two scenes is a pair of vacant baseball fields - or what used to be baseball fields. Or, if Stephen Johnson and Shane Scott are successful in their mission, what will soon be baseball fields again.
"If you look around, the kids need something here," Johnson says, waving a hand over the dilapidated diamond. "That's why we're doing this. It's a labor of love."
As the fields sit now, grass grows past your ankles in the outfield, and in the infield, your feet sink deep into the mud. Litter is strewn, a beer bottle resting where the first-base coach should be. There's a giant puddle where a first baseman would stand and motorcycle tracks crisscrossing in every direction.
"It's just terrible," says Scott, who played here 20 years ago. "It's sad. It really is."
But wait just a second. This isn't another story about how children don't want to play baseball anymore. In fact, that doesn't seem to be the case at all in the neighborhoods surrounding North Harford Park.
When the final Little League game was played here in 2005, there were still 20 teams, 20 business sponsors and about 200 kids playing baseball. Baseball didn't fail here simply because kids rejected the game.
For more than 50 years, in fact, baseball at North Harford Park was a thriving community affair. This was one of the most successful leagues in the city.
On opening day each season, there was a parade that wound through the neighborhood streets. Their cleats click-clacking on the asphalt, kids proudly wore their stiff new gloves and hoisted banners advertising their team names. Families and neighbors pulled lawn chairs onto front porches, and everyone from local politicians to the Orioles Bird would show up.
"It was such a big event," Scott says.
Johnson, 44, also grew up on these fields. He bumped into an old coach last year and was surprised to learn the city-owned fields sit unused. He started asking around and came up only with more questions. There was a demand for baseball, neighbors told him, and there were these baseball fields, yet no games were being played - why?
Johnson and Scott teamed up and paid a visit to the city's Parks and Recreation Department, where they learned the league from their childhood didn't fold because of the kids. It was because of the adults.
The city oversees 11 other leagues, and these leagues depend on the efforts and time of volunteers. At North Harford Park, a couple of key volunteers left and no one stepped up to take their places. The city owns 129 fields and has more than 5,000 participants in its leagues. North Harford Little League is the only one that has closed, city officials say.
"I'm sure a lot of the kids who want to play baseball aren't missing out on the opportunity," says Bob Wall, the Parks and Recreation Department's division chief for adult and youth sports. "They just have to go to one of the neighboring communities."
That's not good enough for Johnson and Scott. "Kids should be able to ride their bicycles to the playing field, and they don't have that opportunity here," Scott says. "You shouldn't have a child riding a bicycle 8 or 10 miles to play Little League baseball. With the support in this community ... there's no reason Little League baseball can't be played here."
Johnson and Scott left their meeting determined to revive baseball at North Harford Park. They immediately started knocking on doors and circulating a petition. They got more than 200 signatures. They also got plenty of stories.
"People were ripping the pen from my hands," Johnson says. "They want baseball back so badly."
The city's on board, too.
"If they can find the interest and get the kids, we'd certainly help them out, as we do with all of our leagues," Wall says.
The hope now is that the city will assist with equipment and materials, which Wall says they're prepared to do. Scott says he already has recruited fellow Coast Guard members to help with the labor of fixing the fields.
The challenge now isn't finding kids who want to play the game, Johnson says; it's finding the adults who want to help.
"There were good people and good coaches when I was growing up," Johnson says, "and there's still people out there like that, and that's what I need to find. ... We'll get the ballplayers, but first we need to build a foundation of coaches and volunteers. That's what we need. Because once we get it back, I don't want to see it stop again."
rick.maese@baltsun.com