From today's New York Times, a tale of young enthusiasm turned ugly. A group of teenagers in Greenwich, Connecticut, took a vacant lot and turned it into a Fenway-inspired Wiffle ball field. Industrious youngsters, diving deep into America's low impact past time, rather than passing their time in front of the tube. All is good right? Of course not:
But, alas, they had no idea just who would come — youthful Wiffle ball players, yes, but also angry neighbors and their lawyer, the police, the town nuisance officer and tree warden and other officials in all shapes and sizes. It turns out that one kid’s field of dreams is an adult’s dangerous nuisance, liability nightmare, inappropriate usurpation of green space, unpermitted special use or drag on property values, and their Wiffle-ball Fenway has become the talk of Greenwich and a suburban Rorschach test about youthful summers past and present.Good lord, what kind of town has a "nuisance officer"? You have to love the kids' reaction to the mess:
The regular players, mostly high school boys but including Tara Currivan, 15 (who swings a mean bat and brings lemonade to the field), and Scott Atkinson, 13, seem a little befuddled by the whole thing. “They think we’re a cult,” said Jeff Currivan, 17. “People think we should be home playing ‘Grand Theft Auto.’ ”As someone who occasionally spends Sunday mornings wandering around a parking lot dotted with pylons, I can relate to the cult comment.
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