SWAMPSCOTT — Little League players can expect brand new dugouts at Phillips Park this spring, after Swampscott Little League and the Department of Public Works joined forces to build dugouts and fencing at the baseball diamond near Blocksidge Field.
According to Swampscott Little League Director Al Pica, the board voted to approve spending up to $70,000 for the purchase and installation of dugouts and fencing earlier in the year after years of planning. Pica said the benches, without any fencing to protect players from foul balls or overthrows, were a safety concern.
“The field was in really bad repair. It was a little bit of a safety issue in our view,” Pica said. “On each side of the field, where the dugouts would normally be, there were 1970s-era wood benches that were really not suitable for a team to congregate on.”
In 2022, the league put together a Capital Planning Committee, which helped identify ways to fund potential infrastructure improvements on Swampscott’s baseball fields. After agreeing that Phillips Park’s baseball diamond needed a facelift, the league began planning the project.
Since last year, the league has raised roughly $20,000 through fundraising events for the construction project. DPW Director Gino Cresta said his department pitched in roughly $2,500 in materials, and offered its services for the installation of modular dugouts.
“They (Swampscott Little League) were willing to contribute a significant financial cost to the project. I said I’d be more than willing to help out by providing the concrete and the labor,” Cresta said.
This week, DPW workers could be seen putting the final touches on the dugouts’ foundations. Cresta said he expects the dugouts to be complete by the end of next week. Pica said the fences, which will be constructed around the dugouts’ perimeters, should be installed before baseball season kicks off at the end of April.
“We really wanted to make sure that the finished product had an enclosure, which would be a fence. It’s not as if it’s going to be fully walled off to the street, so it’ll be sort of a cool look and in the summertime, it won’t be as hot either,” Pica said.
The dugout project’s completion aligns with the start of a new infrastructure project. On Tuesday, Pica said the Little League Board of Directors approved a roughly $25,000 project to resurface the softball field in an effort to make it more resistant to flooding.
“Whenever there is a rain event, even if it’s a modest rain event, like an inch of rain, the playing surface itself becomes like a lake,” Pica said.
Pica said the league has been in communication with Cresta to try to secure town and third-party resources for the softball-field project, with the hope of completing the field before the winter. He said he was grateful to the Town of Swampscott and the league for coming together to create something for the town’s youth athletes.
“We couldn’t deliver on the product and on the experience that we’d like to strive for without the cooperation and partnership of the DPW and people like Gino who also care just just as much as we do,” Pica said. “The proof is in the pudding because we’re starting to see these projects come to life and the kids in the community will benefit.”
