You're really lucky if you can spot it from Highway 99. At 55 mph, all you get
is a fleeting chance to peek through a narrow "window" between the aspens and
past the big earthen berm near Six Corners, just east of Sherwood.
But you'll be even luckier if you turn down the narrow gravel road there and
wind your way past the potato-storage barn and out onto the all-but-hidden lawn.
There, tucked into a mature filbert orchard, sits a perfectly manicured,
miniature baseball field.
With impossibly green grass, a brand-new backstop, gleaming white bases and a
neatly laid-out diamond.
All on private property.
And all for community use.
All it takes is a phone call to get permission. These days, the field gets
regular use by teams in Sherwood's Junior Baseball Organization and Tigard
Little League.
A sturdy man in baggy shorts is hitting fungo to the third-graders out in the
field, a sharp "ping" cutting the afternoon glow every time he swings the
aluminum bat into the grass-stained ball.
"OK, let's get one!" says Doug Morales of Sherwood, coach of the Bulldogs.
Then he pounds a hard groundball to the shortstop, who fields it cleanly and
whips it to first.
"Atta way!" Morales yells. "Two out."
On the sidelines, a group of Baseball Moms, armed with cold water and snacks,
watches the action.
"It was really nice of them to make this field," says Marianne Paul of
Newberg, whose son, Charlie, is playing third and whose husband, Eric, is an
assistant coach. "If we didn't have this field, we wouldn't have had a place to
practice."
The field -- make that "Tater Field" -- is the creation of Jeff Urbach, a
partner in Amstad Produce, which has been growing potatoes and onions in the
area for more than 50 years. Like one of Amstad's prized crops, Tater Field grew
from a seed.
"My kids started playing baseball a couple of years ago, and I was really
impressed with how the parents got involved," says Urbach, 38. "So to do my bit,
I converted the hayloft in my barn and put in a batting cage. That worked out so
well that we've now got five hitting stations and two pitching stations."
But Urbach wasn't done. He knew that if the youngsters could practice on an
infield somewhere, they'd improve quickly. Meanwhile, he knew that if he cleaned
up that messy oversized weed patch by the highway, it would make his father
happy.
So last fall, he and his brother, Skeeter, began clearing the land.
Next, they leveled it, fertilized it and planted it, with seed donated by
Western Farm Service of Hillsboro.
Then, they laid out an infield, where the kids could practice.
"It looked so good that we figured we needed a backstop and an outfield,
too," Urbach says.
And so, in April, Tater Field emerged. With kid-sized dimensions -- 290 feet
down the left-field line, 270 in right and 320 feet to dead center -- it is a
true field of dreams.
And sure enough, others were dreaming the same dream.
"You know the saying, 'Build it and they will come?' " Urbach asks. "Well,
for us it was Build It and They Will Call."
As soon as grass sprouted, the phone began ringing. It seems that Sherwood is
blessed with enough playing fields for its youth teams, but there is a definite
shortage of practice fields. As soon as word about Tater Field got out, Urbach
almost drowned in phone calls.
Meanwhile, Urbach and his brother have spent a lot of time and money
watering, mowing and trimming.
"I really don't know -- and I really don't want to know -- how much money
we've spent on this," Urbach says. "But let me put it this way: My wife wanted a
new car, and she's been really patient.
"It's just our way of giving something back."
Rick Bella's columns appear Mondays and Wednesdays. Contact
him at 503-294-5114 or at rickbella@news.oregonian.com. His columns and other
local columnists of The Oregonian can be found online at www.oregonlive.com/columnists
