With opening day a month off, Little League plans to rebuild the facility.
The blaring of sirens, not the crunching of cleat-steps, reverberated off the walls of the scorekeeper’s booth at Rotary Field Sunday morning.
Inside burned the banners and trophies of seasons past, including those from Bainbridge Island All-Stars’ 2001 run to the Little League World Series.
But before it was set afire and before it bore the name “Ed’s Shed,” the booth that for 15 years sat behind the league’s largest diamond was a concept born of necessity, and will be again, said officials and the man after whom it was named.
“Coaches used to work out of their pickups,” said Ed Wiedenman, of youth baseball play in the years before the building existed. “They dragged all their gear around in bags. Those were the good old days. But there was obviously a need for some kind of facility.”
That facility took shape in the spring of 1992 when Wiedenman – at the time the father of several Little League players – and other volunteers donated time and money to build the two-story building behind the main baseball diamond at Rotary Field on Weaver Road.
On Sunday, the building was destroyed in a blaze that investigators are calling arson. The building remained standing but was so damaged structurally as to be considered a total loss.
It will be torn down in the coming weeks to make way for a new scorekeeper’s booth.
“They can burn it down, do whatever, but we’re going to rebuild,” Bainbridge Island Little League President Mike Sheehan said. “We’re going to play baseball and softball, and they can’t stop it.”
The blaze was reported by passersby around 7:05 a.m., and fire crews arrived to find heavy smoke pouring from the building. Flames breached the outside wall facing the baseball diamond before the fire was put out.
The building’s rough inside walls and stairs were badly burnt. Several batting helmets lay in ruin beside the field’s American flag, amid charred wood and foul puddled water on the floor.
“The bad feeling that people have is what hurts the most,” said Terry Lande, director of the Bainbridge Island Metropolitan Park and Recreation District, which owns and maintains the park and its fields. “They lost things that have a lot of Little League history to them.”
A day later, though, focus had already shifted to the rebuilding effort. A new Ed’s Shed will cost $65,000 and could take up to two months to build, officials determined at a meeting Monday night.
Sheehan said the league needs money, labor and materials for the project and has set up an account at all Kitsap Bank locations to accept donations.
A new scoreboard – needed because fire destroyed the control panel to the old one – will cost an additional $4,000.
The league is offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the person responsible for the fire.
That money had been earmarked by the league to pay for trophies and awards for players, whose season begins in a month.
The break-in and blaze were just the latest in an ongoing spate of vandalism at the park.
Ed’s Shed had already been extensively damaged in a break-in several days prior, Sheehan said. Earlier in the week, someone entered the upstairs area overlooking the diamond and destroyed trophies and other memorabilia.
Several dozen beer and liquor bottles were found strewn about, and evidence of small fires was found. No arrests have been made in that incident.
Even as investigators picked through the debris from Sunday’s fire, volunteers across the grounds were rebuilding the Rotary Field snack shack, badly damaged by vandals last fall.
The damage saddened players who gathered at the field, including Erin Kinney and Lauren Sheehan, both members of last year’s softball All-Star team.
“It’s not right – all that’s going to take money to replace,” said Sheehan, age 11, who ascribed the damage to “probably high schoolers who got drunk.”
Both girls lamented the loss of trophies and banners that commemorated years of youth play, including their own.
“It’s hard to get a trophy back,” said Kinney, age 12. “It doesn’t mean anything if you replace it, because it’s not the one you actually won.”
Mike Sheehan said the league hopes to bring Wiedenman, who now lives in Idaho, back to the island to throw out the first pitch to his grandson on Opening Day.
Wiedenman said he would donate to the rebuilding effort. His son Eric and his son-in-law Shane Butler, both of whom live on the island, plan to help with the project as well.
“It needs to be rebuilt,” Wiedenman said. “The kids need it.”
Staff writer Douglas Crist contributed to this report.
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Field of hopes
Anyone with information on the blaze that destroyed the Rotary Field scorekeeper’s booth, or on previous vandalism at the baseball field, is asked to call Bainbridge Police at 842-5211.
To help with the rebuilding effort, email m_sheehan1@comcast.net.
