Score A Homerun With Creativity

By Ron Ciancutti

The retired farm town I grew up in was filled with characters and picturesque places that have been permanently ingrained in my mind. My wife often teases me that those experiences were right out of Mayberry in the fictional stories from The Andy Griffith Show. There was a rustic appeal to many events at that time before the world became so organized and predictable.

So when a collection of long-forgotten sandlot fields were being used by the Kiwanis summer baseball leagues, it was only fitting that citizens gathered there to watch the games and turn the field into a popular site. Over time, lights were added for night games, and the city’s famed resident (Lou Groza of the Cleveland Browns) was honored. The “Lou Groza Baseball Field” was commonly referred to as “Groza,” as in, “Hey, are you guys playing at Groza tonight?” It was like the Cleveland Indians’ Jacobs Field became known as the “Jake.”

As years passed, a picnic pavilion was built as well as a scorekeeper’s booth, which eventually hosted a megaphoned PA system. The batters playing on the central field (there were three fields in all) were announced, as well as the score at the end of each inning. This announcement was done because there was no scoreboard. We hadn’t come that far, you see.

But being from a community where you couldn’t even go for a walk without someone pulling over and saying, “Hey, Ronnie, you need a ride?” meant that if someone would have had access to a scoreboard, he would have simply put it up with the help of some friends, and it would have been accepted without question.

“Hey, where the heck did we get that scoreboard?”

“Beats me, but I’m glad to know it’s 6 to 3 in the bottom of the 7th inning.”

“Yeah, I suppose so.”

No Strings Attached
Speaking of scoreboards, when I was in the eighth grade, my baseball team travelled to another junior high to play an after-school game one Wednesday, and I noticed the school had a scoreboard that was simply a 25-foot x 10-foot piece of steel with innings enumerated on it and slots for numbers to be slid in under each inning. A couple of cheerleaders monitored the board and updated the score as it happened. It was a simple design—no electricity was required, the cheerleaders were a cute addition, and it looked like a solution for the Groza field. I also noticed an ad on the sign that urged the fans to drink a certain brand of soda pop. It was my first exposure to naming rights and the allure of getting something without truly “paying.”

During the next day at school I looked up the local soda-pop bottling company phone number and called from the school’s phone booth. I asked about the promotional scoreboard, and the guy who answered knew all about it. He began making arrangements (with 13-year-old me) to have it installed at our field. I’m guessing he made a little commission each time another scoreboard was placed. I kept asking about the “no-strings-attached” clause, and he assured me there would be no cost because it was free advertising for the company. I told my story to the college kid who organized the umpires each night, but he just shrugged. On the following Saturday I biked over to the field and watched workers pour concrete into two postholes. I told them my dad had suggested where they go, but I was lying—my dad didn’t even know what I was up to. They finished the job, handed me a box full of aluminum plates with numbers, and pulled out. The workers didn’t care who I was or who was in charge—it was 1973. The kid says it goes here, it must go here; what else would the kid be doing here?

Homegrown Miracle
That evening the scorekeeper/announcer arrived, and I showed him the board. He couldn’t get over it. He immediately dispatched his little sister and her tag-a-long friend to work the numbers, and by the time the night was over, he had made arrangements with the city engineer to have the board illuminated with a spotlight or two. That summer everyone delighted in the new scoreboard so much that the city was inspired to purchase an electronic one, which was mounted on two phone poles in left field. My board had become obsolete, so I made arrangements with the garbage-collection crew to cut the legs off the sign, strap it to the side of the city refuse truck, and drive it over to the junior high football field—another site that had few amenities yet a large weekly gathering for the eighth- and ninth-grade football games.

As class president, I met the truck in the parking lot and watched the crew lower the board into two pre-dug holes by the football field. My class officers and I painted over the whole sign with buckets of white paint donated by Griffin's Hardware Store, and before long we had converted the innings into quarters, and the guys in “shop” class cut out a new set of steel numbers to slide into the slots. Simply add a cheerleader or two to monitor the score and voila—a “home-grown-miracle” at another once-neglected field.

When I moved on to high school, the board was still in use. Some years later, I was going for an evening jog and noticed the field had been completely renovated, including an electronic scoreboard and lights that illuminated the whole field. I smiled, thinking that, again, the primitive steel board had probably initiated the improvements that had begun the following year.

A Firm No
During my college summers as an employee of the city recreation department, I asked the mayor’s office if the recreation crew could acquire its own truck instead of borrowing one from the parks maintenance crew every day.  The answer came back a firm “no.” Ever vigilant, I asked if I found a used unit and fixed it up, would the city pay for the parts and take title. He said yes to that, so my friends and I put about $100 into an old pickup truck that the father of a friend was trying to get out of his yard. We “Bondo-ed” all the rust, replaced the brake pads and plugs, and grinned from ear to ear as it rumbled back to life each morning.

In the following year I asked the mayor’s office for a replacement truck. This time, the mayor said yes since we already had a unit in the fleet (and frankly the mayor was probably looking for any way to get that rust bucket with the city logo on the door off the street). The new truck turned out to be a used one handed down from the sanitation department, but it was only a couple years old and much better than the one it was replacing.

Use What’s Available
So what’s the takeaway here? Why did I share these pointless stories? Well, let’s assess. Are there lessons? I can think of a few:

1.    Approach a problem with the blind ambition of a 13-year-old kid.

2.    Don’t spend a lot of time stopping to identify obstacles and problems; they may prevent your progress.

3.    If your intentions are clearly good—keep moving forward. Don't look for someone to say “stop.”

4.    Discern the difference between “no” and “not now.” Maybe the timing is off for what you’re asking.

5.    Find ways to modify your requests by using time as a difference maker. Note how the request for a new vehicle was flatly denied but quickly approved a year later when a replacement vehicle became available.

6.    Be sincere about your requests, so you can always point out that it will be for the “betterment” of all.

7.    Always remember that “well begun is half done.”

Psssst—40-some years later, I still apply many of these principles, and so far they’re still working. Folks, put your head down, push forward, damn the torpedoes, and get it done!

Ron Ciancutti has worked in the parks and recreation industry since he was 16 years old, covering everything from maintenance, operations, engineering, surveying, park management, design, planning, recreation, and finance. He holds a B.S. in Business from Bowling Green State University and an M.B.A. from Baldwin Wallace University. He has held his current position as Director of Procurement since 1990. He is not on Facebook, but he can be reached at ron@northstarpubs.com.