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 Stadium name for sale at Little League
Posted: Thursday August 26, 1999 10:26 PM
WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. (AP) -- The name of the stadium that will open for the 2001 Little League World Series is for sale -- not, however, to Gatorade, Nintendo and Foot Locker, to name a few. Little League Baseball kicked off a campaign Thursday to raise $15 million to complement $5 million already in the bank for projects including a stadium alongside Howard J. Lamade Stadium in Williamsport. Lamade, whose family published The Grit newspaper, owned the land where the field now sits. The new field will be needed for simultaneous games when the series expands to 16 teams in two years. A donor can have his or her name on it for $3 million. "The new stadium will not be named for a corporation. Other things we can talk about," said Howard G. Paster, chairman of the fundraising campaign and former legislative affairs director in President Clinton's administration. The money will also go toward fields and offices in Kutno, Poland and Waco, Texas, and boosting Little League programs in American cities. Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Palmer did a public service announcement, and former baseball commissioners Bowie Kuhn and Peter Ueberroth are on the board of the campaign. Someone can have their name on a new administration building in Williamsport for $1 million, a scoreboard for $250,000 and a small sporting goods mall near the stadiums for $200,000. Also up for grabs are Little League schools in Kutno ($3 million) and Waco ($2 million) and three fields in Poland at $150,000 each. Donors so far include the major league's charity wing, CNA Insurance and Myteam.com, an Internet sports business. A gift of $250,000 can start a Little League in a city where baseball, which hogs space, might have been pushed out by the iron rims of basketball. "The problem with baseball in the cities is not money, surprisingly enough," said W. Dwight Raiford, a Little League board member whose wife, Iris, founded the Harlem Little League in 1989. "It's space. You can imagine what the situation is like with real estate in midtown Manhattan. "Space is not a problem with basketball, but it takes a lot of commitment and work to get a baseball field built in a city," Raiford said. "We've made a lot of progress in carving fields out of city parks." Little Leagues have started in Los Angeles and Chicago in recent years. Harlem now has four fields and 52 leagues. "We have missed so many children within our own borders who want to play ball," Raiford said. Elsewhere, officials in Poland aggressively campaigned to make Kutno the center for youth baseball in Europe. The European final was played there this year at a park built out of a wheat field. "They wanted it bad enough," Little League spokesman Lance Van Auken said. "When the Iron Curtain came down, there was a desire to have things that were Western, and what is more Western than baseball." Europe will begin sending a team to the series in 2001. The continent's representatives are usually children of U.S. military dependents or Americans whose companies sent them to Europe. About one-third of the $20 million raised by Little League will be spent in Williamsport. Paster said he hopes to have $10 million by New Year's Day.
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