Baseball hopes to develop lands in Potters

Antigua Little League Baseball will be moving to develop a facility of its own after one community has graciously “allocated” lands to the growing sporting fraternity here.
President of the organisation, Adolfo Pena said the next step is to source both the funding and material needed to construct the playing area.
“The Potters community has allocated a piece of land for us so we can develop into a small baseball stadium,” he said. “We have the place already graded off and so we need to dig and build the diamond which takes a lot of sand or gut sand, which at the moment, we don’t have any. That is the start so that we can really have a place so that every day we can go there,” he said.
Currently, the national baseball team utilises Potters, the King George V Ground and the St Johnston’s ground as temporary training and playing facilities.
According to Pena, however, the sporting body also faces a transportation problem and he is looking towards the public for an answer.
“Most of the children live in Gray’s Farm, Villa and Cedar Grove and so it’s a big issue to get them on time and sometimes we have to pay a transport and so on, but we have been trying out best. If somebody has an old bus that’s not working and they want to donate it or sell it for a very good price then we can fix it so we can have transport because that is very important, the transport,” the president said.
Major League Baseball scout, Gregory Anthony Manuel, who was in Antigua during the country’s staging of the Little League World Series qualifying tournament earlier this month, reminded that the cost of equipment must also be taken into consideration.
“You need a lot of sponsors because baseball is expensive in terms of equipment as you would need bats, gloves, helmets. It is a big investment to start a baseball programme; it is not easy. It can be easy if you have a lot of commercials [sponsors], people with a lot of money to put into the programme,” the scout said.
The Antigua & Barbuda national team lost all three of their encounters in the tournament.