A 10-year dream is about to come true.
Greg Hagen of Pima County Parks and Recreation has informed former BAJA Sporting Club president Chuck Catino that 50 acres dedicated for a recreational park site in Green Valley will include a four-field softball complex.
Catino has spearheaded an effort since 1997 to build a “Field of Dreams” in Green Valley.
Canoa Preserve Development partners David Bloum and Keith Holben announced last summer their intent to dedicate the 50-acre parcel to Parks and Recreation for a community park.
Located in the northwest corner of their new residential building project along South Camino de la Canoa off White House Canyon Road, just southwest of Continental School, the concept plan calls for a senior center, concession area, restrooms, picnic area, ramadas, a paved trail, dog park, basketball courts, and mesquite bosque in addition to the 21 acres designated to construct softball diamonds.
“We feel it is an amenity to our development and to the community,” Holben and Bloum said in a written statement.
“It's a win!” agreed Catino, who said he hopes to play on one of those fields by 2010.
This latest announcement represents the culmination of 10 years of filing and phoning and moving and shaking from Catino, a BAJA charter member whose tenacity and leadership have helped the organization grow from a handful of “born again jocks” to a prominent softball community that includes nearly 500 family memberships.
Almost from the time he and six others first formed the group, Catino has transferred that tenacity toward establishing a permanent softball home for more than 100 senior players who continue to pursue the sport they love.
“He saw all this open country and said, 'What am I gonna do here?'” recalls wife Mary Lu when they moved to Green Valley from Chicago 11 years ago.
“I wanted to do nothing,” Catino admits, but the former college second baseman who played semi-pro football and had tryouts with several major league teams, including the old St.. Louis Browns, Kansas City A’s, and Milwaukee Braves, viewed a senior softball game at Anamax Park and dusted off the old glove the next day.
Jim Click Ford sponsored two teams in 1996 (“the white and the red team”), Catino remembers.
Today, Arizona Family Restaurant, The Insurance Agency of Green Valley, Edward Jones Investment Co., Meredith's Hallmark Shop, Mark's Quality Water, Green Valley Lanes, Hickey Automotive, Baymont Inn, 3 1/2 Happy Barbers, and Triple Play join Click in sponsoring BAJA slow-pitch teams, some with players in their 80s.
“Now I'm older and pitching,” admits the grandfather of six, who at 71 still retains the boundless energy needed to stay on top of a project of this magnitude.
After 30 years negotiating union contracts and keeping up with transportation issues for trucking companies in the city with the big shoulders, Catino learned how to keep after politicians and talk to developers, and it has paid off for BAJA.
Those successes prompted some community leaders and GVR members to encourage him to run for the GVR board of directors on this month's ballot.
This site is the eighth and the final one, Catino hopes. Others over the years include the historic Canoa Ranch, the wastewater treatment facility, land behind the library, near the mine, at Sahuarita Park, near Pima CC and Continental School, all given consideration in Catino's long quest to find a home for senior softball here.
The funding still has to be worked out, of course.
“The BAJA complex is one of hundreds of projects for inclusion in the 2008 bond issue,” cautioned Tom Six, Board Advisory Committee member and a member of the subcommittee for Parks and Recreation, which will continue the review process in July that could result in the full committee's recommendation by April 2008 to the Pima County Board of Supervisors that the project be included on the ballot.
There are hundreds of requests that represent an estimated $820 million worth of projects, Six said, and this is just one of those under review.
The subcommittee has outlined economic, demographic, and social criteria regarding proposed projects, however, which presently include consideration of those that expand recreational opportunities and promote economic benefits.
One item specifically mentioned is the “addition of sports tournament sites,” which is exactly part of what Catino and his group have had in mind for the expansion of softball locally from the beginning.
Although it seems likely, according to Catino, that only two fields will become a more immediate reality, a final four-field complex with restrooms and concessions could easily lend itself to attracting softball tournaments to the area one day.
“It has our support,” said Parks and Recreation Program Manager Lauren Harvey, “as do all the project requests for improvements in recreation.”
“We want to get them ball fields as soon as possible,” Harvey said.
There is still much left to do, Catino admits, and that includes some more waiting and hoping, but patience is just another characteristic of the man whose “Field of Dreams” may be just around the corner.
Mike Touzeau is a freelance writer.