Thursday, May 12, 2005
Rochester Michigan family builds own field of dreams
For nearly a dozen years, Helene Lionas has known the knock.
"Many nights each summer the local kids knock on the door and ask if Mr. Lionas is home," she said, laughing because they ask for her husband, Jim, instead of her three sons. "They ask, 'Are we having a game tonight?' "
The game has been a Stoney Pointe subdivision fixture for more than a decade now, ever since the Lionas family moved to their current Rochester home and turned their backyard into a neighborhood field of dreams.
Untouched, it would be a 180-foot stretch of lonely grass. Instead, it's been reshaped into a Wiffle Ball diamond by a pair of lawn mowers, one riding and one walking.
The 30-foot basepaths, on-deck circle, and corner areas by third and first base are cut shorter than the rest of the diamond and most are marked by white spray paint and foul-line stripes when necessary.
There's a pitching rubber in the short-grass pitching circle, a warning track cut along the outfield edge and an electric scoreboard in center field, complete with a built-in television set, used either for showing the batters in the current game, a baseball movie or, as with one night last week, the 1984 World Series.
Last Wednesday's Wiffle Ball game was played at night, as most Lionas games are, and preceded Rochester's National Day of Prayer celebration for the second consecutive year. Jim Lionas is a member of the local National Day of Prayer committee and the game is tied into that event as a special-occasion game. Given the schedules of the Lionas boys -- Mike is 24 and lives in Shelby Township; John, 21, and Nick, 18, live with their parents -- nighttime is their main chance to continue the family tradition.
Jim Lionas ringed his yard with poled lights when the family moved in 12 years ago. The results were instant.
"The most unique thing is the draw," Mike Lionas said before last week's game. "The fact that people will come from all around just seeing the lights."
Next month, the family hopes to name the field in honor of U.S. Army Lt. Adam Malson, a regular player years ago in the Lionas backyard who died in February while serving in Iraq.
"Adam is our real hero," Jim Lionas said. "His life and death reminds us of the importance of the little things in life, like this field and what it does . . . in bringing people together to forget their troubles for just a few hours."
Wiffle Ball became a Lionas family religion in 1989, when Jim realized his lawn mower had multiple height settings for the grass. Experimenting, he cut a diamond in the grass behind the family's old house, then just a 60-foot lot in Rochester.
A birthday party for one of the boys inspired Jim to put in more amenities than just the basepaths and suddenly, it became the family's identity.
"Jim set it up, we left and returned to find a neighbor had filled it with pink flamingos, all wearing baseball hats," Helene recalled.
Once the family moved to the current house in 1993, the new neighbors flocked to bear witness and the summer games between the neighborhood kids took off.
"Watching the kids interact together, they have a great time doing this and they have a sense of what baseball is about," Jim Lionas said.
"Baseball brings people together. That's what it did in this neighborhood when we first moved here. Being an upscale neighborhood, we were concerned that people would not come out and play, so to speak. It was like that initially but when we turned on the lights, like they say in the movie, they will come," Lionas said of "Field of Dreams".
For last year's game before the National Day of Prayer, former major league pitcher and local event speaker Dave Dravecky came to watch and left impressed. This year's speaker, Jim Morris of "The Rookie" fame, came by last week and drew his own inspiration.
"This gives me some ideas -- I have an acre yard," said Morris, who lives in Texas and rose to the major leagues after the high school students he coached as an adult challenged him to try out. "This is what baseball's about. At the end of the day, it's just a game."
Unless you're in the Lionas backyard . . . then it's a spectacle.
From www.freep.com&nbs ¶ 7:18 PM
"Many nights each summer the local kids knock on the door and ask if Mr. Lionas is home," she said, laughing because they ask for her husband, Jim, instead of her three sons. "They ask, 'Are we having a game tonight?' "
The game has been a Stoney Pointe subdivision fixture for more than a decade now, ever since the Lionas family moved to their current Rochester home and turned their backyard into a neighborhood field of dreams.
Untouched, it would be a 180-foot stretch of lonely grass. Instead, it's been reshaped into a Wiffle Ball diamond by a pair of lawn mowers, one riding and one walking.
The 30-foot basepaths, on-deck circle, and corner areas by third and first base are cut shorter than the rest of the diamond and most are marked by white spray paint and foul-line stripes when necessary.
There's a pitching rubber in the short-grass pitching circle, a warning track cut along the outfield edge and an electric scoreboard in center field, complete with a built-in television set, used either for showing the batters in the current game, a baseball movie or, as with one night last week, the 1984 World Series.
Last Wednesday's Wiffle Ball game was played at night, as most Lionas games are, and preceded Rochester's National Day of Prayer celebration for the second consecutive year. Jim Lionas is a member of the local National Day of Prayer committee and the game is tied into that event as a special-occasion game. Given the schedules of the Lionas boys -- Mike is 24 and lives in Shelby Township; John, 21, and Nick, 18, live with their parents -- nighttime is their main chance to continue the family tradition.
Jim Lionas ringed his yard with poled lights when the family moved in 12 years ago. The results were instant.
"The most unique thing is the draw," Mike Lionas said before last week's game. "The fact that people will come from all around just seeing the lights."
Next month, the family hopes to name the field in honor of U.S. Army Lt. Adam Malson, a regular player years ago in the Lionas backyard who died in February while serving in Iraq.
"Adam is our real hero," Jim Lionas said. "His life and death reminds us of the importance of the little things in life, like this field and what it does . . . in bringing people together to forget their troubles for just a few hours."
Wiffle Ball became a Lionas family religion in 1989, when Jim realized his lawn mower had multiple height settings for the grass. Experimenting, he cut a diamond in the grass behind the family's old house, then just a 60-foot lot in Rochester.
A birthday party for one of the boys inspired Jim to put in more amenities than just the basepaths and suddenly, it became the family's identity.
"Jim set it up, we left and returned to find a neighbor had filled it with pink flamingos, all wearing baseball hats," Helene recalled.
Once the family moved to the current house in 1993, the new neighbors flocked to bear witness and the summer games between the neighborhood kids took off.
"Watching the kids interact together, they have a great time doing this and they have a sense of what baseball is about," Jim Lionas said.
"Baseball brings people together. That's what it did in this neighborhood when we first moved here. Being an upscale neighborhood, we were concerned that people would not come out and play, so to speak. It was like that initially but when we turned on the lights, like they say in the movie, they will come," Lionas said of "Field of Dreams".
For last year's game before the National Day of Prayer, former major league pitcher and local event speaker Dave Dravecky came to watch and left impressed. This year's speaker, Jim Morris of "The Rookie" fame, came by last week and drew his own inspiration.
"This gives me some ideas -- I have an acre yard," said Morris, who lives in Texas and rose to the major leagues after the high school students he coached as an adult challenged him to try out. "This is what baseball's about. At the end of the day, it's just a game."
Unless you're in the Lionas backyard . . . then it's a spectacle.
From www.freep.com&nbs ¶ 7:18 PM
