‘Pitch in for Parks’ cleanup

Nearly 100 players from the Bayside and Glen Oaks Little Leagues took the field at Tenney Park, but stealing bases and swatting line drives were not on the agenda.
Instead, the kids were getting the fields prepped for the coming season as part of the Parks Department’s annual “Pitch in for Parks” cleanup.
The Parks Department hopes the youngsters will develop a sense of stewardship over their fields once they have taken time to lay down the base lines and paint dugout benches.
At Tenney Park, 74th Avenue and 260th Street in Glen Oaks, so many kids showed up on Saturday, March 31 that the cleanup wrapped up an hour ahead of schedule.
Nine-year-old Matthew Trabold said he participates in the cleanup every year - raking leaves, packing them into bags, and smoothing over rough spots on the dirt portions of the baseball diamonds.
For Michael Tancredi, 9, the cleanup was his first, but he was optimistic that the effort would make a difference once the season started. “It’s much easier for the players to catch the balls when there are no holes or rocks in the way,” he said.