VALLEY HAD ITS OWN FIELD OF DREAMS.Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY Dennis McCarthy may refer to:
As far as youth baseball fields go, Marks Field wasn't much. Just an the old cow pasture pasture, land used for grazing livestock. Land unsuited for cultivation, e.g., hilly or stony land, may be used as pasture. Tilled land and meadow may be pastured after the crops are removed. behind a converted chicken coop COOP See Banks for Cooperatives (COOP). on Addison Street in Van Nuys, where the Marks family lived in 1946. There was no grass on the field. Just a lot of dirt and rocks. But to the neighborhood kids - kids like future Hall of Fame pitcher Don Drysdale Because it was their first. ``There was no Little League yet, no youth baseball fields in every community like there are now,'' says Cassidy, who retired from CSUN in 1996. ``There was only Marks Field for kids in the Valley who wanted to play organized baseball.'' A cow pasture that Harold and Mary Marks turned into a ballfield so their sons, Ned and Gene, could play organized baseball with the other kids in Van Nuys. A ``paradise for boys,'' Valley Times sports columnist columnist, the writer of an essay appearing regularly in a newspaper or periodical, usually under a constant heading. Although originally humorous, the column in many cases has supplanted the editorial for authoritative opinions on world problems. Claude Newman called it back in 1947, when he threw his support behind the fledgling eight-team Valley Junior Baseball League. ``No place in this part of the country will you find a league of this type - a circuit formed for boys between the ages of 10 and 14,'' Newman wrote. ``The league must play its game on private property, Marks Field, because there are no other baseball diamonds available for such things.'' It's all in the scrapbook A Macintosh disk file that holds frequently used text and graphics objects, such as a company letterhead. Contrast with "clipboard," which is reserved memory that holds data only for the current session. Mary Marks left her sons. Yellowed pages of newspaper clippings, box scores, baseball photographs and local sports columns that detail the earliest days of organized youth baseball in the Valley. They don't tell you the full story, though. For that, you have to sit down with 68-year-old Ned Marks, and have him take you back to when he was 10. His family had fallen on such hard times that they had to move into a renovated chicken coop behind the main house in the 13000 block of Addison Street in Van Nuys. ``A friend of dad's, Buzz Whidden, owned a big, sprawling piece of ranch ranch, large farm devoted chiefly to raising and breeding cattle, horses, sheep, and goats. The cattle ranch was introduced from Latin America to Texas and the plains of the W United States and Canada. property on Addison Street with barns and big chicken coops in back. He told dad he could renovate one of the coops and move his family in there if he wanted. ``It was 700, maybe 800 square feet. Dad put in a toilet and dug a cesspool cesspool: see septic tank. . My brother Gene and I shared a small bedroom, and Dad and Mom had another. There was a small front room and kitchen. That was it. ``We lived there for about five years,'' Ned said. ``Some of the happiest times of my life were spent in that converted chicken coop. ``A lot of the neighborhood kids hung out back there because there was so much room to play. One day my dad asked Buzz if he minded if he built a baseball field out back. Buzz told him to go ahead.'' Harold Marks Harold Marks (23 February 1914 - 28 March 2005) was a British educationalist who worked in and for adult and post-school education. Harold Marks was born in London and educated at Caterham school, University College, Oxford (BA in Modern Greats), and Wesleyan University, made a metal dragger and hooked hooked adverb Addicted it on the rear bumper of his old Plymouth. Then he'd drive around the 1 1/2-acre lot for hours, smoothing out the dirt, while Mary and the boys cleared the rocks. ``When Dad was back working again, Mom would drag and chalk the field so we could play,'' Ned said. Pretty soon, word spread that there was a baseball field for kids being built on an old cow pasture over on Addison Street, right next to the cornfield. Scotty Drysdale brought his young son, Don, over to play. He wound up staying to help Harold coach the team and start the fledgling Valley Junior Baseball League. They even got the neighborhood paperboy to sign up and play. ``I'd deliver my paper route, then go play baseball,'' Cassidy said. ``During the summertime, I halfway lived at Marks Field. Harold and Mary poured their hearts into that field for us kids.'' After the games on weekends, Mary would put out a spread of chicken and corn from the local fields for all the players and their parents. Marks Field had become the best place to spend a lazy summer afternoon watching baseball in the Valley, Newman wrote in his sports column. By 1950, the league had added fields and teams in the Valley from as far away as Canoga Park - then the last bastion of civilization civilization, culture with a relatively high degree of elaboration and technical development. The term civilization also designates that complex of cultural elements that first appeared in human history between 8,000 and 6,000 years ago. heading west to Thousand Oaks Thousand Oaks, residential city (1990 pop. 104,352), Ventura co., S Calif., in a farm area; inc. 1964. Avocados, citrus, vegetables, strawberries, and nursery products are grown. . ``Mom would take our entire team to Canoga Park in her car,'' Ned said, laughing. ``She'd cram seven or eight of us inside, then pop the trunk A communications channel between two points. It generally refers to a high-bandwidth, fiber-optic line between telephone switching centers (central offices). Telephone "trunks" handle thousands of simultaneous voice and data signals, whereas telephone "lines" are the wires from the so three or four more could sit back there.'' By the mid-'50s, even the popular Marks Field could not stand up to the sprawl of tract homes being built in the Valley. ``The field kind of died a natural death, and we moved on,'' said Ned, whose brief professional baseball pitching career was cut short by an arm injury. ``Dad got a letter from Little League officials in Williamsport, saying they had heard about his league, and wondered if he wanted to head the league they were starting out here.'' Harold Marks said thanks, but no thanks. His boys were growing up and moving on now. Ned, the youngest, had just graduated from North Hollywood High
Besides, he was too busy building custom homes, and making up for all those years his family had lived on hard times. Still, he and Mary had talked about it and agreed. They wouldn't give up one day of their lives together with the boys in that converted old chicken coop with the baseball field out back for the nicest home in the Valley. Dennis McCarthy, (818) 713-3749 dennis.mccarthy(at)dailynews.com CAPTION(S): 2 photos Photo: (1 -- 2) Ned Marks holds an old photo of kids on Marks Field, a field put next to cornfields in Van Nuys in 1946 for Valley kids to play baseball. The picture includes Hall of Fame pitcher Don Drysdale, third from left on the bottom row. Harold and Mary Marks turned the old cow pasture into a ballfield so their sons, Ned and Gene, could play organized baseball with the other kids. Tina Burch/Staff Photographer |
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