![\"Historic](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/tlw8ot80i1qqbgt3.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
TAMPA, Fla. – The field at St. Joseph’s Catholic School is ready for kids to play ball.<\/p>\n
What we know:<\/p>\n
The West Tampa <\/a>Little League got together with community leaders to restore this little league<\/a> field to its former glory.<\/p>\n Miguel Gonzalez is the community relationship board member for the West Tampa Little League.<\/p>\n “When I was a child and I played at West Tampa Little League, we also played baseball right here at the St. Joseph Field,” Gonzalez said.\u00a0“As a matter of fact, the St. Joseph’s Field was where everybody played baseball prior to West Tampa Little League’s inception.”<\/p>\n The backstory:<\/p>\n The league went looking for a new place to hold games when it outgrew its other facilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n Gonzalez said this field saw some famous ball players through the years.<\/p>\n “Some of the famous players that have played on this Little League field are Tony LaRusso, Lou Piniella, Dave Magadan, Tino Martinez and a host of many others that have gone pro,” Gonzalez said.<\/p>\n The restoration will allow students to have a better facility for recess\u00a0and physical education classes, Tony Crafa, the school principal, said.<\/p>\n “We have a long history of baseball at this school, going back to the 50s and 60s,” Crafa said. “And the field was in disrepair. So, I had a need to repair the field so that our kids could use it and play on it. So, it was just really a partnership that made sense for everyone involved.”<\/p>\n What they’re saying:<\/p>\n Crafa said the league approached him and handled the restoration.<\/p>\n “Teamwork both in West Tampa and with us as a school, is something we always want to instill in our students and give them an opportunity to do so on a beautiful baseball field like this is just very important,” Crafa said.\u00a0<\/p>\n “It’s exciting, especially with all the development going on in West Tampa, and this is just another exciting part of all of that and just making West Tampa a great place to work, play and live,” Marybeth Anglin, the president and CEO of the West Tampa Chamber of Commerce, said.<\/p>\n By the numbers:<\/p>\n This field will now be the home of many Tampa Little League t-ball games; a need as interest in the league explodes.<\/p>\n “Now we’re at a point where we’re nearly 400 children playing baseball at West Tampa Little League, so we’ve outgrown the original facility,” Gonzalez said.<\/p>\n And only time will tell if these players will join the ranks of the famous Tampa players to play on this diamond.<\/p>\n What we don’t know:<\/p>\n The group restored the outside of the concession stand. It’s unclear when the inside will be read for use.<\/p>\n The Source: Information in this story comes from interviews done by Fox 13’s Danielle Zulkosky.<\/p>\n Tampa<\/a>Sports<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. – The field at St. Joseph’s Catholic School is ready for kids to play ball. What…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227221,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[47,629,115,110,135,137,136,628],"class_list":["post-227220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-fl","tag-hillsborough","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/vlcsnap-2026-04-10-22h56m57s998.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/vlcsnap-2026-04-10-22h55m31s202.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/vlcsnap-2026-04-10-22h56m19s420.png\")
<\/p>\n