More than 1,000 kids hoping for holiday magic as Salvation Army issues Angel Tree reminder<\/a><\/p>\nFor decades, the league has served as a key outlet for young athletes \u2014 drawing strong community support in both attendance and funding.<\/p>\n
Todd Hunter Jr., who is representing the Oso Pony Baseball League, says the group has been an anchor in the lives of many young athletes. Now, after the city decided to end the league\u2019s lease at Paul Jones, he says members are unsure what comes next \u2014 especially since many have invested their own money into the field.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is turf and it was put in by this organization with their funds, so that the kids have a better experience,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Hunter says many organizations depend on the league to help smoothly run their events, and without the league\u2019s involvement, they worry the quality could suffer.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re not going to be here to run tournaments, we’re not going to be here to chalk the lines. We’re not going to be here to run concessions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Under the new lease, the city would take full responsibility for maintenance. And while officials did provide the league with a 30-day notice, Sergio Gonzalez, assistant director for Corpus Christi Parks and Recreation, says the city\u2019s reasoning for ending the agreement is to make the field more available for equal use.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the past 15-20 years all our fields have been under a long-term lease agreement with certain organizations. Under the city’s purview now the availability is there now for anybody to use our fields as long as it’s available online,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Because of the termination, the league will have to pack up all its equipment from the field\u2019s storage shed. Gonzalez says the city is prepared to take over operations.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome facilities we need to fix up and all that and get it up to par. It’s going to take time but now we have a dedicated team,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But Hunter says there are still too many unanswered questions.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’ve asked the city of they’d just renew the lease, renegotiate the lease, or really just give us an explanation of what’s going to happen with these fields that Oso people an organizations have put their heart and souls into,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For decades, the league has served as a key outlet for young athletes \u2014 drawing strong community support…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":{"0":"post-78272","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-corpus-christi","8":"tag-corpus-christi","9":"tag-corpus-christi-headlines","10":"tag-corpus-christi-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}