RIP Edgewood, you were loved.
From the KVKL website’s blog:
As many of you probably heard, the police were called to Edgewood on Sunday. The complaint was due to urination on someone’s property, but the officer also discussed noise and open containers. As we understand it, this was one of multiple complaints they have received this season. Since it seems that some do not want us there, Kaw Valley Kickball has decided to discontinue our use of Edgewood until further notice. We would also ask that you not use the field for practices and scrimmages. To avoid wearing out our welcome on the other grassies, I strongly encourage you to reserve a field for your practices. Here’s the link for doing so: http://www.lawrenceks.org/lprd/webenroll.
This is a good time to remind ourselves that our games take place in the middle of neighborhoods, so we need to behave as guests while we’re there. Please avoid urinating in yards, keep the volume low on your boombox, pick up your trash and cigarette butts, drive the speed limit, and don’t flaunt your beverages. The police have never shown any desire to crackdown on our league, so the ball’s in our court to avoid future incidents.
It is unfortunate that people from the very community the Kaw Valley Kickball League enthusiastically seeks to support and promote have turned against us, but in their defense public urination is sort of gross. As a long time defender of grass, I feel as if I should be more upset about the end of Edgewood, but I believe the field’s flaws were becoming less of a quirky addition to the game and more of a nuisance. I’m specifically talking about the extremely short fence in left field (less than 160 ft from home base), the sunken bases, and the warped foul line along the hill in right field. The short fence hinders the ability of outfielders to properly defend long high kicks, the sunken bases make aggressive running extremely difficult, and the foul lines make consistent calls by the refs impossible. I still feel like South Park is the ideal kickball field, but I’ve grown to love the consistency of dirt. Sad times as we see another grass field bite the dust. Water Tower Park was the first place I played for the KVKL, and will forever be one of my favorite fields (though it is just as odd of a grass field as Edgewood), I’m happy to still see it in use this year. I hope we can hold onto grass for as long as possible, but the end of Edgewood makes sense to me.
Your friend,
Coach Billy Gay Cyrus