When the Jr. Rolling Twins play softball they check to make sure their parents -- and oncoming traffic -- are watching them. The wheelchair softball team has gotten used to cars buzzing in and out of the parking lot in Brooklyn Park where they practice.
"They see something is going on but they just don't care to stop or avoid going," said Mark Braun, 16. "It is a parking lot, but it is also a field that we are allowed to use."
Not only can all the cars gong in and out of the parking lot between the Community Activity Center and the city library disrupt practice, but the vehicles and the playing field's hard surface also can pose a very real danger.
"When you crash [onto the pavement] you kind of get scared and you're seeing [bodies and wheelchairs] fly into the air and into the gravel. I mean, I've done it myself a couple of times," Braun said.
With any luck, the Jr. Rolling Twins, who play in a Courage Center recreation program, could be headed for much more compatible digs. The Minnesota Twins are helping them out. The Twins are advocating for the Jr. Rolling Twins' need for a new field by competing for $200,000 from the Pepsi Refresh Project, which is giving away millions of dollars toward ideas that "refresh" communities. The project calls for Major League Baseball teams to promote an idea that benefits a community in some way. People vote online (www.mlb.com/pepsi) and the idea with the most votes wins the money. The Twins are competing against 14 other Major League Baseball teams, whose ideas include building community parks, teaching young people about cancer and planting an urban garden to feed the poor. In the Twins' case, that idea is a new ballpark for the Jr. Rolling Twins.
"I think the great thing the Twin Cities has over other cities is that it is more of a tighter- knit community where people get on board to support something like this,"said Mike Bauler, the Courage Center recreation coordinator for the team.
A new field could do wonders for the team, providing benches, awnings, a scoreboard and fencing -- not to mention a dugout. Then players wouldn't have to deal with the parking lot's uneven ground, the gravel that gets caught in their wheels and cracked pavement, to say nothing of the traffic and hard pavement hazards.
"There are kids who don't have the ability to move their legs, so when they fall they have to wait for assistance," Braun said. "On a rubberized or specialized field they could probably do it themselves because the field is set up to help them get up."
