In baseball math, if each inning lasted a decade, Arlington’s Senter Park would be past its seventh-inning stretch. This season, it’s ready for a comeback.
You’d be hard-pressed to find much in Arlington that hasn’t changed since the ’50s, when the Optimist Club began leasing the park’s 3.2 acres for youth baseball fields. Back then, if a kid wanted to play in an organized league, this was the only game in town.
“We’ve had people tell us I remember having my first homerun out there,” said Cheryl Erickson, board member of the Arlington Optimist Club. “It has a lot of history.”
Thirteen years after the Optimist Club hosted its first league at Senter Park, the city of Arlington built Turnpike Stadium and gained a minor league baseball team. What followed were stadium additions, a stadium rename, a major league team, more additions, Globe Life Park and then Globe Life Field. Two miles south, the kids at Senter Park were still playing on the same fields and waiting in line for that one bathroom built 72 years ago.
Now, thanks to that major league team and all that comes with it, Senter Park will re-open as the MLB and Texas Rangers All-Star Legacy Park and Corey Seager Batting Cages.
Major League Baseball and the Texas Rangers Foundation is turfing both baseball fields. They’re also providing a scoreboard, dugouts, bullpens, fencing, drainage, new bleachers with shade for one field and adding shade and scorers’ tables to the other. The installation company will maintain the turf for eight years.
Rangers shortstop and World Series MVP Corey Seager and wife Mady are gifting new, lighted batting cages and a covered warm-up area.
The Optimist Club is renovating the bathrooms and concession stand.
“It was time for an update,” said Erickson. “The experience that everyone remembers and loves – for the next generation to enjoy it is what I’m most excited about.”
