Stadium in Limeport was their field of dreams

By Ernie Long
Of The Morning Call


The Limeport Stadium was like home to many people for many years.

Homer Fegely helped his father build the stadium and then played there for Limeport from about 1934-50.

He gives 35-40 hours a week to help keep up the stadium.

"Nobody has an idea how much work it is," he said. "It would really hurt me, I'll tell you that, if we were to lose it. When you give that much to a place, it's like a second home."

The association that owns the stadium is facing the sale of its property for unpaid school taxes.

Loss of the stadium "would be one of the biggest travesties of all time," said Bill Sandt, a longtime player for Limeport in the Tri-County League. "To this point, there hasn't seemed to be much action to save it, and it's scary. It's not just tragic from a player's standpoint, but it would break the hearts of a lot of diehard fans."

"We have new management in here now, and we can see the place turning around," said Paul Orben, current Limeport Athletic Association president. "But we're just so far behind that I'm afraid we're going to get into more trouble before we can get it turned around."

Cliff Koch, one of 27 members of the Stadium Committee, said, "We'd hate to see it go down the tubes and have a housing development put there or something. But that will not happen, believe me."

The Stadium Committee was formed in 1983 to help promote the 50th anniversary of the facility. The members decided to stick together and raised $39,000 for renovations that included lights and an electronic scoreboard. Now the committee runs the annual fund-raising dinner, oversees stadium operation and maintenance, and generally promotes amateur baseball in the area.

When asked about the stadium's problems, veteran Blue Mountain coach Ron "Punkin" Miller said, "It's a perfect spot for baseball. I don't know if this game helped, but I hope that enough people bought tickets, because if we lose this field, it's a tragedy.

"There's so much tradition in it. I mean, this looks like a scene out of 'Bull Durham' or 'Field of Dreams.' For us not to have this would be a shame."

Howard "Lefty" Fegely played first and second base for the Limeport Independents from 1914 to 1916 and, by 1924, gained complete financial control and was manager of the Limeport Milkmen. He helped organize the East Penn League in 1931 and was manager of his team for 19 years.

Howard Fegely built Limeport Stadium. The new facility was completed in 1936 for $20,000. According to Tom Fegely, Howard's grandson, his grandfather sold the facility to the Limeport Athletic Association in 1957 for $15,000.

"My grandfather put a lot of the townspeople to work in building the stadium during the Depression," Fegely said. "But, by the time the East Penn League folded around 1950, he just operated his dairy and didn't make money from baseball anymore. He blamed TV as being the ruination of Sunday baseball. But back then, that stadium really packed them in for Sunday outings. Often cars overflowed from the parking lot and lined the streets of town."

East Greenville defeated Limeport 8-1 on July 30, 1933, in the first game ever played at Limeport Stadium.

In 1938, manager Jimmy Wilson brought his Philadelphia Phillies to Limeport for an exhibition game against the East Penn All-Stars. Despite rain during the first seven innings, more than 2,000 fans stayed on. The Phillies won, 8-3.

Tom Fegely, the team's batboy from 1948 to 1951, recalled how concrete bleachers once lined the right-and left-field boundaries, and how there was a clump of trees into which an occasional hitter would belt a ball.

Currently, Limeport's Tri-County and Blue Mountain League baseball teams use Fegely Stadium as their home field. Southern Lehigh High School also rents the park for some of its home games, and various all-star and playoff games are held there throughout the year.



ernie.long@mcall.com

From The Morning Call -- August 3, 1989

Copyright © 1989, The Morning Call