By Michael Letendre

The Bristol Sports Hall of Fame will induct its Class of 2022 on November 18 from the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel and it should be a tremendous evening.

The induction class includes Clem J. Roy, the first ever baseball coach at Bristol Eastern.

Roy won 128 games as the mentor of the baseball program from 1960-1974 and helped the outfit take its first postseason steps.

Years later, the school honored its first coach by naming the baseball field after Roy.

It was a well deserved honor but I’m not sure what he’d think about the current state of the facility.

In terms of comparing other fields around the area, the baseball field on King Street is severely lacking in several key areas.

And as far as I’m concerned, it’s really ashame that Roy is going to be honored by our city with a field that just isn’t up to par.

But hopefully, that situation will change in the near future.

A fundraising effort could help in such an effort as the school is in need of several missing items, including dugouts.

But why does this fundraising effort have to happen in the first place?

Why weren’t dugouts installed at the field to begin with by the city?

The baseball field was ‘flipped’ several years ago (Bristol Central baseball coach Bunty Ray, who played in the outfield for Bristol Eastern from 1990-1994, fondly remembers playing in the outfield where the third base coaching box is now) but certain elements weren’t added when the facility was re-constructed.

Dugouts were one such omission.

It’s important to realize that dugouts are a necessary element to every scholastic baseball and softball field.

How many schools that Bristol visits, in terms of baseball for instance, don’t have dugouts?

The answer to that question is a big fat zero.  

Frankly, dugouts aren’t just a place to store equipment and gear for the athletes.

Players need to be able watch the game from a safe place and being so close to the action, foul balls can be extremely dangerous.

And what happens if a late spring day brings a rain or thunderstorm?

At Bristol Eastern, there is absolutely zero coverage for its baseball athletes, which can result in a dangerous situation.

But it’s more to it than that.

Dugouts serve more than just protection from the elements as it can also provide a buffer for players and coaches from unruly (and those crazy Bristol Eastern) fans, forming boundaries that Clem J. Roy Field doesn’t currently have.

It’s also a place where players can get feedback from teammates about an at-bat or a defensive situation – creating a bonding tool between the guys (or gals) and is considered tradition when playing the game of baseball.

In Bristol, these players go from, say Edgewood Little League – with dugouts – to play high school ball over at Eastern without those structures.

Dugouts are a necessity on a baseball field and aren’t just a luxury or for aesthetics.

Ask yourself this question when thinking about the need for dugouts over on King Street:

Doesn’t it seem silly that one public school in town (Bristol Central) has dugouts and fenced in fields while the other one (Bristol Eastern) does not?

And the lack of an outfield fence is a big problem at Eastern.

Of course, it comes down to available funds but in the town’s budget, the money needed for a fence around the field doesn’t seem to be currently available (it hasn’t been available since the construction, or reconstruction, of the field apparently…).

This isn’t s a new or unheard-of topic here in town and because of the lack of funds this time around, the fence project was put on hold once again.

Currently, the situation at Eastern is quite bizarre as there’s a fence – and small warning track – that starts in right field but as you go past the scoreboard, the fence abruptly ends.

It almost looks like sections of the border fence currently between the United States and Mexico.

And, like the Wild Wild West, there’s plenty of open country for what seems like miles in every direction.

The Bristol Board of Education is holding a finance meeting on September 14 where the fence project will be voted on.

If there’s not any action, what will the next step be?

Will there have to be fundraising efforts for both a fence and what turns into four dugouts for baseball and softball at Eastern instead?

That seems a bit extreme.

Bristol is a baseball city and getting us on par with all the other towns around Connecticut just seems the right thing to do.

Clem J. Roy spent his time, energy and effort in building the baseball program at BEHS and to honor that legacy, shouldn’t we get the field named after him up to standard?

If the city finally get these fields up to par, I promise to talk about something else.

Perhaps we can start talking about get a Caldor back to the city of Bristol…

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