RENSSELAERVILLE — When a disembodied voice tells Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come” — referring to the construction of a baseball field that would be home to a team of all-star players — it leaves out the possibility that the local park committee might have other ideas. 

Such is the case in Rensselaerville, where residents Travis Myhre and Tanya Skinner, who manage the adolescent travel-baseball team Hudson Valley Vengeance under their not-for-profit organization Northern Dutchess Fusion, have requested to use the Bayard Elsbree Memorial Park in Preston Hollow for practices and games but were denied by the Preston Hollow Park Committee. 

The committee could not be reached for more information about its decision.

“I’ve been in touch with the town supervisor,” Myhre told The Enterprise this week. “He’s looking into it further because I don’t believe he agrees with these kids being denied. I’m a taxpayer, and my family has been for 70 years, there.”

Myhre said his team is made up of eleven 13- and 14-year-olds from the Hilltowns and “wherever they want to come from,” adding that there are kids on the team from as far as Stanford, in Dutchess County. 

Travel baseball is more elite than Little League, where young athletes focus on foundational skills, and is a good opportunity for youngsters who have excelled beyond the basics and perhaps have an eye on a career in the game.

Games are played within a travel league, Myhre said — in this case, Eastern New York Travel Baseball — and players will travel throughout or even outside of the state to play other teams.

“With travel baseball,” Myhre said, “it’s much more competitive. A lot of kids enjoy it because you’re dealing with leading, stealing. It’s just like a major league game, and it teaches kids to be aggressive — to play to win … It’s at a much higher level than Little League.”

Myhre said that the dimensions of the baseball field at Bayard Elsbree is in line with the prescribed Major League dimensions, thanks to Bill Smith, who coaches the travel team that practices there. Smith could not immediately be reached. 

“He put a lot of time and money, with his own crew and equipment … into that field,” Myhre said. 

Myhre himself had done something similar at the baseball field in Westerlo, where his team used to practice, bringing in roughly $8,000 worth of dirt a few years ago, along with building a new dugout.

“We were in the town of Westerlo park for four years, and they were excellent to work with,” Myhre said. “They were more than happy that we were there because we were bringing people into the community.”

He said that the Westerlo field is still excellent for younger players who haven’t yet aged into the Major League dimensions, and that his not-for-profit would do what it can to help fund a travel league that takes kids in a younger age bracket. 

In addition to the Rensselaerville field being adequately sized, Myrhe said that it also has a concession stand that can be manned during games to offset umpire fees and other expenses. He said that a game can bring anywhere from 100 to 120 spectators. 

Overall, Myhre said his team would need the field for somewhere around 150 hours each season for practices and games, plus extra time for maintaining the field. This year’s season will start “towards the end of May and then we’ll play games from May until … a little after July,” he said, adding that the team will play home games at Berne-Knox-Westerlo.

At the Rensselaerville Town Board’s March 24 meeting, where the issue was lightly discussed as a matter of correspondence, Councilman Brian Wood said that he guesses the park committee’s denial is because Smith’s team already practices there, but that, if that’s true, he doesn’t know why Smith’s team can’t simply get priority scheduling. 

Continuing to speculate, he said, “They’re a volunteer board. They don’t want to have to be in a position where they have to deal with the headache of someone calling and complaining because so-and-so left the dugout a mess or someone didn’t put the bases away or something like that.”

 Supervisor John Dolce had, earlier in the meeting, read from the park deed and said his interpretation of it was that the park committee has final say over how the park is used. Wood pointed out that the park is funded by taxpayer money, which is controlled by the town — though he said he wasn’t advocating the withholding of funds.

Giving the final substantive word on the matter before the board turned its attention to other issues, Wood said that his “advice to the park committee is make it work or nobody plays. Period.”