For years, this was impossible. Garfield’s baseball games, often at East Los Angeles College, were watched by just a smattering of parents in lawn chairs and no peers. There was never a home field, so students hardly ever made it to games, and community members such as Irene Maldonado who ran the snack bar at “home games” had to lug boxes of food to various parks around Los Angeles.
“Now we have this humongous crowd, which is so awesome,” Maldonado said Thursday night, out from a snack bar behind the home–plate fence that offered chili dogs and nachos. “Our kids don’t have to go anywhere. They’re here. It’s local. It’s our home, you know?”
As she spoke proudly Thursday afternoon in Garfield’s first game on their own campus, her son Elias roped a double into the gap. And Maldonado, getting to see her kid run the bases on a new home field, screamed at the top of her lungs: “Thatta boy!”
“So cool,” Maldonado said. “So awesome … you want to cry, because it’s like, it’s here. It’s finally here.”
Indeed, a long-awaited baseball diamond was finally completed at Garfield High, a multi-year construction project finished in a new jewel of community pride. And the Bulldogs’ opponent in their first home game: none other than the Roosevelt Rough Riders, a storied East Los Angeles Classic rivalry come to life on the baseball diamond.
After a pregame ceremony thundering with the horns of Garfield’s school band and a first pitch from principal Andres Favela, Garfield beat their crosstown rivals 3-1 in another win for the East L.A. community.
“The stars aligned,” Favela said.
For years, making the rounds to local parks and area high schools to try to cobble together baseball schedules was “exhausting,” athletic director Lorenzo Hernandez said. Coach Ruben Torres was tasked with fielding a competitive program in the upper divisions of the City Section that had to practice taking grounders on blacktops and grass.
“I don’t think anybody that doesn’t coach knows how frustrating that could be,” Torres said.
After continued efforts by Torres, former principal Mario Cantu and successor Favela, and a push from local Los Angeles Unified School District board member Monica Garica, plans for an on-campus field were put into motion in July 2020. The total cost of construction, Favela estimated, was more than $5 million.
To create proper space for the right-field fence, a large portion of one side of the football field’s bleachers was demolished. And it was there, in those now-phantom metal benches, where Garfield catcher Jose Rosas deposited a third-inning pitch for the first homer at the Bulldogs’ home field. Senior batterymate Cesar Ferrer added his name to history, becoming the first pitcher to notch a win in throwing a one-run beauty across 6 ⅔ innings.
“I did pretty good, huh?” Ferrer smiled to Rosas postgame, who laughed and nodded.
After a final strikeout, the Bulldog students – who’d tossed trash-talk back and forth with Roosevelt fans all game – let loose a brigade of confetti poppers. And Torres gathered his players in right field for a speech after the jubilation settled.
“We’re not gonna win ‘em all here,” Torres said. “But we’re gonna try.”