Written by Jason Peters
Citizen staff
Peter Ghostkeeper stands in the middle of the toppled ticket booth at Spruce City Stadium. A vandal, or vandals, broke into the local ball park earlier this week. (Citizen photo by David Mah)
Dumb.
That’s the word Peter Ghostkeeper used to describe the act committed by an individual or group of individuals at Spruce City Stadium.
Sometime prior to Thursday afternoon, the local fastball park was vandalized. The most serious damage was inflicted on the ticket booth, located at the front entrance of the facility. The booth, built in advance of the 2006 Canadian senior men’s fastpitch championship, was tipped over and part of its roof was ripped away.
“What reason would there be for them to do that?” asked a frustrated Ghostkeeper, a Spruce City Men’s Fastball Association committee member. “The ball season’s over, the gates are all locked. The only way they could get in was to climb the fence.”
A fence, standing about eight feet high, protects the stadium grounds.
A plywood wall in the concession area was also torn down and part of its roof was damaged. Ghostkeeper said vandals also went to work at the park about a month ago.
“They tried to break into the concession by climbing the backstop,” he said. “And it seemed like they were hitting the door with a pick or something. They tried to get in there. They were unsuccessful, but they damaged the door. And those doors are 1,500 bucks apiece, maybe.
“Every year, we have a bit of something,” he added. “We had the storage shed (vandalized) too. We had a piece of plywood over the window and that was ripped off. There’s nothing in (the shed) but they tried to get in there. And on the other side of the storage shed, a couple years ago, they took off one of the boards for the wall.”
The RCMP attended the scene on Thursday but Ghostkeeper said there’s little the police can do.
“All they can do is just record it,” he said. “Their hands are tied. There’s no evidence, other than the ticket booth being pulverized.”
Ghostkeeper said the booth will be repaired.
“We’ll put it back up and we’ll have to do some fixing,” he said. “We’ll make it work. We figured that building was heavy enough to withstand a big wind so we didn’t bother chaining it to the fence. Now, we’ll have to do something.”