There’s plenty of local history in Wiffle ball (it was invented up the road in Fairfield) and Greenwich land-use disputes (where to start?), but Vincent and Justin say they just wanted a place to play Wiffle ball. They got materials from a friend’s basement plus two big pieces of plywood being thrown away by a Shell station on East Putnam Avenue. They fished pallets out of Dumpsters and spent perhaps $200, mostly on green paint.But even before they were finished, things began to get complicated. They were told the neighbors had complained, the field was on town-owned land, they needed a permit to put up their field and it would probably have to come down.
This being Greenwich, they decided not to go quietly. They and/or parents alerted the local newspaper and politicians up to Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele of nearby Stamford. Soon they had everyone in town talking about it, with most of them seemingly put off by the notion that even a Wiffle ball field needs to enlist the armies of adult supervision and legalistic oversight.
“BACK before we lost our collective minds and began shrieking with horror at the thought of kids having fun on their own (as in not part of an official league or otherwise organized activity), they used to do things like find a vacant field, turn it into a makeshift diamond and spend glorious hours in the summer sun,” the local newspaper, Greenwich Time, wrote in an editorial in support of the youths on Wednesday.