The son of Quebec baseball legend Georges Maranda deplores the lamentable state of the field that bears his father’s name in Lévis.
“What a disaster”, protests Denis Maranda, who spoke with The newspaper Tuesday.
Georges Maranda, who died in 2000, was the first player from the region to reach the major leagues in the 1960s with the San Francisco Giants and the Minnesota Twins. It was with the Twins that he wore number 47, like a certain Édouard Julien who made his debut with the same team two weeks ago. Georges Maranda is one of the very few Quebecers to have pitched more than 100 innings in the major leagues.
The Georges-Maranda Stadium is the largest baseball complex in Lévis, with four fields, including one that hosts a Midget AAA team.
The renovations that have been carried out there for a few years are superficial: a new scoreboard and the restoration of the dugouts for the players.
“And it was time [pour les abris], it looked like a chicken coop. Nobody went there anymore,” told me a baseball official in Lévis, who does not want to be named so as not to alienate the City.
Especially since he salutes the work of the municipal employees who struggle to maintain the land in order to keep it safe. But he needs more than that.
No Sens
“Let’s say it’s not inviting as a park. It no longer has any damn common sense, ”he says, referring in particular to the mounds, the grass and the delimitation between the infield and the field.
Photo provided by Denis Maranda
Denis Maranda, in 1967, with his father Georges, in the garage of the family home. The former Major League Baseball pitcher had transformed this room into a veritable little baseball museum.
If nothing changes, the Lévis field will quickly become one of the worst in the province for elite baseball.
For Denis Maranda, the situation is even more shocking, considering that his father was long involved in the development of minor baseball in Lévis after his career.
My father ‘is a great man […] which has enhanced the city of Lévis and the city of Quebec”, explains Mr. Maranda.
“In the stands, I would be afraid of getting a splinter, the grounds are obsolete,” he adds. “What’s the point of installing a recent scoreboard if the rest of the land is neglected?”
Denis Maranda says he wrote to Mayor Gilles Lehouillier.
“Young people need these fields to follow in the footsteps of Georges Maranda and Édouard Julien,” said Mr. Maranda, who believes that synthetic turf would be a great solution.
Synthetic grass?
While synthetic turf baseball fields are starting to spring up everywhere in Quebec, Lévis still does not have one. However, it has four synthetic turf soccer fields.
Safer, such a surface makes it possible above all to considerably increase the number of hours during which a site is usable.
Called to react, the City of Lévis indicates that a repair project for the stands is underway and that an intervention is to be expected for other elements of the stadium. “As for a synthetic surface, the analysis was requested from the appropriate teams,” explained Michel Thisdel, media relations management advisor for the City of Lévis. He also reminds that the stadium is more beautiful during the summer than on the photos presented and that work will be carried out for the preparation of the grounds for the opening of the season.