Community Clean Up Day

Ocean team members participated in Stockton University’s Community Clean Up Day.  With hundreds of volunteers setting out throughout the city to begin the clean up, the Ocean team settled into sprucing up Pete Pallitto Field.  This baseball field has special meaning for one of our very own team members, Pete Pallitto, Jr.          

Atlantic City, circa March 1965, there was an abandoned softball field at Sovereign Avenue and the bay; an open field with a pitcher’s mound and home plate being used as an adult softball league. It’s a location that gets passed by hundreds of motorists daily on their commute to or from work. One of those motorists was Pete Pallitto, an A.C. businessperson and visionary.  Pete had a young family of two boys ages 5 – 7 and realizing summer was fast approaching with no playground facilities to occupy his two young sons’ time, he had a vision to utilize the abandoned field for a baseball / playground facility.

After some research, Pallitto found out the park was owned by the city. Pallitto, being a neighbor of Atlantic City Mayor Richard Jackson who also had two young boys, figured it would be an easy sell to the mayor for development of that abandoned field. Pallitto’ s hunch paid off; Mayor Jackson embraced the idea wholeheartedly with the stipulation of a dollar management fee and the city maintain control of park.  With the green light from the mayor, Pallitto agreed to spearhead the project. Now, Pallitto sitting with nothing more than a dirt lot with a pitcher’s mound and home plate, started to wonder what he had gotten himself into.

Pallitto owning numerous businesses in the city, started to spread the word of his idea among fellow business leaders and the city neighborhoods with anticipated interest being embraced for his idea. With adult volunteers and Pallitto at the helm, a Board of Directors was elected and The Chelsea Little League was born. Back in the sixty’s, Atlantic City was a working-class city, with no shortage of craftsman and laborers who were more than willing to volunteer their time and effort to construct a ballfield and playground for their children to play.

Now with the field and labor in place, the remaining hurdle to overcome was financing. Pallitto started thinking that if he sold advertising and team sponsorships it would at least get the project off the ground. Pallitto, in his persistent way, approached his fellow business owners, convincing them that outfield fence advertising and team sponsorship was nothing more than a plus for their business. Response was overwhelming, and in the summer of 1965 Chelsea Little League with a 4-foot-high plywood fence, wooden scoreboard and construction trailer as a clubhouse and concession stand (with Pallitto’ s wife selling hot dogs from a crock pot and boxes of Cracker Jack) fielded six teams, with 15 children per team.

With each passing season, construction and Improvements were implemented with over three hundred children in the seventy’s enrolled in Little League, spending their summers enjoying America’s pastime.  In 1991, the field was officially named, Pete Pallitto Field, to celebrate the man who had a dream and the determination to bring something special to the kids and residents of Atlantic City.

Ocean and its team members were pleased to be a part of not only the Community Clean Up but also to honor Pete Pallitto for his vision and contributions in the development of a baseball field that has been enjoyed by so many since the first games in 1965.  Thanks, Pete!