A Diamond in the Front Yard

By William Wan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 20, 2008

It is the classic portrait of American fatherhood: Dad playing catch with his kid in the front yard.

But it wasn't enough for Jim Scardina. No, he took the idea and launched it as far as he could imagine -- past the bases, past the outfield, all the way to the fences.

Now, his entire front yard is a baseball field. With dugouts, bleachers, even a concession stand.

Piece by piece during the past 10 years, Scardina has built the field from scratch, to the astonishment of his neighbors, the disapproval of his wife and the delight of his son.

On game days, Joe Scardina, 19 and playing in a summer league, simply rolls out of bed, pulls on his uniform and steps out the door onto the outfield.

"I'm sure there's a lot of people who think I'm crazy," Jim Scardina said on a hot day as he prepared the infield for another summer season. "But there's also probably a lot of baseball fanatics out there who think it's pretty cool."

And as his son has grown from Little League to high school to college ball, Scardina has expanded the field. These days, to visit his house in Millersville in Anne Arundel County, you must first drive the entire length of the baseball diamond and walk along the outfield fence to reach his door.

His visitors bring up the "Field of Dreams" thing a lot. ("Everybody likes to think it's like what happened in the movie, but it wasn't really like that," Scardina said.) Others prefer to see it as a heartwarming symbol of a father's love, but that's not quite the whole truth either. Just try to bring up that father-son stuff and Scardina, a plumber and a bear of man at 48, is likely to change the subject.

"Look at this dirt," he says abruptly, crouching down. "This is what good dirt feels like."

Scardina takes comfort in such tangible details -- in figuring out the right and wrong way to do things.

Figuring out the dirt took a while. Too sandy, and the infield turns into a big dust bowl. Too hard, and it kills the players' legs when they slide into bases. Too much clay, and it takes forever to dry after a rainstorm.

Ask him why he built the field, and you'll get a short, perfunctory answer. But ask him what it takes to keep the field in shape, and he'll go on about the intricacies of outfield grass, the different dragging patterns needed to even out the infield, the crucial role of clay for firm ground underneath the batter's box.

All that knowledge is even more surprising given the fact that until his son started playing baseball, Scardina knew little about the sport.

He had done some water skiing growing up in Glen Burnie, and he played youth football but never baseball. So when Joe started to play at age 7, Scardina drove him to games and hung around his coaches. At home, he would work with Joe on his throw and his swing.

Pretty soon, though, he ran out of things to teach him, so he began managing his son's teams, handling the equipment and logistics. The most frustrating part of the job was finding a field to play on. The county fields were often crowded, and a few days of rain could wreak havoc on the summer season.

It was around this time that Scardina's father-in-law gave the family 10 acres in Millersville to build a home. Before construction even began on the house, Scardina's wife, Michelle, noticed some strange work being done on a large, flat section of land.

"I said, 'Uh, Jim, what's going on out there?' That's how I found out," she laughed. "I didn't like it. I was against it, but that's kind of how Jim is. He has these big ideas."

Said Joe: "I didn't think too much of it when I was real young. It was like, 'Yeah, there's a baseball field at our house.' But after a while, you realize this is what every kid wants. It's pretty cool."

It was a simple dirt field at first, something for Little League practice, Scardina told his wife and son. But already he was planning the next step.

He studied the best stadiums in the country. He watched major league games to pick up maintenance tips. Finally, when he felt ready, he called in the experts for advice.

Through contacts at the local batting cages, he reached Paul Zwaska, then head groundskeeper at Camden Yards in Baltimore. He persuaded Zwaska to come down and take a look.

"We walked the property and measured it out," Zwaska said. "Then he started talking about adding turf and irrigation, and I kept thinking, 'Is this guy really going to do this?' "

But it didn't stop with grass on the outfield. Scardina started working on accessories: A bathroom so players wouldn't have to hike all the way to the house. Bleachers and a concession stand for the kids.

Then one day, Michelle Scardina noticed a big shed being erected beside the house. At the time, they were using a tractor to mow the grass on their 10-acre lot. "A storage shed for the tractor, that's how he explained it," she said.

But within months, the tractor shed had somehow transformed into a $100,000 winter baseball training facility with a bathroom, shower, kitchen and office. Two batting cages were installed with 90-mph pitching machines. An area to the side served as a mini-infield for the boys to run drills.

Joe's teams started frequenting Scardina's house almost year-round -- for practice during spring, for amateur league games in summer and fall, for baseball camps and workouts in winter.

"It became something really special," Michelle Scardina said. "We got to meet other families and watched their boys grow up. We had sleepovers and pool parties and traveled together to games."

And all the while, Jim Scardina kept working on the field, installing underground irrigation, cutting corners around the bases to give it a distinctive look.

"It's like with my son, Joe, and his baseball. You keep going. It's never perfect, so you keep going," Scardina said.

Although he hadn't played baseball as a boy, he felt he understood his son's love for the sport. Scardina also had latched on to something early and pursued it through life. Only for him, it had been plumbing.

His grandfather had started the plumbing business from scratch. As a kid, Scardina would follow him around, carrying his tools for him. By age 12, Scardina was working for his grandfather, and by high school, he was spending his days on work study at the business.

For years, they worked together. Neither his father nor his uncles went into plumbing, so when his grandfather's health began to fail, Scardina inherited the company at age 24 and built it into a highly successful business.

The story about his grandfather is the closest Scardina comes to explaining why he really built the sprawling field. It has to do with family, pursuing passions, building something you can give to the next generation.

These days, the only time the Scardinas use the field is during summer, when Joe comes home from Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia, where he will be a junior this year. All summer long, he plays on an amateur league team, the Maryland Mets, with his former high school buddies.

Scardina and his son sometimes talk about what to do with the field once Joe finishes college. Although Joe still dreams of the minor leagues, he's realistic, pursuing a degree in business management.

They have talked about the possibility of Joe starting a business by using the field and winter workout shed to run junior baseball camps. It would be a way for his son to stay involved in baseball and for Scardina to pass on the field he has worked on for more than decade.

Amid the discussions, Scardina admits, a few new big ideas for the field have popped up. Installing lights, disguised as palm trees, so they can play into the night. Expanding the field just a few more feet to make it a full-fledged major-league-size field.

"I haven't mentioned it to my wife, but I've looked into all of it, believe me," Scardina said. "As long as Joe wants to keep playing baseball, I'll be out there working on the field."