Diamonds in the Rough

Ronald Cortes

The Philadelphia Inquirer

Forget your Field of Dreams, your Fenway Park, your Camden Yards. In the urban tangle that is Philadelphia's softball field is where you find it. And you'll find it almost anywhere. These men and women of summer are happy just to be playing, whether it is in the spacious(and sometimes scraggly) reaches of Fairmount Park or the concrete claustrophobia of South Philadelphia. For them, and for those who come to watch, the charm is not the location, it's the game itself. As a neighbor watches after a player's child, two Hispanic women's teams play under the lights in North Philadelphia.

Ronald Cortes, "Diamonds in the Rough," in POYi Archive, Item #20611, http://archive.poy.org/items/show/20611 (accessed April 21, 2025).