Dallas celebrates grand reopening of Reverchon Park baseball field

Baseball at the iconic Reverchon Park in Dallas is happening again, continuing a legacy dating back more than a hundred years.

As the metroplex keeps growing and expanding, the City of Dallas and Dallas ISD decided to revive an old park for kids to play baseball.

This preservation project was the result of a public-private partnership.

A complete overhaul and renovation was done after the park went downhill and was nearly lost to developers who considered the land for apartments and other commercial ventures.

Dignitaries, city leaders and DISD administrators were on hand on Saturday for a celebration just before the home-field North Dallas High bulldogs and their opponents christened the park’s reopening.  

What they're saying:

Parks and recreation director, John Jenkins, was at the ribbon-cutting ceremony and talked about just how much the renovation means to the community.

"We renovated. We’re talking about steel that was put in here 70 years ago, and we were able to preserve and put in new steel, able to preserve the grandstand. We upgraded the ballfields, put in new irrigation, resodded, put in new fencing, new lighting, a new scoreboard," said Jenkins.

The former Dallas ISD superintendent, Michael Hinojosa, emphasized that it was the community that helped pull off this park reopening.

"It was almost snatched away from us until people spoke up and pulled this off, and it’s amazing," said Hinojosa.

The punctuation on it all were the faces and voices of history at the reveal for the park's reopening.

Local perspective:

Former players like Bo Weaver, who won a state high school baseball championship in 1965, were also in attendance.

"From 62 to 69. I played many, many games here at Reverchon," said Weaver. "I just walked the infield and stopped at the places where I played so many innings, shortstop and third base, just reminiscing about 50 years ago when I played. So, it's a touching, sentimental thing, yeah."