A baseball field in Fairmount Park was flooded for a year. It illustrates the challenges of park maintenance.

The hole, positioned in front of the pitcher’s mound, appeared seemingly overnight last March and was relatively small. Yet the amount of water bubbling out of it and through the first baseline of a baseball field in East Fairmount Park left the diamond practically unserviceable all year.

“It was a swamp,” said David Semel, then-baseball coach of the Friends Select School baseball team, which uses the field in the spring for practice and games. He’s also the father to a current senior on the team.

“All of our home games were played at the opposing teams’ fields.”

The team made the best out of the situation practicing around the wet, dirt deposits and embracing a “road warrior” mentality. Sometimes they’d practice on the roof where the girls’ field hockey team plays.

Parents and students figured the source of the flood would eventually be tackled considering the field sits in one of the city’s marquee parks and is also used by residents.

Yet the leak at the diamond on 3800 Mount Pleasant Drive illustrates a much larger issue facing the city: The need for high-quality fields exceeds the supply.

With limited resources, Parks and Recreation has historically prioritized field maintenance based on usage. The department said it is also juggling the maintenance of recreation centers, more than 100 playgrounds, and the winterizing of the city’s 65 pools. The department has to balance routine maintenance, major repairs, long-term improvements, and the issues raised by community members. According to the department said “limited staffing, due to challenges in hiring skilled trades” and severe weather can affect the speed of work.

As this new season approached, Semel and other parents grew frustrated to see the giant puddle of water remain unaddressed and freezing over in colder weather. They had tried going to their Council member Jeffery Young and Parks and Recreation to no avail. Parents ultimately opted for a method of last resort to get answers: going to the media. Within days they had their answers.

Parks and Recreation attributed the flood to a small water main leak and said they have tried to make repairs twice, though the department did not say why these repairs didn’t take.

“The frozen ground has made repairs more challenging, but we’re working on a permanent fix and expect to complete the job within a week,” said a statement. “We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused to parents, students, and the community.”

Should the fix come when promised, it would be a satisfying ending for the groups that use that particular baseball diamond in East Fairmount Park.

It’s not always so simple.

Youth sports groups across the city have long called for major investments in athletic fields and courts, especially as teens have fewer places to hang out. The soda tax and philanthropic donations have aimed to fill the gaps in funding for parks as well as recreation centers. But the need remains as Parks continues to recover from relatively low investments dating back to the 2008 recession and a 20% budget cut in 2020.

According to the Trust for Public Lands (TPL), a nonprofit that annually scores park systems in the 100 most populated American cities, Philadelphia placed 32nd in the 2024 rankings. While the city had always scored highest in accessibility — 96% of residents live within a 10-minute walk of a park — its ranking is almost always hurt by how little it sees in per capita investment compared to other cities like Baltimore and Pittsburgh.

With the department’s attention needed in so many places, parks and fields often end up being regularly cared for by “friends of” groups or schools like Friends Select.

» READ MORE: One of Philly’s most historic baseball fields is in disarray. Neighborhood activists are asking for help.

Will Klein, parks research director for TPL, said most park systems are 90 to 95% funded by their local governments. In Philadelphia, he said only 70% of park funding comes from the city.

“When you’re consistently ranked as one of the bottom 20 of the 100 biggest cities in the country on investments in your maintenance team, it’s hard to do the job that you want to be able to do,” said Klein.

While Parks might be limited in the funding it has to work with, TPL vice president Owen Franklin said the cost of maintaining a public space appropriately over time is much more efficient than letting the deferred maintenance create the need to build a whole new park.

“We have under-prioritized maintenance for generations and have not developed the muscle and the funding discipline to provide for it,” said Franklin.

Klein and Owens say parks are viewed as a quality of life amenity or as nice to have, when they should be viewed as an important element of civic infrastructure. Officials need look no further than the pandemic years, when park usage across the country boomed.

Robert DiCicco, the parent of another senior on the Friends Select baseball team, said he’s “really, really grateful” a permanent fix is in the works but the flooded diamond snafu is bigger than Friends Select’s baseball team and where they practice. It’s about the community and how the city presents itself to the country, he said. A lifelong Philadelphian, DiCicco is tired of seeing national media taint the city’s big moments with old, tired narratives.

“It does kind of get your goat when out-of-towners come in on a national broadcast and they don’t paint the city in the best light and if we let us got into disrepair they’ve got more ammunition,” he said.