Baseball Groups Voice Concern About Loss of Warner Field

August 10, 2026
• Warner Field is set to go offline in March 2028. 

Warner Field, one of Needham’s three 90-foot baseball diamonds, is expected to be taken offline for five years during construction of the Pollard Middle School project, a move local baseball organizations say will heavily impact the town’s baseball programs.

The diamond, located at DeFazio Park, will close in March 2028 with restoration expected to begin in October 2031. The field would return to playable condition in April 2032.

During the Select Board’s July 21 meeting, Dave Volante, the president of Needham Baseball & Softball, said “losing that field, [it] would be almost impossible for us to run programs even at half capacity of what we are now.”

Volante and Matthew Ching, commander of Needham’s American Legion Post 14, urged the Select Board to invest in improvements to the Memorial Field diamond, pointing out the ongoing flooding issues with the field.

According to Volante, Memorial can become unplayable after just a quarter inch of rain. Needham High School has regularly moved games to Warner Field when Memorial flooded.

When Warner goes offline, Volante said the town will essentially be left with one and a half 90-foot diamonds for five years, since Memorial is often not playable. Needham High School has three teams that use 90-foot diamonds each spring, while NBS fields about 6-8 teams, making field availability and scheduling a concern.

“Sharing two fields will make it really difficult,” Volante said. “Losing Warner, which has to be a staging, completely understood, but going down to just 1.5 fields when any kind of rain happens and we can’t use Memorial, we’re going to have a lot of kids sitting at home, which is unfortunate.”

During a July Park and Recreation Commission meeting, member Cynthia Chastin acknowledged the “major disruption” the project will have on the town’s baseball programs.

Ching also encouraged the board to consider partnering with local schools like Babson College or St. Sebastian’s School to provide additional playing space while Warner is not available.

Warner Field will be used as laydown space during construction of the project. The site will also house underground geothermal wells that will heat and cool the new school, which town officials have said will help reduce construction and operating costs.

Because the project involves the use of protected recreational land, the town has been preparing for the possibility that it could trigger the state’s Article 97 process. To prepare for that, town officials created a Memorandum of Agreement, outlining how Warner Field will be used and restored afterwards.

The MOA states that Warner Field “will be returned to its current use as a baseball field at the same or better quality than the conditions at the time of this agreement.”

The funding for the restoration is included in the Pollard project’s budget. In addition to redoing the playing surface and replacing the irrigation system, an ADA-accessible walkway will be created from Pollard through the MBTA tunnel to at least the outfield of the diamond.

The Park and Recreation Commission, Conservation Commission, Permanent Public Building Commission and School Committee all unanimously passed the MOA in meetings over the past few weeks. In their Aug. 3 meeting, the Select Board unanimously voted to execute the agreement, keeping the current project timeline on track.

Despite restoration plans in place, town baseball leagues are focused on how their programs will run without Warner.

“This is a pretty serious concern because we have a lot of kids playing,” Ching said. “We like to see the kids out, off the video games.” 

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