There is a large dog, a mastiff, in one of the yards that abuts the fence in the outfield of the Pleasant Grove High baseball field. But for years, Vikings coach Darrin Henry said, it was the house next door that scared his players and ultimately produced a story with all the makings of the “The Sandlot.”
“Nobody wanted to hop that fence,” Henry recalls now with a chuckle.
The problem started when Henry’s son, Payton, started to take batting practice. On his way to becoming a catcher in the Milwaukee Brewers’ organization, Henry hit plenty of homers for the Vikings — much to the chagrin of the homeowner behind left field.
“No one ever really hit the ball over there in his yard before, but when Payton came through, he would put it over the fence a lot,” Darrin Henry says. “We didn’t know what to do. We had him hitting with wood bats, and it wasn’t working.”
A woman who lived there told the city council she had almost been hit in the face with a ball while pulling weeds, and that they had been forced to replace parts of their fence on multiple occasions. The property owners asked the city to do something and were told that signs would be posted telling players that they “were not to hit the ball out of the park.”
“… [T]his was clearly a mute plea,” the woman told the Pleasant Grove City Council in 2014, “since hitting the ball out of the park is the primary goal in baseball.”
So the baseballs kept coming — 85 in total, almost all of them from Payton. The man, Les Langford, had complained about the baseballs coming into his yard for years — and he knew who the culprit was.
“He was the coach’s son and the coach would sit there and pitch to him all day long,” Langford said. “I think he’d say, ‘I want you to hit that house over there’ and he would.”
Langford said he typically returned a few dozen balls to the school’s principal each year. He hopes the batch that most recently was delivered to the Henrys will be the last.
“The problem’s solved,” he said.
Henry’s short-term solution: telling his son to hit to the opposite field. Then during his son’s senior year in 2016, Henry said, the city built a taller fence and netting.
“Of course, the very first time Payton gets up there, he takes it over the net,” the father recalled.
But as Henry’s high school career came to an end, the couple apparently decided it was time to make amends and brought over a surprise for the family recently.
“His wife came over with a whole bucket of balls and said, ‘We’ve finally forgiven you,’” Henry said.
Payton Henry, who has been told he will move up in the Brewers’ organization after a solid season with Helena in the Pioneer League, posted a photo of the baseballs on his Twitter account Friday. Only one has been hit into the family’s backyard since he graduated.
“It ended up like ‘The Sandlot,’” his father said. “Now everyone’s friends.”
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