Field Of Schemes

A baseball field was stolen in East Harlem.

Don’t bother calling the police because they work for Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s City Hall, who helped pull off the heist.

You can find the details on page 3 of today’s Daily News. Juan Gonzalez – one of the few bright spots in a city that misses Jimmy Breslin – tells how East Harlem Little League lost their home on East 112th Street. City Hall said the field was needed for a new development project.

There is no development project worth a baseball field. A just society should be built on those words. But it’s been a long time since any justice seeped out of City Hall.

This is the City Hall that cut a deal to give Manhattan’s richest private schools prime-time use of the new baseball fields on Randall’s Island. The City Hall that allowed the Yankees to start construction on a new stadium without first replacing the parkland they are building on. The City Hall that can’t wait to give tax refunds to landlords while thousands of New Yorkers sleep in the streets. The City Hall that allowed a huge chunk of Queens to sit in the dark last summer.

And now another baseball field goes dark.

Maybe the East Harlem kids can get together with the kids in the South Bronx who play in Parking Lot 15 at the corner River Avenue and East 165th Street.

Pretty soon that will be the only baseball field left in the city.