For the past few weeks, I have had the pleasure of watching my 9-year-old son and his teammates and friends play the country’s oldest past time — baseball.

Although not as fast-paced and exhausting as the recent basketball season that ended in March, baseball still sparks up not only the sense of pride, but also the excitement of getting to watch your child give it his or her all for the team.

The last few games I’ve been to have been at the Chelsea baseball fields located behind Chelsea High School. Although the three fields there are owned by the school district, they are maintained by the board of the Chelsea Summer League Association.

The painting of the facilities, stocking the concession stand and field maintenance, not to mention a new covered pavilion, are the responsibility of the board. And all of that takes money, some of which comes from concession sales and some from players’ registration fees.

But a large portion of it usually comes from gate admission to the many, many games played throughout the spring/summer season.

After watching my son catch his first pop fly in right field Thursday night, I overheard that the thousands usually collected through the gate won’t be present this year. Apparently since the Chelsea League has joined the Rogers County Baseball Association, gate fees have been waived for regularly scheduled games, which puts the Chelsea League out a large amount of money.

This concerned me because not only are the board members already volunteering their time to mow, paint, clean, etc., at the complex, but now they have even less funding to back it up.

I mean, first of all, being an officer or just a member of the board takes up time not only to attend meetings, but to get things organized, purchased and to be involved at the fields working concessions. And that time is taken from raising a family because I’m sure most of the board have children — of which most, if not all, are on a baseball/softball team.

In addition to the time donated to just the board, some of these people are coaching team(s) and/or attending games for their own children. That means if a board member has two children and both have a game on the same night in different locations, one parent is at one game and the other follows the second child. This also takes up time.

So to all the time it takes just to keep the Chelsea League up and running — not to mention the families involved — words are not enough to thank you. Thank you for biting the bullet and volunteering nearly three full months to our children.

And this includes the coaches who volunteer so much of their time to teach the fundamentals of baseball, as well as keep our children under control while trying to conduct practices and vie in games. The time and effort they put into these teams and these children is priceless.

So to the volunteers of not only the Chelsea Summer League Association, but to all of those who support youth baseball in Rogers County in one way or another, thank you. If not for you, our children would be without.