3 min read

CLINTON — Even with the official opening day still a couple weeks away, Ken Paul has already seen his vision for Wiffle Fenway Park come to life.

As Paul was putting some finishing touches on the new Wiffle ball field behind Clinton Elementary School two weeks ago, two children approached him. They wanted to check out the new field, and after Paul gave them the OK, he listened in as they played ball.

“They were pretending they were playing for the Red Sox and that they were beating the pants off the Yankees,” said Paul, the treasurer of Clinton Parks and Recreation Association. “It was awesome to hear them interact, and it’s kind of why I did it: to be able to see kids and the community use this field.”

Finished just two weeks ago, Wiffle Fenway is already proving to be a hit in Kennebec County’s northeasternmost town. With a fence akin to the real Fenway Park as well as a full dirt infield, basepaths, gazebos and more, the field is ready for play, with a soft opening day scheduled for Aug. 17.

Each year, the Clinton Parks and Rec Association, the town department’s nonprofit wing, sets its sights on one major project. Two years ago, that project was the pirate ship playground behind the town office on Baker Street; last year, it was the adjacent Jay Galusha Dog Park.

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This year, the idea for a Wiffle ball field came to Ken Paul via a TikTok video of pitchers throwing devastating pitches. He then came across a Wiffle ball replica of the Seattle Mariners’ ballpark built by the parks and rec department in Kent, Washington, and he wanted to bring a similar thing to life in Clinton.

Wiffle Fenway, a replica of Fenway Park in Boston, is behind the elementary school in Clinton. (Anna Chadwick/Staff Photographer)

“Ken did the research and got all the specs, and (the people from Kent) shared their plans and measurements and all that good stuff with him,” said April Paul, Ken’s wife and the Clinton Parks and Rec Association’s president. “With some of the money we had fundraised last year and a grant we got from T-Mobile (in Oakland), we got to work on it.”

Ken Paul said the field cost about $15,000, a price tag Clinton Parks and Recreation was able to make work with $5,000 of its own money and the $10,000 grant from the T-Mobile call center. Work on the project began June 16, and it was completed less than a month later, on July 13.

Doing so was a team effort. A group of T-Mobile volunteers helped with the groundwork; Paul worked to put up the outfield fence; Wiswell Electric of Clinton drilled ground posts for the fence; Jeff Cook of Canaan built gazebos behind the dugouts and home plate; and another volunteer, Frank Owens, helped with the infield dirt.

Then, there was Carrie Davis of Benton-based Davis Vinyl, who painted the left-field fence to resemble that of Fenway’s Green Monster. It features a mock scoreboard, complete with scores of other “games,” as well as the line score from Boston’s 6-1 win over the St. Louis Cardinals that clinched the 2013 World Series.

“I got with Carrie early on and said, ‘Hey, this is what I’m thinking, but how do we do the scoreboard?’” Ken Paul said. “We needed someone to paint it, so she got this aluminum. composite-type board with 4×8 sheets and got it all printed so we could put up there.”

Unlike local youth baseball fields Purnell Wrigley Field in Waterville or Little Fenway on the Oakland-Belgrade town line, Wiffle Fenway is not an exact (though smaller) replica. The outfield fence is 90 feet all the way around, home to first and third base is 43 feet, and first to second, second to third and mound to home are 36 feet.

Even if 90 feet doesn’t sound like much, it can be a long way to hit a plastic ball. Batters will see if they can do just that during a home-run contest that will follow a game between T-Mobile Oakland employees and Clinton Parks and Rec at the Aug. 17 grand opening.

“It looks like a long way, but Shayne (son of Clinton Parks and Recreation Board Director Anthony Barton) was out here hitting it into the high grass,” Ken Paul said. “That makes me think some of the littler kids might have a chance at some home runs, too.”

Mike Mandell came to the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel in April 2022 after spending five and a half years with The Ellsworth American in Hancock County, Maine. He came to Maine out of college after...

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