International Herald Tribunal
Saturday, July 5, 2003

In the middle of the South Bronx, a decaying area of New York City, sits a graffiti-free space that is the pride of the community: South Bronx High School's $3 million, multi-sport playing field and track. Its name: the Merrill Lynch Field of Dreams.

South Bronx is one of 26 high schools whose mostly dirt-and-asphalt fields have been renovated through a partnership between the city and Take the Field, a nonprofit program created by Preston Robert Tisch, co-chairman of Loews Corp. and co-owner of the New York Giants football team.

When Take the Field ends next August, 45 of New York City's 60 public high school fields will have been renovated.

As New York's public schools seek private funds to keep programs alive, donors like Tisch are vital. When Take the Field completes its mission a year from now, the city will have spent about $87 million on the program. Tisch's group will have raised another $33 million - much of it from New York-bred executives such as David Komansky, a former co-chairman of Merrill Lynch Co., and Mario Gabelli, head of his own money management firm.

Mixing city grants with private and corporate contributions, Take the Field has replaced glass-strewn grounds and warped asphalt tracks with low-maintenance artificial turf over a soft cushion of rubber. The new surface allows the schools to save the cost of grass replacement, irrigation and chemical fertilizers. It also has other benefits.

"If you slid into second base, you had a good chance of getting glass into you," Komansky, 64, recalled of the South Bronx field, where he played baseball as a boy. "The fields were in horrible shape all over the city, and the druggies would hang around at night." Merrill Lynch received naming rights to the renovated field in exchange for its $500,000 gift.

Bob Catell, chief executive officer of KeySpan Corp., a natural gas supplier based in Brooklyn, contributed to the renovation of New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn, where he played baseball and football and ran track. He said the lessons he had learned from sports also helped him in business.

"You have a better chance of being successful on a team than trying to do things on your own," Catell said. "I also learned that you don't always win and how to pick yourself up off the ground and move forward."

Gabelli, chairman and chief executive of Gabelli Asset Management Inc., had similar reasons for donating at least $500,000 to Evander Childs High School in the Bronx. He lived about a block from Evander Childs and played basketball, football and stickball on the school's fields.

"Sports are a vital part of the growth process," Gabelli said. "You learn with a coach or without a coach, one-on-one or three-on-three." (Bloomberg)