Friday, August 15, 2003

By Ruth Ann Dailey, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

There's a place in baseball for box scores, but box springs?

"This is a first for us," said Tina Vojtko, spokeswoman for the North Hills School District.

Sometime between a Tuesday evening neighborhood pickup game and Wednesday morning rush hour, someone moved a bed -- complete with headboard, box springs, mattress, pillow and floral-print linens -- onto the pitcher's mound of a ball field on Seibert Road in Ross.

It put a new twist on the phrase "field of dreams."

"I thought maybe it was some coach who was trying to tell his players they're sleeping on the job," quipped Maureen Maier, a kindergarten teacher at Eden Christian Academy.

The private school has operated in the former Berkeley Hills Elementary School for 25 years, but the adjacent ball field is still owned by the North Hills School District and is used by various community groups.

A chain-link fence surrounds the field, interrupted by two gates and two other openings, one of which is large enough to admit a tractor that occasionally drags the infield.

No telltale tires or footprints, however, marred the dirt's surface yesterday afternoon. There was nothing but a couple of bicycle tracks circling the twin bed.

Michelle Gibson, a teacher's aide at Eden, saw teenagers playing a pickup game on the field Tuesday evening and speculated that the bed was the work of neighborhood teens.

"I think it's a seniors' prank," she said. "If it is, the school year's off to a heck of a start."

A group of four neighborhood boys playing there yesterday afternoon said they'd also had a little batting practice the night before but had seen nothing. They moved the foot of the bed a little closer to third base, opening up the pitcher's space a bit.

Vojtko said North Hills employees would remove the bed sometime today.

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