Baseball center shut down; Barone, partner to seek new location
in Hollister
He’s a Major League pitcher for the Florida Marlins and wanted
to help out area youth by opening up a practice facility in
Hollister where he could teach local baseball players pitching and
hitting fundamentals.
Baseball center shut down; Barone, partner to seek new location in Hollister
He’s a Major League pitcher for the Florida Marlins and wanted to help out area youth by opening up a practice facility in Hollister where he could teach local baseball players pitching and hitting fundamentals.
That was until the city of Hollister ordered Daniel Barone to shutdown his 2,000-square-foot warehouse facility on 807 Industrial Way because he unknowingly was operating the commercial business in an industrial area.
“When we got the business license, we didn’t realize that we needed a permit too. As far as we knew, that’s all we needed. No one ever said anything about a permit. It was just an unfortunate misunderstanding,” said Barone, who headed to Florida on Tuesday to join up with his teammates in order to get ready for spring training, which officially gets under way on Feb. 16.
Prior to ordering Barone and his business partner Kalev Betancourt to shut down the operation the two were doing well in their venture, and inspiring a lot of youth.
“We weren’t doing a crushing business or anything; we were just trying to help kids out. And we were even going to open an area up stairs where the kids could do their homework first before getting a lesson,” Barone said.
According to Barone and Betancourt, a number of local youth coaches were very receptive to the whole idea of having an indoor venue to work on baseball skills during the cold and wet winter months.
In all, the facility was open for about a month before the city pulled the plug on the operation. Had it not been shut down, the plan was for Betancourt, who is also an assistant baseball coach at Monterey Peninsula College, to run the operation during the spring and summer months when Barone was playing for the Marlins. The two would then team up again in the fall and early winter.
“We definitely plan on opening another facility next year. This isn’t going to stop us. We just want to work with kids and help them out,” Barone said.
The two were planning on pursuing proper permitting until it was discover that their case wouldn’t be looked at until Feb. 20 – more than two weeks after Barone had to leave for Florida.
In order to properly operate out of the facility they would need to hire an architect to draw up official building plans and install a restroom – something that the building’s landlord would not be willing to accommodate anyway, according to Betancourt.
The two operated the facility without incident for roughly a month. Prior to its opening, the two had spent roughly a month getting it all ready.
Inside there was a full-sized batting cage and a Major-League length (60 feet, 6 inches) area for pitchers to workout indoors. The walls were painted dark green to resemble a Major League homerun fence and stripped in yellow across the top to signify an official homerun area. There was also a large American and state of California flag inside as well as wall-sized photos of other Major League stars.
“We bought a Wagner (Power Painter) and went to town on this place,” Betancourt said. “We put a lot of effort into it.”
Next year, the two will look for a facility that is commercially zoned first and then go from there.
“This would have been our busiest month,” said Barone as he and Betancourt loaded up a small trailer to move the remaining items out of the facility. “This is the time of year when baseball players are just getting back into the swing of things. And the weather outdoors isn’t always good enough to practice at a ballfield. We were fortunate enough to be able to use the Babe Ruth field too but the weather has been awful. Next year, we will do all of the paperwork and go through all of the loop holes for this. We enjoy doing this. We love being around baseball and helping kids.”
