Flashback: Ali raised money for new Niles High baseball field – South Bend Tribune

Editor’s note: This story was originally published May 14, 2006.

NILES — Lonnie Ali braced her husband as each player in the Niles High School baseball program took turns gripping the champ’s historic right hand.

Parkinson’s disease doesn’t allow Muhammad Ali’s body to act as it once did, but it isn’t able to touch his spirit.

And it’s that spirit that helped lead the charge to renovate the Niles High School baseball field, which was dedicated by the Alis and others Saturday morning.

“It’s not every day you get a letter from the greatest (athlete) of them all,” said Mike Healy, vice president of operations for the Detroit Tigers, which gave $55,000 to the project. “When he wrote to us about the project, there was no way we could say no.”

Ilitch Charities’ $55,000 donation went toward in-ground dugouts, field fencing, a scoreboard and windscreen, and additional turf. Bleachers also will be installed at the field through the donation.

The total cost to renovate the high school’s old practice field into a regulation field was about $150,000 and was made possible entirely through donations, according to Niles Schools Superintendent Doug Law.

Among the major donors are Muhammad and Lonnie Ali, whose son plays baseball for Niles, Box Entertainment and the Detroit-based Ilitch Charities for Children, which donated money generated through the Tigers’ hosting of the Major League Baseball’s 2005 All-Star Game.

The school’s varsity and junior varsity teams have played home games at city-owned Thomas Stadium on South 11th Street in recent years, while the freshman team used the old high school practice field for games.

Lonnie Ali told the crowd gathered in the Niles High School gym that all the donors could do for the children was provide an opportunity.

“You have to seize the day,” she said.

Mike Vota, the school’s head baseball coach, said that not only are they trying to teach the game of baseball, they’re also trying to teach the players about competing.

He said it’s those life lessons that will last long after his players are able to play organized baseball.

For now, they get to play.

And Healy told them they should be proud of the field they can now call home.

“That field puts a lot of college fields to shame,” he said.