Carrick Community Athletic Association

Click here to read the on-line story in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

If you've had it with professional baseball this summer, you can check out fall play at the Carrick Community Athletic Association's Volunteer Fields starting next week.

The association added its fourth field this year to accommodate the demand it gets from kids who come from all over the Hilltop and other nearby neighborhoods, even neighborhoods that have their own organizations.

The story of how the fourth field came to be will be told in the Post-Gazette's Saturday or Monday edition.

Carrick's draw is its multiple playing opportunities, stadium lights and an organization of parents that for years was sustained by the late Sal Gizzo.

Sal, who died two years ago, was Mr. Everything to the association, which was founded in 1946. That’s Sal in the mural surrounded by kids. Bob Warnock, a volunteer who won the Sal Gizzo award for service to the CCAA this year, is pictured below the mural.

"Sal took care of the grass, cleaned the dugouts, bought equipment and kept the organization afloat on his credit card,” said Bob, who himself spends "tons of time here."

"Sal gave everything he was to this organization. He was a vital part of what makes our group so strong.”

Luke Stock, who has worked for the Sprout Fund as a muralist and designer and for the MLK Mural Project, painted this mural at field #4 as a memorial to Sal. Luke worked for two weeks and finished it two weeks ago.

His murals are also at the Midwife Center in the Strip, on Warrington Avenue in Allentown, at 24th and Carson on the South Side and in Mount Oliver borough, one in Ormsby Park, the other on Brownsville Road.

The ball fields are on either side of Colerain Street, which you can get off of Route 51. There you can pay homage to Sal and all the other parents who care more about the lesson that sinks in than the win that splashes off like champagne.