The Good Stuff: Sam’s Field of Dreams

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FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (KNWA/KFTA) — The end of summer for young baseball players usually means their coach is trying to find that one last awesome tournament to play in before the season comes to an end.

Well, for a handful of local teams, they found that tournament. A Field of Dreams tournament.

For them, it’s truly the good stuff because it raises money for a worthy cause and it’s practically in their backyards. Well, it’s more like Sam Perroni’s backyard.

Ask any one of Arkansas Hornets baseball players and I did. It’s clearly a “take no prisoners” kind of weekend ahead.

These young nine and 10-year-olds spent the week fine-tuning their game before hitting the field for a season-ending tournament and fundraiser.

It benefits the Arkansas chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association.

Lucky for the parents, this tournament is just a few miles down the road.

Then it’s straight down a road that looks a whole lot like a driveway because it is.

At the end of 76-year-old Sam Perroni’s driveway, there’s a scoreboard.

“We have tents in the outfield, cornfield up, lines chalked, concession stand going,” Perroni said.

A little over a decade ago, Sam had this idea. He realized he and his wife Patricia weren’t getting any younger and he loved the game almost as much as they loved seeing their baseball-playing grandsons.

“My grandsons played little league baseball all the time, selfish move, if I build a baseball field here, they’d come practice,” Perroni said.

It is true. If you build it they will come.

Finding an available field is never easy, so his grandsons’ baseball teams jumped at the chance.

“All of a sudden I started getting calls from coaches to practice on it and I let them,” Perroni said.

Hunter Kemp, Perroni’s grandson said as he got older, Perroni could have left it be, and let it get old.

“He still has teams practice out here and finding uses for it and giving back to this field,” Kemp said.

What started out as a way for him and his wife to see their grandkids more often has now turned into a special way to forever remember and honor his wife.

Perroni said on August 24 they will have been married for 55 years. He’s married to his high school sweetheart, the homecoming queen, and said she’s pure of heart.

His one and only, who just months after building this beauty of a ballpark more than a decade ago found out she had early onset Alzheimer’s.

“It’s a very cruel disease. You lose your loved one twice. You lose them when you take them to a home and lose them when they pass away,” Perroni said.

So this weekend, when the Hornets and the other teams literally make themselves at home in Sam Perroni’s backyard, they know they’ll be playing for something much more than just some tournament trophy.

They’ll be playing for a cure in honor of Nana.

“The way I see it, this little tourney may be the last bit of money necessary to push it over the cliff, to find the answer to Alzheimer’s,” Perroni said.

If you would like to see some of the games, see this field, visit with Sam or come on out and buy a hotdog in his concession stand and maybe just make a donation to the Alzheimer’s Association of Northwest Arkansas, you can visit 13804 Arkansas 16 in Fayetteville, Which is west Wedington Drive.

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