People build sandcastles on the beach knowing they won’t survive — wind and water, footsteps and plows reduce the walls and arches to sand grains. Eventually, the sandcastle is disregarded and forgotten. That seems to be the story of the former Sandcastle Stadium, later Bernie Robbins Stadium, a professional baseball field located at a gateway of Atlantic City along Albany Avenue.

The stadium was built in 1998 for independent league baseball’s Atlantic City Surf. The team changed ownership and leagues before folding in early 2009.

Since then, the structure has fallen into disrepair. Today, the stadium’s only occupants are trespassing vagrants, possible drug dealers and a gaggle of geese. The windows of the luxury boxes are shattered. The path where base runners tried to turn singles into doubles is overrun with weeds.

This sandcastle has become a monument to a gone moment.

Bird feces, inches thick, coat the third-base stairway leading into the stadium. Four or five steps’ worth, too.

You consider whether the climb is worth it.