Baseball can be a challenging sport, and even more so when the players can’t see the ball coming at them.

The grand ol’ game of baseball doesn’t seem to be as prominent as it once was on the local amateur sporting scene; blame the changing demographics and entertainment preferences of a new generation.

Back in the late ’90s, upwards of 800 people were in the softball league in the Fixer’s neighbourhood, from tykes to adult slo-pitch. Since then, it has twice merged with other leagues to find enough players to keep going.

But you wouldn’t know it at Bond Park, near Lawrence Ave. and Don Mills Rd., where there’s still enough baseball happening that five playing fields are needed.

One of the diamonds is named after the Star’s late great sports writer Milt Dunnell, who entertained readers with his columns for about 60 years and was on the high side of 90 years old before he retired. He passed away in 2008 at the age of 102.

Most of the games happen on weeknights, when the overhead lights must be turned on so the batters can get a good look at those 80-mile-an-hour fastballs coming across the plate.

But when some of the lights are malfunctioning, not only are batters more likely to fan on the ball, pitchers are less likely to find the strike zone.

Jonathan McCully emailed to say his son plays ball in a league that uses Bond Park, and that many of the lights haven’t worked properly since last summer.

“By my count there are now four lights out on Diamond 1, seven lights out on Diamond 3 and one light out on Diamond 4,” he said, adding that many have not worked since last summer.

“Some of the lights also need to be re-pointed, as they are no longer providing proper coverage of the outfield (Diamond 3 is the worst). General maintenance (cleaning, re-pointing, and replacing) should be done on a regular basis.”

STATUS: Bob Crump, who’s in charge of North York parks, emailed to say a work order has been filled out to fix the lights, “however, we’ll have to wait for a dry weather stretch to access this area with a boom truck as the ground is quite soft at the best of times.”

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