Battled Fields

Chris Duderstadt is a soccer dad. Forget the fabled soccer mom and her demographic influence on this season's political machinations for a minute. For this soccer dad, only three issues are relevant: greener grass, level surfaces, and better field access. It's a simple platform, but Duderstadt faces an obstacle: In Golden Gate Park, those perks are reserved -- and protected -- for guys who wear tight pants and swing wooden sticks, not for the humble soccer player.

Three weekends ago, Duderstadt, 49, drove his old Triumph motorcycle to every soccer field in the city. The 20-plus photos he snapped depict shoddy lots of brown grass, gopher-infested plats, and rutted fields. In contrast, there's Big Rec, the huge expanse of flat, green grass in the outfields of Golden Gate Park's twin hardball fields near Seventh Avenue and Lincoln Way. Ideal for kicking a ball, yes. But several posted signs prohibit soccer (and football and softball) players from using the area. It is reserved strictly for baseball.

Duderstadt, who coaches a team of 15-year-old boys and is the state cup coordinator for the California Youth Soccer Association, wants the Department of Recreation and Park to take down those signs and open up the grass for pickup soccer games. According to figures he's collected from Rec and Park, each of the hardball fields at Big Rec is used 2,640 hours per year, while the eight soccer fields in Golden Gate Park are annually used 29,831 hours apiece by soccer, rugby, field hockey, Gaelic football, and polo players.

Those numbers mean it's rare to find an available soccer field in the park, even though the baseball diamonds often remain empty.

Already a ragtag group of pickup soccer players, unaffiliated with Duderstadt, has taken advantage of the open outfield. The 20 or so pickup players, an urban cross-section that includes fortysomething doctors and 18-year-old project kids, meet at Big Rec every Wednesday evening and Saturday afternoon. The players say Golden Gate Park is the most centrally located place to meet, and since they can't use the fields at the Beach Chalet (taken by paying league teams), the Polo Fields (shut down since June for summer events and restoration), or Kezar Stadium (locked and reserved for paying customers), they've settled on the green, green grass at Big Rec.

Robert Schumacher, 33, has played in the Saturday game for two years. In recent weeks, Schumacher says he and his pickup soccer pals have been targeted by the Park Patrol. On Oct. 5, Head Park Patrol Officer John Ruppert, accompanied by an SFPD officer on a motorbike, issued several $28 tickets to the soccer crew for failing to obey posted signs. Ruppert says the soccer players' cleats tear up the field and that the tickets he issued were a long time coming. "It's the same people who have been told to leave repeatedly," he says. "They knew. They used to see me coming and stop [playing soccer] when they saw me. It's flagrant."

Rory McPartlin, one of Schumacher's fellow pickup players who has dealt with Ruppert, says the soccer group already "went past dialogue with the guy." McPartlin, 26, says the Park Patrol has singled out soccer players for some unknown reason, even while teams play Ultimate Frisbee and toss around footballs in the same area. And he says the Park Patrollers are so overzealous that he's seen one officer tell a parent that his toddler could not even play around with a soccer ball. "They treat us like we are dogs who shit in the park," he says.

To which Ruppert responds, "The department is not singling out anyone. Everybody is trying to make this into a persecution case. It's ridiculous."

Duderstadt thinks he might be partly responsible for the soccer players' tickets and the brouhaha over Big Rec. In August, when Rec and Park announced it had botched the first attempt at reconditioning the fields and that restoration would keep the Polo Fields out of commission for the entire upcoming fall youth season, Duderstadt began looking for places that might accommodate soccer practices. He'd seen a women's field hockey team practicing at Big Rec for two weeks and asked Rec and Park officials if that area was now open to non-baseball teams. The next day Park Patrol told the hockey players to take a hike.

Then, in August and again in September, Duderstadt asked the Recreation and Park Commission to consider opening the space for general use. That's exactly when the pickup soccer players say the Park Patrollers began regularly stopping games. "They've got a bug up their butt because I've been harassing them," Duderstadt says.

After the tickets were issued, Duderstadt asked Rec and Park Principal Supervisor of Athletics Charlene Nichols to put a discussion of Big Rec's use on the docket for an upcoming commission meeting. Duderstadt says Nichols told him that she wouldn't be able to comply for some time. "I wouldn't do that without consulting my staff," says Nichols. "Anyway, I'm not sure that the only activity should not be baseball. But he can go in front of the commission as a citizen and ask himself."

Nichols says she already sent out a Sept. 3 memo to the Park Patrol identifying several meadows in Golden Gate park where soccer players can legally congregate. She adds that the reconditioned Polo Fields will open in January, even though the pickup players would have to cough up $21 for a two-hour permit to play there.

Still, Duderstadt has his eyes on Big Rec. "Those other spaces are small, unleveled, and are gopher-ridden," he says. "I'm not saying they should put in goals and stripes. But they should open it up to people who will use it.