In many ways, Shannon Dalton Forde Memorial Field in Little Ferry, N.J., is a typical youth sports field. It’s a place for community members to gather, for kids to learn about baseball and softball for the first time, or for them to further their skills.
But once you see the views of the Manhattan skyline, you realize it’s not typical.
“It just feels like a little slice of heaven amidst all the cement,” said Mets analyst and former team great Ron Darling.
It’s much more than just a youth field. It’s a way to keep the memory of Shannon Forde alive.
Eight years ago, MLB honored the memory of the late Mets public relations executive by using the proceeds of the annual “Play Ball” auction to renovate and rename the field in her New Jersey hometown, just down the road from where Forde and her sister Alicia grew up. Forde passed away at 44 years old earlier that year after a long battle with breast cancer.
Now, friends, family and community members are working toward a more ambitious plan for the field, raising money for more renovations with the hope of being able to host an NCAA softball playoff round in the near future.
Felician University, a Division II Catholic university with campuses in nearby Rutherford and Lodi, now calls Shannon Forde Field home, and it’s a home the Golden Falcons are proud of. It’s well maintained by the town’s Department of Public Works and the neighbors, and some upgrades have been made since renovations were completed and the field was dedicated to Forde in 2017.
“The neighbors are great there,” Felician head softball coach Phil Delgado recently told the Daily News. “It gives us a great setting. The field itself is, after that first round of renovations, amazing. And now Felician has kind of added some additions with new clay and stuff like that. But the township has been great and the DPW is amazing with keeping the field up to date.”
Another batting cage and new bullpens have been added in recent years. But to bring the field up to NCAA specifications, Forde field will need about $100,000 of renovations. The Felician softball program has already raised about $45,000, some of which is going toward moving in the fences. But the field needs a new scoreboard, seating behind home plate and, ideally, indoor training facilities that would allow kids of all ages to use it all year round.
The additions aren’t just for Felician, but for the town of Little Ferry as well.
“Our goal is to kind of get more people speaking about Shannon,” Delgado said.
Delgado didn’t know Forde personally, but he heard about her long ago from the father of a player he was giving lessons to. Forde was a known figure in her hometown. How could she not be? Ask anyone who knew Forde and they’ll tell you how special she was.
“She was like an older sister to me,” David Wright told The News. “It didn’t matter how dumb of a question it was, I always felt comfortable going up and asking her because I had that close relationship where I knew that she wouldn’t judge.
“She would tell me what she truthfully thought. That honesty that she would always give me was impactful because I think it genuinely led me in a direction that I wanted to go.”
She became a mentor to Wright early on in his Mets days, helping him understand everything from when to arrive at the ballpark to the role the media plays in New York. She gave him restaurant recommendations and helped him navigate New York.
“Where I really got a chance to get to know her and pick her brain and utilize her skill set was probably my first spring training [in 2004],” Wright said. “That relationship grew and grew. Once I got called up that July she became a really, really close friend, confidant, and somebody that I leaned on for advice.”
Forde’s role in communications involved a delicate balancing act. She had to protect the players and the image of the Mets organization, while also aiding the media in their day-to-day jobs. It can be like walking a tightrope in a city where the back page headlines still dominate coverage, but Forde was a pro.
“There was just an aura of sweetness and kindness, which I think it sticks out in this market,” Darling said. “You know, the market is not sweet. It’s none of those things. So I think that’s why she stood out.”
With Forde, you could have it all.
She was also a trailblazer. At a time when few women held high positions in baseball, Forde worked her way up the ladder with the Mets, gaining the trust of many in Queens and around the league.
“She was up-and-coming,” said former Mets left-hander John Franco. “She was well known in the industry, not only in New York, but all around the country, in the MLB office, the commissioner’s office, the Players Association office — everybody knew Shannon.”
It’s something Delgado wants his players to know about and something her family is still proud of.
“Truthfully, she started baseball very early,” said her mother, Debbe Dalton. “We had two TVs and she used to sit in the back room with my husband and watch baseball all the time. As soon as she was old enough, she joined little league softball, and she played all the way through until she graduated high school. She loved it. I mean, she really loved it.”
A young Shannon would also spend time with her grandparents, Kay and Harold Haufe, watching baseball as well. Her grandfather grew up a Yankee fan, as many kids in the area did at the time, but eventually grew to dislike how late owner George Steinbrenner ran the team. When the Mets started playing, he watched the plucky underdogs from Queens.
But the real Mets fan of the family was Forde’s father, Michael Dalton.
“My husband was a total Met freak,” Dalton said. “I mean, he loved everything about the Mets. No Met ever did anything wrong.”
Forde loved bringing her family out to Shea Stadium for games. It provided an entrance into a different part of the baseball world for them. There were All-Star Games and playoff games and, because it’s the Mets, calamitous games. The family enjoyed them all.
Dalton has found it difficult to watch Mets games since the passing of her daughter and her husband, but the team’s magical postseason run this October brought her fandom back.
“I started watching again,” she said. “And I enjoyed it again.”
Dalton sometimes walks to the field to feel closer to her daughter. The view of the Empire State Building feels like a bridge from her roots in Little Ferry to the place where she made her career.
Darling remembers her two kids running around the field the day it was dedicated, being both heartened and heartbroken. Heartened by the fact that they would have something so great to remember their mother by, but heartbroken they would grow up without her.
Delgado has learned as much as he can about Forde and he wants his softball players to learn about her as well. He brings young softball players to college games to help them grow their love of the game and he likes to talk to families about the person the field is named for.
Felician is still two or three years away from completing the renovations, but if the team can get to a place where they’re hosting an NCAA Tournament, it would be a momentous event for the program, the city and even for the Mets.
“I think it’d be great because a lot of the current young players, or the college students and young women in college who are trying to get into the industry could do some research on Shannon, what she did and what she brought to the table,” Franco said. “Basically she opened the door for a lot of young women to do what she did. So to redo the field for the NCAA to have a tournament there, and especially her name being attached to the field, I think it’s an outstanding thing to do.”
Not only is Forde’s legacy secured with the field, but it continues to grow as the facilities do as well.
“This is so much bigger than just us and what we’re doing here playing seven innings of softball,” Delgado said. “It’s inspiring.”
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