Handicap-Accessible Baseball Field Opens in Hibbing

HIBBING - Thursday, thousands of Iron Rangers gathered to watch the first game on Hibbing’s brand new Miracle Field. The handicap-accessible field is the only one north of Duluth, and will serve disabled athletes from the Iron Range to the Canadian border. It took two months of extremely hard work paired with $500,000 to get a completely handicap accessible field. “It's going to be fun,” said Hibbing Miracle League athlete, Brian Drazenovich. “Get to hit the ball.” It's athletes like Drazenovich who are itching to roll out on Hibbing’s newest field to play ball. “I want to play on it,” he said. It happens to be Drazenovich’s best friend, Jeff Polcher, who helped make Hibbing’s field of dreams possible. “We put our heart and soul into this,” said the president of the Miracle League of the Iron Range, Jeff Polcher. In April, the Minnesota Twins announced they would donate $200,000 to Hibbing to make them part of the Miracle League family, but there's a catch; the field had to be done by All-Star Week -- giving the community only weeks to transform an empty park into Minnesota’s 12th Miracle Field. “It's been an incredibly stressful two months, a lot of sleepless nights,” Polcher said. “We had a stretch there where we had about eight days of rain.” Polcher said fighting the weather was the biggest challenge.Minnesota Twins legend Kent Hrbek signed autographs and posed for pictures on the field. “I'm very happy to come up and be a part of it because like I said it's very humbling,” retired Minnesota Twin Kent Hrbek. After Wednesday's celebration, it was clear to see the real reason why Hibbing pulled together to make the Miracle Field reality. “Once you see something like this, there won't be many dry eyes in the place tonight,” Polcher said.The Minnesota Twins Legacy Foundation and the All-Star League have donated $8 million to help Minnesota foundations keep baseball alive.The field is dedicated to Kevin Thoresen who brought Miracle Fields to Minnesota.