‘I just wanted to give them that whimsical kind of childhood’: Baseball, Lemonade and Kids Being Kids at Cosmic Clover Field. 

By Melissa Cole

You might say the Keenan family of West Hartford is a little obsessed with baseball.

Jeff Keenan, a Conard High School graduate, played baseball at Amherst College in Massachusetts, while Victoria grew up in a Little League family. When the two were dating, they picked a Boston Red Sox game to introduce their families to each other.

“Baseball’s been a huge thread throughout our life. When we got married, our first-look photos were on the Yard Goats field. We were the first people to do that. That was in November of 2017,” Victoria said.

The couple went on to have two little boys, Rory (6) and Frasier (4), and they fully embraced the baseball theme, from celebrating baby showers to decorating the nurseries. So naturally, now that the boys are older, they decided to literally carve out a baseball field in their backyard for their sons to enjoy, along with the neighborhood kids.

It was Victoria who did most of the work herself. She knew the dream could become a reality when the family purchased their home on Wyndwood Road, which overlooks a pond and features a large, flat section of grass.

“I looked at the flat portion of the yard and thought, ‘Well, maybe one day,’” she said. “Then I thought, you know what? This is the year. I can make it happen.”

It took Victoria about two days to create the field. She first dug out the grass before adding sand between the bases. While that seems like a big task, she’s used to working with her hands. An avid gardener for years, she’s always busy planting and transplanting in the yard and has also taught herself how to build things. In fact, she recently completed an impressive greenhouse, also located in the backyard.

“I’ve been a stay-at-home mom since I had my oldest in November of 2019. So I’ve kind of been on this journey of figuring out what I want to do, and the gardening’s been huge. I’ve gotten into doing home DIY over the years,” she said.

The family grows many of its own vegetables and herbs, and Victoria enjoys sharing that passion with the neighborhood children who come to play.

“I love having kids here in the summer and letting them taste little bits of herbs and seeing the connections they make,” she said. “One of the kids picked a piece of cilantro last year and said, ‘This is in guacamole.’ And I was like, ‘You’re right, it is.’ It felt so good to see that I had helped make that connection.”

And there’s more. On the side of the field, there’s a lemonade stand that Victoria built herself using leftover lumber from another project. She added chalk paint to spruce it up, and the wheels came from a bike rickshaw that had been sitting in their attic for five years. Victoria enjoys finding creative ways to repurpose materials and approaches projects sustainably, giving new life to items that might otherwise have been trash.

You also can’t miss the “Cosmic Clover Field” sign tucked in the back of the yard, another creation by Victoria. Made from a piece of plywood, some green paint, and lettering cut with her Cricut machine. “Clover” is a nod to the family’s Irish heritage and the patches of clover growing naturally throughout the yard. As for the “Cosmic” part, that inspiration came from the couple’s oldest son and the family’s love of all things space.

“The cosmic piece was because my oldest was really into Buzz Lightyear for a very long time. He loves outer space. My husband’s a big NASA nerd guy and loves it, and I love astrology,” Victoria said.

So far, the response from the community has been positive. Kids and parents have embraced Cosmic Clover Field, with one father telling Victoria that the backyard ballpark brought back memories of his own childhood.

“He grew up playing in the alleys of Brooklyn, and he said, ‘What I wouldn’t have given to have what you just built for your boys,’” Victoria recalled. “That’s what makes me do these things. I know they’re going to have this kind of whimsical experience of childhood.”

Yes, Victoria says it’s all about getting outside and just having a good old-fashioned summer; playing baseball, sipping lemonade, and spending time with friends and neighbors. The Keenans are hoping Cosmic Clover Field becomes a place where kids create summer memories that will last a lifetime.

“I kind of grew up that way, and I feel like we’ve been so fortunate to have such a great backyard,” Victoria said. “This is why I became a stay-at-home mom. This is why I had kids. I just wanted to give them that whimsical kind of childhood.”

If you want to follow Victoria Keenan on Instagram, she posts a lot of her DIY projects there: @_victoria_keenan_

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