http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/nyregion/10towns.html?hp GREENWICH, Conn. Vincent Provenzano, 16 years old, experienced his Kevin Costner moment one Sunday afternoon in May after a thrilling day of Wiffle ball in a friend’s backyard. He came home, gazed at a field of weeds, brush and poison ivy in an empty lot off Riverside Lane, turned to his friend Justin Currytto, 17, and proclaimed: “If we build it, they will come.” After three weeks of clearing brush and poison ivy, scrounging up plywood and green paint, digging holes and pouring concrete, Vincent, Justin and about a dozen friends did manage to build it — a tree-shaded Wiffle ball version of Fenway Park complete with a 12-foot-tall green monster in center field, American flag by the left-field foul pole and colorful signs for Taco Bell Frutista Freezes. But, alas, they had no idea just who would come — youthful Wiffle ball players, yes, but also angry neighbors and their lawyer, the police, the town nuisance officer and tree warden and other officials in all shapes and sizes. It turns out that one kid’s field of dreams is an adult’s dangerous nuisance, liability nightmare, inappropriate usurpation of green space, unpermitted special use or drag on property values, and their Wiffle-ball Fenway has become the talk of Greenwich and a suburban Rorschach test about youthful summers past and present. “People can remember how much fun it was to go out in the woods in the summer, build a fort, do something fun and creative, so there’s something pretty cool in what these kids did, especially at a time kids grow up in such an incredibly structured and stressful environment,” said Lin Lavery, one of three Greenwich selectmen, who inherited Wifflegate while the first selectman, Greenwich’s version of mayor, is on vacation. “But we have a situation that’s escalated,” Ms. Lavery said. “Neighbors are upset that it’s too close to their property; building has been done on town property; there are issues of traffic and drainage. We’re hoping to come up with a compromise, but there are a lot of issues to address.” There’s plenty of local history in Wiffle ball (it was invented up the road in Fairfield) and Greenwich land-use disputes (where to start?), but Vincent and Justin say they just wanted a place to play Wiffle ball. They got materials from a friend’s basement plus two big pieces of plywood being thrown away by a Shell station on East Putnam Avenue. They fished pallets out of Dumpsters and spent perhaps $200, mostly on green paint. But even before they were finished, things began to get complicated. They were told the neighbors had complained, the field was on town-owned land, they needed a permit to put up their field and it would probably have to come down. nytimes.com 7/10/08