Iconic wiffle ball field in KC is fit for the pros. But it may soon be gone
No one who has walked past the corner of 52nd Street and Wornall Road, across from Kansas City’s Loose Park, can help but notice the quality of the wiffle ball field that lies in Joe Ungashick’s front yard— the fate of which is now uncertain.
The green diamond, a fixture in this neighborhood of $1 million-plus homes for at least eight years, isn’t special just for what it has — proper baselines and bases, yellow foul poles, a mini “green monster” wall in left field à la Fenway Park. For meaningful games: scoreboard, PA system, organ music. At night, they rolled out the light towers.
It’s perhaps even more special for the roster of grown-ups who, invariably motivated by fundraising for a good cause, have played there over the years, including Kansas City Royals legend and Cooperstown Hall of Fame slugger George Brett. Royals’ pitcher Danny Jackson, a 1985 World Series winner, has slung the perforated ball from the mound.
“Alex Gordon hit the longest home run here,” Ungashick said of the Royals’ 2015 World Series outfielder. “He hit the house.” Easily a 130-foot wiffle shot.
If there were times when the turf on what’s known as the George P. Toma Field looked fantastic, the explanation is that Toma himself, the Royals’ and Kansas City Chiefs’ famed groundskeeper who lives nearby, tended it himself.
But now the tiny field of dreams may soon fade away.
Kansas City’s wiffle ball field
The reason is simple: Ungashick and his spouse, Amy, are about to place their 5-bedroom, 5-bath home — purchased in 2011 for $480,000, and now valued around $2 million — on the market.
They’re moving. Not far away, only blocks, in fact, to the Kirkwood development south of the Country Club Plaza. Chiefs coach Andy Reid and his wife, Tammie, will now be neighbors.
The question, hanging like a curve ball, is whether whoever ultimately buys Ungashick’s house will choose to keep and maintain a mini-ballpark that has served neighborhood kids, adults and nonprofits alike.
“Just to be clear. The hope is that the next owner loves and maintains the vision for neighborhood wiffle,” Ungashick said. “But, of course, that will be up to them.”
How many buyers will be looking to have a neighborhood wiffle ball field as part of their purchase is an open question. One possibility Ungashick said, is that whoever makes an offer on his home may want to opt to buy the house without the field, which can be done. Ungashick recently sub-divided the property. But, in that case, whoever eventually buys the field alone might choose to tear it up to build a new house.
Ungashick and his wife had given that idea serious thought themselves, and even had a new house designed for the spot until they changed course and opted to relocate.
“Who knows what’s going to happen?” Ungashick said.
How KC Wiffle began
True enough. Ungashick certainly didn’t expect to have the grand field that exists now when he purchased the home at 239 W. 52nd St. in 2011.
A massive Kansas City sports fan, Ungashick was raised the second oldest of nine children. His father, William F. Ungashick, founded the Shick Tube-Veyor Corp., later to become Shick USA, a successful company that built machinery for the food industry. Joe Ungashick, now retired, eventually became chief executive officer of the family business, which was eventually sold.
To him, he said, the front lawn of the new house seemed perfect for wiffle ball, similar to the pocket parks in Brookside where he and friends and siblings played as kids. So he laid out some bases. Because the lawn lay low, in a recess lower than the sidewalks, Ungashick christened the park The Hollow.
“I mean, we had 15 kids (in the neighborhood) under the age of 15 that needed a place to play,” Ungashick said. “That was just a natural thing to do. We put the bases out there. We started Friday night wiffle.”
Adults wanted to play, too. In 2015, Ungashick and friend Dan Deeble began a league, KC Wiffle, with 24 teams playing weekly doubleheaders around town, including in his yard. He added a wall.
Then, in 2017, Mitch Wheeler, one of Ungashick’s KC Wiffle teammates, the chief partnership officer for Premier Sports Management marketing firm, and a former corporate partnerships executive with the Kansas City Royals, had an idea. A fund-raising charity game.
Wheeler was also the development director of The Battle Within, a nonprofit that runs programs to help veterans and first responders deal with PTSD, post-traumatic stress syndrome. Meanwhile, Dayton Moore, the Royals’ then-general manager, had his own charity, C You in the Major Leagues, begun in 2015 to support youth baseball and help children and families in crisis.
A game was planned to aid both charities. Guided by sports architect Brad Schrock, a KC Wiffle player who designed Kansas City’s T-Mobile Center Arena, the field was transformed. Toma, originally asked to be the honorary grounds keeper, guided its actual grounds keeping.
Story goes that when the Royals’ general manager showed up and first saw the field, he told Ungashick it reminded him of Cooperstown and the 1989 movie “Field of Dreams” combined. A plaque at The Hollow, affixed to a brick wall behind home plate, satirizes James Earl Jones’ monologue as the movie character Terence Mann on the beauty of baseball.
“Dayton. Fans will come, Dayton,” the plaque begins.
The first-year fundraiser was a success, raising thousands for both charities. In subsequent years, two charity games a year — one in June and one in September — have benefited The Battle Within alone.
Since 2017, some $3 million has been raised for the nonprofit, with continued help from sports figures that include Alex Gordon, Chiefs announcer Mitch Holthus, KC Sporting’s Matt Besler, baseball commentator Rex Hudler, Royals first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino.
“First of all, we —by we, I mean The Battle Within — owe a debt of gratitude that is hard to put into words for the financial impact that Joe Ungashick has had on our organization, on veterans and on first responders finding their their healing path,” Wheeler said.
New wiffle ball field in Kansas City, Kansas
Although the future of The Hollow is unclear, the positive news, Wheeler said, is that what began on Ungashick’s front lawn will continue.
With Ungashick’s field as inspiration, Homefield Kansas City, the sports complex at 9250 State Ave., in Kansas City, Kansas, has allowed for a new wiffle ball field to be erected on its grounds for The Battle Within to hold its annual events.
The first, Mash Plastic 2025, is to be held Thursday, with pre-game events beginning at 7 p.m.
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“Homefield KC heard that we were wiffle orphans and adopted us,” Wheeler said.
Corporations donated their time and material to build a new George P. Toma Field that include details to give it a backyard or front lawn feel: a “green monster” score board, a backyard shed, a “Cousin Eddy’s Camper” with a press box on the roof, and “Beast’s Dog House” hole in an outfield fence inspired by the 1993 movie, “The Sandlot.”
“This is the next generation that was inspired by Joe’s front yard,” Wheeler said. “None of this that we’re looking at today happens without Joe.”
This story was originally published June 25, 2025 at 12:06 PM.
