Getty Image / Mitchell Layton
J.J. Hardy has been retired from Major League Baseball since he played his final game with the Orioles in 2017. The dude went out in style, hitting a homer (and two hits) while receiving multiple standing ovations from the home crowd for his years of contributions to the team that included 3 Gold Glove Awards and the Silver Slugger Award in 2013. As a Tampa Bay Rays fan, he was a force to be reckoned with in the infield and at the plate.
But since J.J. Hardy has retired, he has been living near Chandler, Arizona. Chandler’s just a bit southwest of Phoenix, Tempe, and Mesa for those like myself who aren’t intimately familiar with Arizona’s geography. I had to look it up. And it sure seems like a great place for a baseball field with 300+ days of sunshine every year. Never mind that whole ‘there’s no water’ situation.
So J.J. Hardy probably thought he was really onto something when he decided to build a baseball field in his backyard. His neighbors, however, saw it differently and are quite angry with the 2-time MLB All-Star. This was the focus of a local news segment this week from AZFamily’s CBS5 network:
Hardy’s neighbor Pam Lang says “everybody has a right to enjoy their backyard, but this is something that is beyond reasonable to expect your neighbors to tolerate.” I’m inclined to agree with her after seeing the huge poles towering over her backyard fence…
For those wondering, J.J. Hardy earned an estimated $82,071,000 over 14 seasons in Major League Baseball according to Spotrac. So while building a backyard baseball field is expensive, he can almost certainly afford it and spare no expense to make it an awesome field for his two sons to play on.
The TV segment was picked up by JomBoy Media where someone in the X comments wrote that the venue is being considered by the Oakland Athletics as their new stadium. Top notch tomfoolery going on in the comments.