It's better known as Prescott Field, but it recently became the Lutz Family Field, and appropriately so.
Irv Lutz - and his entire family for that matter - has been synonymous with fastpitch softball in Lebanon County for four decades and helped grow the sport into one that was cherished and celebrated in this area every summer.
And to further explain just how much Lutz meant to the game, when his health was in decline and he could no longer contribute the countless hours needed to run the fastpitch league and the South Lebanon team he managed, they both folded.
Tuesday night, those same ailments brought an end to his life. Lutz, who had been on dialysis for years and was also battling the effects of diabetes, was 58.
"He took the game of softball in Lebanon County to another level," said Keith Evans, a former player under Lutz with South Lebanon/TNT Sanitation. "He took Lebanon County softball to a national level and a bigger scale."
"Irv was a big-time competitor," Evans added. "He wanted to win. He played hard and coached hard. ... You'd go to the field and he'd ask you about your family. He was concerned not only about you as a softball player but also as a person."
No one knew that better than Cliff Swisher, who became friends with Lutz in the seventh grade at Elco and later played with him once they got out of high school in the late '70s until 2006.
Scot Adams pitched for Lutz's South Lebanon team and also played against him for years and will also remember his passion for the game.
"Irv was a very competitive person," Adams said. "He didn't like to lose. ... Irv was a throwback. He kept that Lebanon league going longer than it should have. Irv loved softball more than anyone I know."
Irv was part of a Lutz softball family that included brothers and cousins and sons Barry, Lee, Hal, Clint, Andrew and Matthew. And even his wife, Deb, was part of the softball legacy at Prescott Field as she regularly manned the concession stand there.
But the family's aggressive style of play on the field didn't always make the Lutzes popular with their opponents.
"The Lutzes were not a very well-liked team on the field," Adams recalled. "They would go in hard or spike you. They played tough. But when you played with him you'd see he was a different guy. He was a very, very generous guy."
A 2003 inductee into the Central Chapter Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame, Irv Lutz's coaching highlight came in 2007 when his South Lebanon/TNT team traveled to Kitchener, Ontario, for the International Softball Congress II tournament and went 8-0 to become the first U.S. team to win the event on Canadian soil. Lutz couldn't make the trip north because of his condition, but he was definitely there in spirit.
"In 2007 when we won, he was in Good Sam and the games were broadcast on the Internet," recalled Mike Rohrer, a member of that team. "He followed it play-by-play like it was a Phillies game. He told us afterward that he couldn't sleep. It was a highlight for him."
Adams also remembered how the team came together for Lutz in Kitchener.
"Every game that we had, it was, 'Let's win this one for Irv,'" the pitcher said. "It's sad he couldn't be there, it would have been his shining moment."
Rohrer agreed that Lutz was not far from the players' minds that weekend.
"He was such a good guy and we wanted to do it for him," he said. "As we were celebrating, we were thinking about Irv a lot."
One of Swisher's favorite memories of Lutz came after a tournament in Milton, Pa., in 1982. Swisher put together a great weekend on the field in helping their team win the tournament, but the Most Valuable Player award went to someone else on another team.
"He was pretty upset that I didn't get the (MVP) trophy," Swisher said, "so he gave me the championship (team) trophy."
It wasn't long after that that Lutz become involved with the Wet Your Whistle fastpitch team that for years went toe to toe with Jolly Molly in one of the fiercest rivalries around. Swisher actually played with Molly for a couple of years during that time, but it never affected his friendship with Lutz.
Evans also played with Lutz and against him as player/coach for the Blue Mountain View team before coming over to the South Lebanon squad.
"It was a little different playing on the same squad as him," Evans said. "We had great rivalries with him. You played each other so much and were on the field with him so much, it was like you knew him."
But that field is no longer springing to life on steamy summer evenings like it used to, and that undoubtedly made Lutz sad.
"I'm sure it bothered him," Rohrer said, "but he knew it was still going on other places."
"He wouldn't say it too much," added Adams about the lack of games at Prescott, "but it probably did (sadden him). ... I think that made Irv sad a little bit."
As the illnesses spread throughout Lutz's body, he became wheelchair-bound, but that didn't slow him down.
"Even when I saw him the last couple of years, he was always in a good mood," Rohrer said. "He was missing fingers and in a wheelchair but he always wanted to talk about softball."
