Vol. VI No. 22 Dog vs. dog, PAGE 3
JUNE 1, 2022
vfpress.news
Northlake senior citizens host a prom, PAGE 4
Broadview Oak Park man steps up mom to the plate, revives collecting Bat A Ball baby formula amid shortage ShaRhonda Knott-Dawson started the Chicagoland Baby Formula Collection in midMay to distribute formula to parents in need By MICHAEL ROMAIN Editor
ShaRhonda Knott-Dawson, who lives in Broadview and has two daughters, 13 and 9, knows what it’s like to need baby formula. Knott-Dawson said she’s had trouble breastfeeding and knows what parents of infants are going through amid a historic national shortage of baby formula caused by a recall of infant formula in February. “My worry is that there was no coordination or direction from the state,” Knott-Dawson said on May 27. “I didn’t see a plan.” As a result, Knott-Dawson, who sits on the Broadview library board and is active in a range of community organizations and initiatives across the west suburbs, took matters See FORMULA on page 9
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Scott Friesen bought Bat A Ball Batting Range in Melrose Park last year, reopening the range in April as Sam’s Batting Cages By MICHAEL ROMAIN Editor
In 2001, the Chicago Tribune interviewed Kevin Sherrod, a former Proviso East High School baseball player, while hitting balls with his 8-year-old daughter, Araina, at the Bat A Ball Batting Range, 1425 N. 1st Ave. in Melrose Park.
At the time, the Tribune reported that places like Bat A Ball “once dotted the area but are now scarce. Coming upon one now is always a surprise.” The batting ranges, the Tribune noted, “are dreamy places, where baseballs batted never reach a destination (whether a fielder’s glove or a bleacher seat) but are rather captured by the heavy netting that envelops the nine cages and the contraption that gathers balls and tosses them, at speeds from 35 to 85 miles per hour, toward batters positioned in nine cages.” By 2021, vines had overtaken the complex, which had also turned into a dumping ground for construction crews. Oak Parker Scott Friesen saw an opportunity in the eyesore. “The property was unavailable for the
better part of a decade,” Friesen said during a recent interview. “The owner died in 2011 without any direct heirs, so it was a court battle for ownership for years. That finally got settled at the end of 2019 and it went on the market last year. My wife called me and said, ‘Hey, that batting cage we drove past for years had a for sale sign on it.’ That’s when the insanity began.” Friesen, who runs analytics for a logistics company in Chicago by day, is into pinball and baseball and tall, tall tasks. The father of two (his son recently graduated from Oak Park and River Forest High School, where his daughter is currently a sophomore) bought the old Bat A Ball See BATTING on page 4