Thieves swipe metal equipment, even water tap, during break-in at Elmwood Giants field

The Elmwood Giants Baseball Club was hit with a break-in on the weekend that saw them stripped of a bunch of gear, including their aluminum bats and even the water tap in their storage shed.

"It's disappointing, there's no doubt about that," said Al Kinley, who sits on the board for the Winnipeg club.

"A few people work really hard to make sure we have the stuff that we have and then to lose it in that way is pretty frustrating."

A club member noticed Saturday morning that someone had cut through a chain-link fence at Koskie Field off of Chalmers Avenue in the city's Elmwood area, he said.

It appears the thieves were specifically targeting metal, from the smallest things — the handle on a batting cage was unscrewed and taken — to the largest, Kinley said. Two pitching machines were gone and a third, bigger one, was found dragged a distance into the field.

They didn't take any balls, so I don't think they're thinking of starting a ball team.- Al Kinley

"I guess they kind of gave up on it. It's a heavy son of a gun," he said. "Or maybe somebody scared them off."

The water had already been turned off for the season so there was no flooding from the theft of the tap.

The thieves also helped themselves to all the metal bats (Kinley estimates there were 50-60), several catcher's masks and a brand new portable backstop that was still in the box.

"They didn't take any balls, so I don't think they're thinking of starting a ball team," he said, trying to find some humour in the incident.

"There were [also] uniforms hanging up in there, there were a bunch of hockey jerseys that we have in there, and generally the catcher's gear — other than the masks — didn't seem to be taken.

"Everything else that they took, other than the thing still brand new in the box, seemed to be metal-related."

Kinley estimates the total loss to the club, including repairing the damage, will be in the thousands of dollars. Even with insurance, that's a big blow to a volunteer-run organization, he said.

'Start from scratch'

The club operates the Elmwood Giants Juniors, who are members of the Manitoba Junior Baseball League, and the Elmwood Giants Seniors in the Winnipeg Senior Baseball League.

It also offers a kids' Learn-to-Play program, which sees as many as 50 youth take part every spring and summer, learning the game at little to no cost to the families.​

Kinley said the club will do what it has to do to make sure the program is equipped again for next year's young players.

"Now we've got to start from scratch though," he said.

He isn't sure when the break-in happened, but has since heard someone saw a U-Haul trailer on the field on Thursday.

"They could have been sitting there all day Thursday doing this, because there's not a lot of activity at the community club or on the field right now," Kinley said.

There were staff and students at Elmwood High School across the street "but if this was just a couple of guys working around the field, that wouldn't be something that someone would necessarily take notice of," he said.

Winnipeg police said they are investigating the break-in.

Kinley urges anyone who comes across the equipment — each bat has the Elmwood Giants' logo on it — to contact investigators.

With files from Shane Gibson

More from CBC Manitoba: