Marchbank Park Field, with its weedy playing field, cold concrete stands and rusted metal scoreboard, is abandoned and lonely and looking as dead as the mortuary behind it.
But that will all soon change when the century-old baseball diamond gets newest-generation synthetic turf, striped for football (both flag and tackle), soccer and lacrosse, beneath a digital scoreboard, aluminum bleacher seating for 500 and dugouts that double as dressing rooms. The makeover will cost $16 million to $18 million, and the city of Daly City will not have to pay a dime of it. The entire renovation is being paid for by Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep, a Catholic high school almost 10 miles away on the Van Ness corridor in San Francisco.
The school is doing the entire job in exchange for exclusive access to the sports field for three hours a day, five days a week and some Saturdays. It will not only be used for practices but for games, taking one of the oldest and richest interschool athletic programs out of San Francisco and across the county line for lower level and even some varsity contests…