The Ballpark Behind Tropic Palms Isn't as Public as It Looks

On the night of February 6, 2024, the Delray Beach City Commission chamber filled up with kids in baseball caps and travel-team jerseys. Their parents came too, and their coaches, all there to talk about a diamond most of them had played on since they were old enough to hold a bat. One father on the Little League board, Gus Ross, put it simply.

"It feels like something out of a movie."

He meant it as a complaint, not a compliment. A few weeks earlier, a group of 8 to 12 year olds had been told they couldn't play on a public baseball field. The field in question sits a short walk from Tropic Palms, and most people who live near it know its nickname better than its address: Little Fenway.

What Little Fenway Actually Is

Robert P. Miller Park sits at 1905 SW 4th Avenue, close enough to Tropic Palms that residents can bike over on a Saturday morning without thinking twice. Inside the park is a field built to mimic Fenway Park in Boston, right down to a 40 foot left field wall known locally as the Green Monster. The dimensions are specific: 315 feet to left, 415 to center, 355 down the right field line. The rest of the park holds four lighted Little League fields, two lighted regulation baseball fields, a Miracle League Field built for players with disabilities, four batting cages, and a playground.

It looks like the kind of civic amenity a city builds and then simply maintains. That's not quite what happened, and it's not quite how it still works today.

One Resident's Persistence Built the First Field

The park exists because a Delray Beach resident named Robert Miller decided the city needed better facilities for kids who wanted to play organized baseball. In the early 1970s, Miller went to Mayor Jack Saunders and the City Commission and asked for a regulation size, lighted Little League field. Around the same time, another resident, Ken Ellingsworth, helped the effort land a Bicentennial Grant worth $250,000, described by the city as the largest grant of its kind given anywhere in Florida at the time. That funding built the original field, which the committee named Little Fenway.

Miller didn't stop there. One field wasn't enough for the number of kids in Delray Beach who wanted to play, so the city kept adding fields over the years. The most recent addition, Sergio Field, is named for Fred Sergio, a longtime city resident and city employee. It's the kind of expansion that happens quietly, one grant and one commission vote at a time, until a neighborhood field turns into a full athletic complex.

The Lease That Decides Who Plays

Somewhere along the way, Bucky Dent's Baseball School moved into the south end of the park under an agreement with the city to help maintain the fields. That academy is known today as Elev8 Sports Institute, and it has held a lease with the city since 2003 that gives it the authority to set standards for who plays at Miller Park.

That detail matters more than it sounds. A public park, built with public grant money and named after the resident who lobbied for it, has its field access governed in part by a private lease with a baseball academy. For most of the last two decades, that arrangement worked without much friction, because a pay-to-play travel program called XLB Training had a long standing relationship with the Little League that used the park, and through that relationship XLB players got free access to the fields.

When the Arrangement Broke

That access ended in January 2024, when Elev8 blocked XLB Training from using the fields for the remainder of its season. Elev8's head coach, Todd Moser, framed the dispute as a business issue in a statement to the Palm Beach Post, describing XLB as a for-profit program trying to play for free on fields maintained by Elev8's nonprofit arrangement with the city. XLB and its supporters saw it differently. They showed up at the February 6 commission meeting to argue that kids who had played at Miller Park for years had lost their home field with little warning.

Delray Beach's parks and recreation director, Samuel Mettot, noted that pay-to-play programs commonly work with Little Leagues specifically to save on field costs, which is the arrangement XLB had relied on. Whether that counted as a reasonable partnership or a workaround depended entirely on which side of the dispute someone stood on. What the episode made clear to everyone in that chamber is that access to a public field on public land can still hinge on a private contract most residents never read.

What This Means If Your Kid Wants to Play Here

For families in Tropic Palms with a child interested in travel baseball, the practical lesson isn't about picking a side in a 2024 dispute. It's about understanding that field time at Miller Park runs through Elev8's lease, not through a simple first come, first served city booking system the way it might at a smaller neighborhood park. If you're looking into a travel program, it's worth asking directly whether that program has a working relationship with Elev8 or with the Little League that plays there, rather than assuming any program can simply reserve time on Little Fenway.

For families whose kids are in recreational Little League rather than a competitive travel program, none of this changes much day to day. The Little League itself remains the primary user of the regular season fields, and the dispute was specifically about a separate travel program's access outside that structure.

A Small Practical Note for This Fall

One near term change is worth knowing if you visit the park often. The restroom building at the Miracle League Field closes for renovation starting November 1, 2026, with a planned reopening by November 26, 2026. During that stretch, the city has said alternative restrooms will be available at the concession stand. It's a minor scheduling detail, but if you're a regular at the Miracle League Field or you're bringing a group there this fall, it's the kind of thing you want to know before you arrive rather than after.

The Rest of the Walk From Tropic Palms

Little Fenway is one stop on a longer loop that a lot of Tropic Palms residents already know by heart. Barwick Park sits just east of the neighborhood and offers a playground, trails, and dog-friendly space that pairs well with a morning at Miller Park. If you'd rather walk than watch baseball, the Leon M. Weeks Environmental Preserve, sometimes called Delray Oaks Natural Area, has quiet walking trails a short drive away.

For errands, Delray Plaza Shopping Center sits right on Linton Boulevard at the edge of the neighborhood, with a Publix and a Walgreens covering most of what you'd need without a trip downtown. The same stretch of Linton holds a run of casual restaurants, including Duffy's Sports Grill and Tijuana Flats, for the nights nobody feels like cooking. If Saturday mornings are your thing, the farmers market at Old School Square, about a mile from Tropic Palms, runs from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. with local produce, artisan food, and live music.

None of these places require a car ride across town. They're the kind of stops that make Tropic Palms feel less like a subdivision and more like a neighborhood with its own rhythm, one where a Saturday can include a Little League game at a field built to look like Fenway Park, a walk through Barwick Park, and a stop for groceries, all without leaving a two mile radius.

The next time you drive past Miller Park and catch a glimpse of that green wall, you'll know it's not just a nostalgic nod to Boston. It's a field with a real history, a real lease, and a real dispute behind it, sitting quietly in the middle of a neighborhood that mostly just uses it to play catch.

If you've got questions about Tropic Palms beyond the ballfield, whether it's the walk to Barwick Park, the drive to Atlantic Avenue, or anything else about calling this corner of Delray Beach home, Abbey Adair is always happy to talk through it. Find Your Dream Home. I'll Get It Sold.