Bob Steiner’s summer sport is softball, and for much of his adult life, Wauwatosa's home for summer league softball has been Hart Park.
So, it has been frustrating this year for Steiner, 66, and his fellow softball enthusiasts to watch the field at Hart Park go unused. The City of Wauwatosa has yet to restore the field since the August 2025 flooding that damaged many of the recreational facilities at Hart Park. The park’s other facilities have been repaired, but the softball field’s future is still up in the air.
“This is just like a head-scratcher to so many of us why they no longer want to do a softball field,” Steiner told Tosa Forward News.
Subscribe for free to receive the latest Tosa news — or become a paid member and support more reporting like this.
The league games organized by Wauwatosa Recreation Department continue to be a popular pastime for Tosa residents and visitors from nearby communities. Overall participation, though declining in recent years, is still sizable, with at least 38 teams in each of the past five years.
But Hart Park was not the home base of Tosa softball this year. Tosa Rec had to move all of its games away from the bustling social hub in Tosa Village to the fields across town at Whitman Middle School, to the dismay of some of the village’s businesses. Hart Park may never host another softball game, as the City of Wauwatosa considers whether there is a better use for that space.
City officials have said little publicly about their plans for the Hart Park softball field, though Mayor Dennis McBride addressed the subject briefly during a Sept. 8 meeting of the Common Council’s Financial Affairs Committee, saying that “options” soon would be presented to the council, either to restore the softball field or create something else there.