John Fallenstein was all smiles as he gazed over the new baseball field named in honor of late parents Al and Erla Fallenstein.

“Al would just be over the moon with this,” Fallenstein said of the $630,000 project that equals or surpasses any other wheelchair-accessible field in the nation.

Fallenstein Field at North Mankato’s Caswell Park was officially dedicated Thursday, marking the culmination of a dream that began 41⁄2 years ago.

“This was my vision, and now it’s a reality,” said Joanne Hovey-McBride of Lake Crystal, who was coaching baseball to children with disabilities when teen Thomas Abrahamson, a wheelchair player from North Mankato, approached her.

“He said, ‘Joanne, I think you ought to get us a totally wheelchair-accessible field we can play on as kids and then as adults.’”

Hovey-McBride, Jim Coughlan and others took that acorn of an idea grew the tree — a state-of-the-art artificial surface field that includes spacious dugouts, lights, and field dimensions (150 feet down each line, 180 feet to center field) suitable for adult wheelchair play as well.

The field is under the auspices of the North Mankato Miracle League for children and teens with disabilities.

“If we wanted to do it, we wanted to do it right,” said North Mankato Miracle League president and Fallenstein son-in-law Justin Mathes of the planning process.

Mathes said only one other wheelchair-accessible field — in Texas — is on par with the North Mankato facility, which will host an adult tournament this weekend involving wheelchair teams from several states.

“I’ve been told there’s a guy on the Nebraska team that can put it on the highway,” he said, looking beyond the left field fence to a spot about 300 feet away.

Al Fallenstein and his wife were killed in an auto accident in 2003. Al Fallenstein, confined to a wheelchair following an accident in 1960, was a Taylor Corp. executive and avid sports fan who left large endowment funds with the Mankato Area Foundation.

Those funds, dedicated to the improvement of Mankato and North Mankato parks, were instrumental in making the field a reality.

Wheelchair player Abrahamson, now 21, was all smiles as well Thursday as he played in a pickup game prior to the dedication ceremony.

“It’s amazing,” he said of the field. “We used to have to play on Wallyn field (in lower North Mankato), and that wasn’t conducive to wheelchair baseball at all.”

Hovey-McBride, who spent nine months researching wheelchair fields in the United States, said the North Mankato facility hits a home run and then some.