WATERFORD – A near $22,000 boost from the Baseball Tomorrow Fund means the sandlot ball field will have all the finishing touches, including bleachers, dugouts and a portable outfield fence system.

The $21,777 grant was received June 30. After nearly two years of effort, the team behind the Waterford Sandlot Project is thrilled to see its work come to fruition. Not only will there be a completed ball field, but there will be a few perks as well.

“The most exciting part is that this grant, or this fund, allowed us to outfit a girls softball team,” Corinna Beebe, co-chair of project committee, said Thursday. “We have this vision, as it were, that the girls with this grant or with this equipment, that they can play in one of the competitive leagues.”

The sandlot project began in October 2002, when Beebe turned to Tom Murch at a sporting event in Oxford and declared her desire for a playing field of similar quality.

“I said, I want this, and Tom said OK,” Beebe said with a laugh Thursday afternoon, glancing over the sandlot site on Route 118. “We decided that we would forge ahead, we would go out on a limb.”

At town meeting in 2003, the voters were asked to contribute $5,000 toward the project. They instead appropriated $7,500 for the cause. That was followed by a $36,000 appropriation this year, and with that and some other fund-raising efforts the sandlot today has been transformed from a scrappy old ball field to a site that has been leveled and smoothed over, irrigated, seeded and surrounded by an official-looking fence.

A quarter-mile walking track has been opened around the perimeter of the field as well.

“It’s absolutely amazing to me to have witnessed the support behind this field,” Beebe said, her committee co-chair, Murch, nodding in agreement beside her.

“Every time there’s an obstacle, someone comes forward to make the obstacle go away,” he said.

While grass will soon be sprouting on the sandlot, the field itself will not be open until spring, Murch said. The committee is plugging the spot as a field for all ages.

Murch said he eventually hopes to see a soccer field, playground and even horseshoe pits added to the site.

The Baseball Tomorrow Fund is a joint initiative of Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association that seeks to promote baseball through support of youth baseball and softball. The organization awards about $2 million annually to youth baseball and softball programs from North American to Europe.

The fund is very competitive, Samantha Murch, Tom Murch’s wife, said Thursday. Only about 5 percent of applicants receive awards.

What helped Waterford, said Beebe, was having a solid plan in place, “and we were able to demonstrate support from the town.”

More information on the Baseball Tomorrow Fund may be obtained on the Internet at www.baseballtomorrowfund.com.