James Rolph Junior Playground

Parking is not horrible actually! I do have a small convenient car though. Scion fam, hello.
Played a softball game here and it was perfect! Only two fields so it’s easy to find and it’s the right size.
Bathrooms were clean and the basketball courts were calling my name, or leaving a voice mail, to come back and play.

This is for softball
For starters this park is in a crappy part of town, second there seems to be tons of homeless out there either whacked out on something or just flat out drunk. The field itself is just god awful. All sorts of pot holes in the outfield the infield is as hard as cement. Every time I see that we have Rolph on our schedule, I get a little cringe.

Rolph! It’s a great place because you can come here and get shithoused while playing sports with dense projectiles and your recyclables will be cleaned up after you by adoring fans with shopping carts. Your choice of 3 different avenues to hit foul balls/​home runs onto to smash windshields of moving vehicles.
Plus, you can pee anywhere!

I go here for two reasons: it’s literally in my backyard and my dog loves it.
It has a little playground, two tennis courts, a basketball court and two softball fields. Seeing as I don’t have any children and don’t play any sports, there’s really not much for me to do here. I would come out here and read, but the field is always dotted with little piles of doggie poop and all the benches are usually occupied by drunk homeless dudes. To be fair, not all the homeless dudes are drunk. And not all the drunk dudes are homeless. But I’ve gotten leered at and «sweetie“d and «hey, beautiful“d enough times to be a tad wary of the place. My dog makes a lousy bodyguard because she thinks they all smell interesting and likes to stop and say hello. (On second thought, maybe she’s the one they «sweetie“d haha!)
On a day when the weather is nice and the drunken leering is at a minimum, my boyfriend and I like to take our dog here and play a mad game of fetch. This is her heaven — running with wild abandon, kicking up dirt, chasing some round thing — it’s pure bliss. Uneasy as it makes me, this is her happy place and that’s good enough for me. Plus the drunk dudes are there less and less, so I’m taking that as a good sign.
I’m grateful for this patch of green, but please clean it up!

Nice green grass and it looks to be fairly «BYOB friendly» to most people playing there. There are a couple of baseball fields there too and a basketball court.
Pretty nice park, although there is a roving hobo camp that sometimes sets up shop here. Also, I saw a crackhead woman stop in front of me, drop her pants, and start taking a shit right on from of me on Potrero Ave. on the side walk in front of the park. But at least it wasn’t in the park…
Either way, watch out for needles and human feces while hanging out in this park. Well, this should be standard procedure at any park in San Francisco…

The only reason Rolph gets two stars instead of one is that it’s been fixed up dramatically. But for softball, Rolph is still at the bottom of places to play in SF. Yes, a ton of nice improvements were made, but the outfield is still downright dumb, unsafe and full of holes. The fields are so tight that outfielders in different games socialize WHILE PLAYING. The lighting in right field on Field 2 is non-​existent. Parking is crazy lousy.
If you play basketball or tennis, it looks like there’s been some nice upgrades. But I play softball and Rolph is not a pretty picture. The next time I go I’m staying in the infield for sure.

Im rating the tennis courts.
How can I not give this a 5 star. On a sunny sunday afternoon when my baby and I are running around SF looking for an empty tennis court to play, all of them are filled until we got to this one. For one this is closer to my hood. We drove to the one in Geary because he knew that it was built recently, m we got there seeing there was an empty court but after parking the car, by the time we got there someone beat us to it. ;-(
My baby knows that Im dying to play since we haven’t played in a while so the search was on. I reminded him about this place so its good that it one court was empty when we got there. I usually play in Marin — San Rafael High because its usually warm and sunny there, there’s a little bit of a breeze on this courts but hey, we are in SF after all. We had a good rally, he tried his Djokovic-​style with me, from bouncing the ball numerous times, dishing his dink shots and passing shots. We had fun and when we get the chance I am sure we will play here again.

We just had our first softball game of the season here. I was really annoyed when I saw the location of the field, it’s one of the hardest parks in the city to get to, and it’s not exactly situated in one of the nicest areas. However, that’s where we were supposed to play so go there I did. And I was very pleasantly surprised. The field was very well cared for, the grass was green, the dirt was well packed, the lighting was sufficient and it was really clean. The seating left something to be desired though, as there were bleachers on one side but the other side only had a single beach with about a foot between it and the fence. Hard to squeeze a team of 15 into that space. Taking the 27 from Nob Hill, it drops you only 2 blocks from the park. However, it’s not a short ride. So all and all, I would feel much better about this park if it were closer to the center of SF. But the park itself is super nice. The fact that we won our game probably also softens my view of it. FIY, they do lock the field after the game. Which was kinda ok, as it gave us a chance to jump the fence, and let me tell you, it is a whole other experience jumping a fence without the cops chasing you (not that I’m speaking from personal experience or anything. i’m just saying).
There’s also a basketball court, if you’re into shooting some hoops.