At first glance, it seems an issue of small moment.

For years, there have been six indoor tennis courts in one corner of Charles River Park. Now a company called Basketball City wants to replace the tennis courts with basketball courts.

Big orange balls.  Small fuzzy balls.  Does anyone really care?

Well, any time 300 angry citizens show up at a community meeting, which is what happened last Tuesday, government officials better care.  The residents don't want basketball.  More precisely, they don't want Basketball City.

To be sure, there are a lot of devoted tennis players who value the tennis courts that are there now.  Boston has a lot of basketball courts and very few indoor tennis courts.  Opponents note, quite correctly, that the loss of tennis would be significant.

But the real source of opposition to Basketball City is not based on tennis vs. basketball.  Rather, it comes from a concern that Basketball City is a commercial enterprise.

The tennis courts were originally installed as part of the development of Charles River Park. The courts were in an area designated for recreational use that was supposed to be "complementary and accessory to" the area's residential community.  And for decades, that's what they've been.  The tennis club is a low key operation used mostly by residents from the West End, Beacon Hill and a few other areas.  It has served well as a community amenity.

For the last two years, Basketball City has operated a very successful facility in Manhattan.  It caters principally to the business community, serving as the home base for a series of corporate leagues.  It has been phenomenally successful, making a lot of money for its owners while providing downtown workers a recreational outlet.

Basketball City hopes to do the same in Boston.  The Charles River Park location is attractive because it's close to downtown and right across from the Fleet Center.  At $15-$20 an hour per person, it's not the kind of activity that a resident might engage in much, but the cash-flush money management firms, banks and law firms that litter downtown would love it.

That, of course, is the problem.  Basketball City's proponents argue its just a substitute of one recreational use for another.  But it's not.  Instead it's a substitute of an essentially noncommercial, residentially focused use for one that's commercial and business-focused.  It's like taking a community tot lot, converting it to a Discovery Zone, and saying it's the same thing.

The 300 residents who gathered to protest Basketball City understood very well the issues at play here:  the preservation and success of their neighborhood.  But for the most part, the city's political leadership simply does not seem to care what happens to Charles River Park.
Why not?

For many years, Boston has pretended that Charles River Park was not a real residential community.  Some of that attitude was leftover resentment about the destruction of the old West End. Some of it was because the first residents of CRP were transients who rented for only a few years or months and then left.

But over the years, CRP has changed into a stable community, one of long-term owners and residents, one with kids and seniors.  It is a real community, one that needs as much respect and as much preservation as we accord to neighborhoods like the North End, South Boston and Hyde Park.