Community leaders had to step up over the weekend to buy baseball hats for a South Boston high school varsity team due to a budget crunch at the Boston Public Schools, which led to criticism about the city’s spending priorities.

Bob Ferrara said he received a phone call last Friday night that left him “beyond disgusted” — the school district hadn’t delivered baseball hats to the Excel High School team ahead of their opening day game, which was scheduled for Monday.

Ferrara soon learned that the hats wouldn’t be coming on time, if at all, from BPS — which in January paused hiring and spending to try to close a $53 million budget gap for the current fiscal year, which ends on June 30. The school district has proposed a budget with more cuts for next fiscal year, amid Boston’s larger financial difficulties, which have the city facing a $48.4 million budget shortfall this fiscal year.

“I’ve been coaching youth sports and high school sports for a long time in the city, so this is a disgrace,” Ferrara, 62, told the Herald Tuesday. “You put a team that you know has nothing and send them on a field without baseball hats on. That’s bush league. That’s unacceptable.

“The mayor is spending $130 million helping a private entity with a soccer team, and they can’t come up with money to make sure these kids have hats on time?” Ferrara added.

Ferrara was referring to the city’s $325 million public-private plan to rebuild White Stadium for a professional women’s soccer team that has taxpayers coughing up $135 million for the city’s half of the renovations. The taxpayer cost was initially projected at $50 million when the project — which will see BPS student-athletes share use of the rebuilt facility — was announced two years ago.

After learning of the Excel High School team’s predicament, Ferrara said he worked over the weekend to ensure new hats would be made and arrive on time for their first varsity baseball game of the season.

Ferrara said he made a call to a “South Boston fixer” and his former youth football coach, Robert Pacitti, who then called his friend, David Moynihan, who owns The Spot, a Southie store that does clothing printing and embroidery. Moynihan offered to make the hats free of charge.

The hats were embroidered with an “SB” logo within 48 hours, and Ferrara said he dashed out on Monday to hand-deliver them to the team in time for opening day, which was played at Madison Park Technical Vocational High School.

“They couldn’t believe it,” Ferrara said of the team. “They couldn’t believe we pulled this off.”

Ferrara said he doesn’t know how much the hats set back the store owner, who did not respond to the Herald’s request for comment. He estimated that it “wasn’t a tremendous amount of money.”

“It’s just the little stuff that falls through the cracks,” Ferrara said. “The way I operate is 1,000 little things. You let one thing fall through the crack, what about the next thing? I’m beyond disgusted that I get pulled into this stuff because it seems like I’m one of the few people who can make things happen. It’s pathetic.”

BPS did not immediately respond to the Herald’s request for comment.

Ferrara, who said he worked for Josh Kraft’s mayoral campaign last year, criticized what he described as the city’s “new way” of doing things, which has led to “filthy” streets and a lack of basic city services.

“We’re totally reinventing the school system, because everything new is better, right?” Ferrara said. “You can’t fix what’s old.”

South Boston’s Excel High School is closing at the end of this school year, as part of a BPS reconfiguration plan. The district’s plans call for renovating the high school and opening a so-called anchor school to occupy the building in the future.

Boston City Councilor Erin Murphy, who has repeatedly voted against the school budget, criticized BPS for failing to provide baseball caps to the Excel team. She recalled pressing for answers after school transportation issues hampered the same varsity baseball team and left players stranded on game days two years ago.

“Now, to hear that this same team is being told there are no funds for baseball caps is deeply frustrating and completely unacceptable,” Murphy said in a statement, “and it speaks to a problem I’ve been raising for years. Boston Public Schools is now operating with a budget of roughly $1.7 billion, and we are spending well over $30,000 per student.

“Yet when you look at athletics, the investment reaching students is still less than $100 per student. That disconnect is exactly what we are seeing play out here. When a school team cannot get something as basic as hats for opening day, it is not a funding issue. It is a prioritization and accountability issue.

“Athletics are not extras. They are part of a well-rounded education and critical to student engagement, attendance, and school pride. We cannot continue to talk about record spending while failing to deliver for students in the most basic ways,” Murphy added.

The councilor thanked the South Boston community for stepping up to provide the caps, but said it should have never come to that. She added that community support “should never be a substitute for a system that works.”

“Our students deserve better,” Murphy said, “and along with Councilor Ed Flynn, we will be demanding answers from BPS on how this happened and how we ensure it does not happen again.”