Foul Ball Read online

  Coach Jacobeit let me pitch a few times that year, but it wasn’t what I dreamed about. I was still in the bullpen, still Warm Up Bouton.

  The summer after my junior year, I decided to give baseball one more chance. I tried out for the Chicago Heights American Legion team, which was basically the same guys from the high school team. I’d have to hitchhike or borrow the car to get there from Homewood.

  It had rained on the first day of practice and there were puddles on the field at Heights Park. I arrived early and picked up a rake to help disperse the water. That’s when I heard this high-pitched, raspy Italian voice.

  “Whatta you doin’?”

  A tough-looking guy, about thirty-five, with a black crew cut, bushy eyebrows, and black-rimmed glasses, was standing over by the dugout.

  “There’s a practice this afternoon,” I said. “I’m fixing the field.”

  “No practice. Too wet,” he said, chopping his words off. “I’m Earl DeTella. The manager. What position you play?”

  “I’m a pitcher.”

  “Too small to pitch,” he said. “You play second base.”

  “No!” I said, firmly. “I’m a pitcher.”

  “Oh yeah?” he said, smiling. “Maybe. We’ll see.”

  After a week of practice, Earl DeTella announced the opening game pitcher: “Jimmy Bouton.”

  A lot of moans went up. A few teammates, guys like Colangelo who knew Earl from the same neighborhood, told him he was making a mistake, that I was just a bullpen pitcher.

  DeTella’s eyes got squinty and his chin jutted out.

  “You fuckin’ guys,” he rasped in machine gun bursts. “The day it rained, you stayed home. He was raking the field. He wants to play ball. He’s my pitcher.”

  The next day I took the mound at Heights Park and won the ballgame. And then I won my next game. And I won a lot more after that, and before the summer was over I had gone from Warm Up Bouton at Bloom to the ace pitcher for the Post 131 American Legion baseball team.

  I was now where I belonged. On the mound. In a real ballpark.

  Coach Jacobeit, reading the newspapers that summer like a scout checking the box scores, gave me the ball in my senior year. “You earned it, son,” he said, just like the kindly coach in the Chip Hilton sports books. The highlight of the season turned out to be the opening game of the Illinois high school state tournament played in front of a capacity crowd—including a few scouts—at Heights Park.

  Once in a while, when I’m down in the basement puttering around, I open an old scrapbook and turn to my favorite page. And I read the first line of a story by the late John E. Meyers, sportswriter for the Chicago Heights Star.

  With a bullwhip for a curve and a knuckler squashy as a tomato, Jimmy Bouton pitched the dandiest no-hit, no-run game of baseball the Chicago Heights AA Park has contained in 31 years.

  Today there’s a sign on the fence at Heights Park that says “Jim Bouton Pitched Here.” I hope they never tear the place down.

  How many players feel the same about Wahconah?

  The plight of Wahconah Park began with a process familiar to towns across America. The local team owner, Bill Gladstone, talked the city of Troy, New York, into building him a new stadium. This meant that his Class A New York–Penn League franchise (a Mets farm team from 1988 to 2000 and an Astros farm team in 2001) would be leaving Pittsfield. There is some dispute over whether the New York–Penn League had declared Wahconah Park to be substandard or whether Gladstone just wanted a new stadium; the point was, he’d be leaving for Troy after the 2001 season.

  The new stadium in Troy, by the way, is named after Joseph L. Bruno, in recognition of the state senate majority leader’s efforts in helping to get it built. It’s not known how much consideration, if any, was given to the name Taxpayer Stadium.

  It was shortly thereafter that the Berkshire Eagle, Pittsfield’s only daily newspaper, began lobbying for a new baseball stadium to be built on land it owned at its headquarters in the center of town. A group called Berkshire Sports & Events (BS&E), which consisted of the Media News Group of Denver (parent of the Eagle), Berkshire Bank, the law firm of Cain Hibbard Myers & Cook, and some local businessmen, was formed to move the project along. BS&E said it was assembling $18.5 million in state grants, revenue bonds, and corporate donations to build the new stadium.

  Hello new stadium; goodbye Wahconah Park.

  But the people of Pittsfield didn’t want to say goodbye to Wahconah Park. In fact they had already voted to renovate their beloved ballpark. Twice. Once in 1997 and again in 1999. And twice their elected officials ignored their votes.

  In the summer of 2000, opponents of a new stadium began a petition drive to counter the efforts of BS&E. But once again the City Council, this time ignoring the petition, voted 8 to 3 to ask the state of Massachusetts to authorize the creation of a Civic Authority to build and operate a new stadium. The Authority would also have the right of eminent domain, in case a few people’s homes or businesses needed to be demolished to make room for the new stadium that the people didn’t want.

  Within hours of the Council vote, however, the citizens of Pittsfield took to the streets again. Under Section 44A of the city charter, the “naysayers” (as they were called by the Eagle) collected 4,781 signatures, far more than the 3,350 they believed they needed to prevent the creation of a Civic Authority. But once again, they were foiled by city officials and BS&E, who successfully challenged the petition in a municipal hearing.

  This time, however, an interesting thing happened. The hearing, now referred to in Pittsfield as “the kangaroo court,” was locally televised. And what viewers saw was a McCarthy-like questioning of private citizens, including a seventy-year-old woman named Anne Leaf, a local artist and one of those who stood to lose her home if the new stadium were built. The aptly named Ms. Leaf, a wisp of a woman, looks as if a wind could blow her away. And one almost did.

  “Their attorney just chopped me up,” said Leaf. “They asked who put me up to it, who else was involved. It was just awful.” Observers said most of the dirty work was done by a guy named Mike MacDonald of Cain Hibbard Myers & Cook.

  A legal challenge to the hearing fared no better for Ms. Leaf. “The superior court judge, MIS-ter Ford, was beholden to the whole damn bunch, the good old boys,” she said. “I’ve never known such a rude man in my life. And he didn’t even have the courtesy to tell me the final ruling.”

  The final ruling was that the anti-Civic Authority group would actually need 4,500 signatures—on a newly worded petition—and all of it within two weeks’ time.

  The naysayers hit the streets again.

  Lashed by the harsh winds of a bitterly cold January, a dedicated band of Wahconah Park lovers, eminent domain targets, and McCarthy-tactic haters, managed to collect—with one day to spare—5,226 signatures. This was more than enough to withstand the challenges, thus overturning the Civic Authority. The matter would now be settled in a special referendum on June 5, 2001.

  Every time I would read or hear something about the fate of Wahconah Park, I’d feel a little tug of sadness. How could they abandon a landmark that means so much to the city? As local historian Donna Walto notes, Pittsfield has already “destroyed its most important architecture” and with it, “much of its own history.” The lost buildings include Bullfinch Church, built in 1793 and one of only two like it in the world; the old brick Union Station; the Peace Party House; Elm Knoll, where Longfellow got the inspiration for his poem, The Old Clock on the Stairs. And those are just a few.

  How could that be happening in the Berkshires, famed for its timeless mountains and its ubiquitous antique shops? While Pittsfield is tearing down, the rest of Berkshire County is preserving and renovating. In South County, where I live, the towns of Great Barrington, Stockbridge, and Lenox are all booming, largely because they’ve maintained the historic character of their downtowns. In North County, the same respect for the past has fueled the growth of Williamstown and North Adams. Sandwiche
d in between, in the southern part of North County, is Pittsfield, which can’t get out of its own way.

  Beyond the sadness, there’s a certain fear involved in the tearing down of treasured buildings. Tearing down is forgetting. If we can forget so easily, who will remember us?

  It’s comforting to live in a community that cares about its history. I’m one of those who cringed when the Taliban blew up those ancient Buddhist statues in Afghanistan, and I’m not even a Buddhist. Nor do I care about religion. Baseball is my religion and ballparks are the temples.

  I go to Wahconah Park only a few times a year, but I like knowing it’s there. Here’s a ballpark that gives you a feel for what life might have been like just after World War I. It’s like those villages they set up to recreate the past, with the blacksmith and the weavers and the butter churns, only Wahconah is a real working ballpark. I want to be able to take my grandchildren there one day.

  Why couldn’t Wahconah Park be fixed up? If it no longer met the exacting requirements of major league baseball’s affiliated farm teams, maybe it could be home to an independent league team. The Atlantic League, which includes the Long Island Ducks and the Newark Bears, might want to play there. So might the Northern League, whose Albany Diamond Dogs and Glens Falls Lumberjacks would be natural rivals. What’s more, independent league baseball is better than the Class A New York–Penn League because the teams are stocked with former AA, AAA, and even major league players.

  For the hell of it, I called my friend Chip Elitzer, who I knew had similar feelings about Wahconah Park because we’d gone to games there together. My wife Paula and I would drive up from South County with Chip and his wife Cindy, and their boys, Daniel, Sam, and Jacob. Chip is an investment banker and a smart man. Maybe he could think of something.

  So the two of us thought for about five minutes and came up with the answer. We could fix up Wahconah Park. We could buy an independent league team to play there. And we could even make some money.

  But where would we get the seed money to begin with?

  I’m doing pretty well, but I’m far from rich, having lacked the foresight to be born in a time when I could have earned $19,000 per inning instead of the $19,000 per year that I actually earned as a major leaguer. And while Chip is a successful investment banker, he also has a big house, a seriously ailing father, and three teenagers to put through college.

  “Money is not a problem,” said Chip. “A good idea can always attract money. We’ll contribute the sweat equity.”

  “Great!” I said. “I know how to sweat.”

  This could be fun, I thought. Can you imagine? Jim Bouton, baseball team owner. Wouldn’t that be a switch? I might finally come to understand the fascination with buying and selling uniformed human beings. Overpaid human beings, to be sure. I’ll have to go out and buy some cigars.

  And Chip and I would be good partners. How do I know? Hell, we once built a tree house together.

  Chip and I have known each other about five years. And two years ago, we built a tree house for his three boys. Okay, maybe it was partly for us, too. It’s one of those Swiss Family Robinson–type jobs that belongs in Architectural Digest—about twenty-five feet up, with a landing and everything. It would have been fifty feet up but our wives wouldn’t let us. Chip and I would be up in the tree, dangling from ropes with hammers and saws, and Paula and Cindy would be hollering at us from down on the ground. “You guys are crazy! Come down out of that tree!” We’d shake our heads and shrug, pretending we couldn’t hear what they were saying because we were too high up.

  “Whaaat?”

  The more Chip and I talked about Wahconah Park, the more we liked it. Pittsfield would get a renovated landmark and a professional baseball team, at no cost to the taxpayers. We’d even sell stock to local investors so no one could ever move the team out of town.

  If we could build a tree house by ourselves, we could certainly build a minor league baseball team. On second thought, our wives would have really hollered at us for that. Maybe we should do a little research. So we called Chip’s friend Eric Margenau, who not only owned a few minor league teams but also has a weekend home in nearby Stockbridge. We explained our idea to Eric and asked him about available teams. “There are a number of dormant franchises we could buy,” he said. “Once we have a place to play.”

  We had just acquired a third partner.

  Now it was our other partners—the ones we lived with—who needed to be on the team. I’m referring to the petite and feisty Cindy Elitzer, Eurasian cutie, loving mother, great cook, expert gardener, and fashion consultant to Chip (who needs all the help he can get); and the tall and feisty Paula Kurman, stunning beauty, great dancer, besotted grandmother, and fashion consultant to Jim (who’s only one Peruvian Connection catalog order ahead of Chip).

  Paula and Cindy are intelligent, strong-willed, verbally gifted women. The other problem is that they’re good friends and often team up together on projects. Like the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, the Fairview Hospital Gala, and the betterment of Chip and me.

  Saving the oldest minor league ballpark in America would take some time, we admitted in a fit of honesty. Not to mention the lost opportunity costs to a self-employed investment banker and a so-called businessman/writer who tries to spin straw into gold from the comfort of his home.

  So, would the women go along with us or not?

  The big conference took place around the kitchen table at the Elitzers, after we’d come back from a movie one night. This was going to be a no-nonsense meeting, unlike our other get-togethers. In preparation, Chip and I opened the freezer and scooped ourselves some ice cream.

  Cindy gently eased into the subject.

  “I think you guys are nuts,” she said. “Pittsfield is not going to welcome you. They don’t have any vision or leadership.”

  “That’s what we’re going to bring them,” I said. “This is just the kind of idea Pittsfield needs. We could turn that place around.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” said Paula.

  “Look what happened to the England Brothers department store,” Cindy added. “A fabulous old brick building that they tore down and replaced with a very ordinary building. The owner, Cindy Welch, even tried to work with the city to save it, but they just weren’t interested. They tore down their beautiful old railroad station, too.”

  Paula brought up a practical point. “My concern is that Jim doesn’t know how to do anything halfway,” she said. “And we can’t afford to have him spending all his time on something that doesn’t produce any income.”

  Chip nodded. “It’s true that we’re not going to get any cash back for the first three years,” he admitted. “Most of the money we raise will have to go into the ballpark.”

  “And what are we going to do for money in the meantime?” Paula asked.

  By this time Chip and I had polished off the espresso crunch and the dulce de leche and were into the vanilla swiss almond.

  “I’m afraid you guys are going to get sucked into a quagmire,” Cindy said.

  “It could go on indefinitely,” added Paula.

  “But it’ll all be over in a few months,” I argued. “Either we get a lease on Wahconah, and a chance to make some money—or we don’t, and we go on with our lives.”

  “And there’s always the serendipity factor,” Chip pointed out. “This could lead to new sources of income. Jim and I could end up as event promoters. Put on concerts. Who knows? It’s not just tilting at windmills.”

  It went back and forth like this for almost two hours. By then Chip and I were reduced to chocolate chip cookie dough and Phish Food.

  Then came the breakthrough. And it was a good thing too, because Chip and I were out of ice cream.

  Paula was the one who made the leap. “Well… I know the two of you would have fun doing it, and maybe it’s worth it just for that.”

  Cindy agreed. “If you really have to do it, guys, then you really have to do it.”


  And so it was unanimous.

  In the end we had no choice. Here was an opportunity not only to save an old ballpark but to turn The System upside down—a system that extorts taxpayer dollars to build new stadiums for migratory teams. We’d replace the same old threat with a brand new offer: We’ll spend private dollars to renovate an existing ballpark for a locally owned team.

  The target was irresistible, the right forces were aligned against us, and the impact could be far-reaching. And if our wives might be ambivalent, our bodies were telling us what to do. As Chip said, “If we don’t do this, we’ll become physically sick.”

  The situation was absolutely begging us to get involved.

  During their “Stadium Yes!” campaign, Berkshire Sports & Events had made three arguments that were repeated endlessly in the Eagle:

  1. There is no alternative plan.

  2. No new stadium, no baseball.

  3. It’s not about a stadium, it’s about “economic development.”

  This last point was powerfully seductive to a financially strapped city, left largely abandoned in the 1980s by General Electric. Pittsfield’s population had declined by 20% to its current 42,000, and the city is so deeply in the red that it had to close a firehouse, cut back on high school sports, and turn out streetlights. Things are so bad that the city’s finances are now managed by a state oversight board.

  For Pittsfield, whose Fourth of July parade had been regularly featured on national television, it’s been a sad comedown. Once the center of Berkshire life, Pittsfield, through bad management, poor vision, and corporate wrongdoing, has ceded its status as an economic hub to nearby towns, with a corresponding loss of tourism. As its population has aged, it struggles to evolve from a manufacturing to a service community.

  In short, Pittsfield needs all the help it can get. It does not need the false promise of a new stadium—or the false arguments being made to get it built. That’s where Chip and I come in. Because the truth is: