Foul Ball Read online

  1. We have an alternative plan.

  2. We don’t need a new stadium to keep baseball in Pittsfield.

  3. If it truly is about “economic development,” a new stadium makes no sense.

  Why spend $18.5 million to build a baseball stadium used for three months a year (and doom a historical landmark!), when the same $18.5 million could be spent on an indoor arena, for example. Simple math tells you that a year-round arena—with professional hockey, arena football, rock concerts, the circus—would draw many more visitors than a summer baseball stadium. And you’d still have Wahconah Park. Even if a new $18.5 million baseball stadium could outdraw Wahconah Park by 50,000 fans, it would be like paying each one $370 to visit Pittsfield!

  It was ludicrous.

  We figured we’d be doing everybody a favor by pointing this out.

  Rather than approach the new-stadium opponents, Chip and I decided to meet with Berkshire Sports & Events. Better to work with the big boys than against them. Besides, these were businessmen; they’d understand the logic of our plan. Chip could talk the numbers. I’d tell the funny sports stories.

  On February 7, 2001, Chip and I met with BS&E at a restaurant in Pittsfield called the North End. A light snow was falling as we arrived. We entered through a back door off the parking lot and stamped the snow off our feet. The smell of beer, cigarettes, and grilled meat greeted us in the hallway. This was a guys’ restaurant. It featured heavy wooden beams, a bar, and a giant fish tank. A waitress showed us to a large round table and gave us menus featuring Italian cuisine. We liked the fact that we were the first to arrive. We sat with our backs to the fish and talked strategy.

  BS&E had some idea of what we wanted to talk about because Gerry Denmark, a lawyer I knew who had set up the meeting, had given them an overview. They must be intrigued, we figured, or they wouldn’t bother. We also knew there’d be egos involved, so Chip and I planned to be team players. We decided to let them take credit for our brilliant idea, which we were calling Plan B. Let them hit the home run with our bat and ball. We congratulated ourselves on our cleverness.

  Our prospective teammates arrived separately and were greeted warmly by the owner, a big guy with a mustache, who seemed to know them. Chip and I stood up to shake their hands. They were Andy Mick, publisher of the Berkshire Eagle; Tom Murphy, director of community development for Pittsfield; Mick Callahan, owner of an outdoor sign business; Mike Thiessen, stadium finance consultant; and Jay Pomeroy, Global Communications Manager for GE Plastics. But no one from Berkshire Bank, a key player.

  Except for Andy Mick, who looked like he had a case of indigestion even before the meal was served, they all seemed genuinely glad to meet us. This might be easier than we had thought.

  And then they started talking—about how a new stadium would be the best thing that ever happened to Pittsfield, that it would spur economic development, that this would be a multi-use stadium that would also host outdoor movies, trade shows, winter ice-skating, flea markets, festivals, bazaars, band concerts, and Boy Scout campouts, and that a new stadium was necessary because they had studies that showed Wahconah Park was falling apart, and that it was a dump, and a money pit, and a lost cause, and decrepit, and crumbling, and past its prime, and beyond repair, and not worth saving, and what’s more, new stadiums were the wave of the future.

  This was all delivered with great enthusiasm. Murphy did most of the talking, but they all took turns. Callahan gave the local business perspective. Thiessen talked about the finances. Pomeroy, with Amway enthusiasm, took on the role of cheerleader. Meanwhile, Andy Mick, who gave the impression of a bird of prey with his tight mouth and piercing eyes, said very little. For some reason he seemed to be the leader.

  It was your basic dog-and-pony show—and Chip and I were just two more guys who had to be won over. What a sell job! Boy Scout campouts? Would that be in the outfield? How about a merit badge for retrieving foul balls? For a minute I thought they were going to try and sell us stock.

  We waited politely for our chance to speak, nodding at each of them in turn, trying to keep up with the points that would need to be countered.

  “What’s wrong with Wahconah Park?” we asked finally, the fish tank gurgling behind us.

  They laughed and shook their heads. Or rolled their eyes. Andy Mick stared straight ahead at nothing in particular.

  “Where do you want to start?” asked a smiling Jay Pomeroy.

  Once again they took turns, this time presenting a laundry list of problems: the parking lot floods when it rains, the plumbing is held together with tape and chewing gum, the locker rooms are cramped, there are no exercise facilities, and the sun shines in the batters’ eyes, causing “sun delays,” which can hold up a game for ten minutes.

  Having done our homework, Chip and I matched their enthusiasm: the flooding might be alleviated by lowering a dam downstream from the park, the plumbing could be repaired or replaced, the locker rooms could be expanded, and the “sun delay” could be sold as the quirky feature of a historic ballpark, just as Fenway Park’s “Green Monster” turns a short left field into a marketing asset.

  They smiled tolerantly at us. Hadn’t we been listening?

  Chip and I energetically challenged their “economic development” theory. We cited studies that showed there is no economic benefit to having a new minor league baseball stadium. Zero. Zip. Nada. We said we would restore Wahconah Park at no cost to the taxpayers, and that the city could spend the $18.5 million on a completely different reason for people to come to Pittsfield. And furthermore, if they decided to build an arena instead of a stadium, we could provide a hockey team. We explained that our partner Eric Margenau was president of United Sports Ventures, a New York City–based company that owns four minor league hockey teams and a baseball team.

  We said that a new stadium was not necessary to keep professional baseball in Pittsfield, that there were two independent leagues that would be happy to play in Wahconah Park. What’s more, independent league baseball was better than affiliated baseball, and a properly marketed Wahconah Park would outdraw a new, cookie-cutter stadium. In any case, we were private investors willing to put money into Pittsfield’s best known landmark. If we wanted to “waste” our own money on a municipal asset, why not let us do it?

  We waited for the applause, but none was forthcoming. In fact, there was a decided lack of interest. They looked like they couldn’t wait to start talking again. It was like trying to have a conversation with animated robots at Disney World.

  They then launched into a speech about fans wanting to watch New York–Penn League baseball, and about Larry Bossidy, a Pittsfield native son and a former local pitching star, who was looking to buy a team for the new stadium. They added, with a sense of awe bordering on reverence, that Bossidy, former CEO of Allied Signal, was worth about $70 million.

  I volunteered that while I was not from Pittsfield and was, at that precise moment, worth something south of $70 million, I had once pitched for the Portland Mavericks, the only independent team in an otherwise affiliated Class A Northwest League. That was in 1977, the year before I made my comeback to the majors with the Atlanta Braves, and we ran away with the league because our players were more experienced. I said we especially enjoyed whomping up on fuzzy-cheeked bonus babies belonging to the San Diego Padres or the Los Angeles Dodgers.

  Whenever Chip or I talked, they would smile, and listen, and nod. But they would never engage us on our basic argument. We were like students at rival high schools trying to convince the other side that our school was best. Except that our school was best.

  Finally, we made the argument that BS&E would have a better chance of winning the Civic Authority referendum on June 5 with our Plan B than with what they were offering. But they said they weren’t worried about that. And they returned to their mantra: Wahconah Park was a waste of money, new stadiums were the wave of the future, and Larry Bossidy was worth about $70 million.

  Out of curiosity, I asked Jay Po
meroy, Global Communications Manager for GE Plastics, what particular interest he had in a new stadium.

  “I just love baseball,” he said.

  Uh-huh.

  But it was all very cordial and they even paid the bill. At the end of the evening, we shook hands and agreed to give it more thought. On our way out the door, they said if we wanted to learn more about Wahconah Park, we should call a guy named Phil Scalise. He was an engineer who had done some studies. He would explain about all the problems.

  In the car, on the way home, Chip and I tried to make sense of the meeting. We couldn’t figure it out. Why were they pushing so hard for a new stadium when it made no sense and the people didn’t want it in the first place? Then again, maybe it would take a while for Plan B to sink in. These guys had been living with their new stadium concept for a long time. They certainly weren’t going to turn on a dime right in front of us.

  But it sure would be interesting, we figured, to see what would happen next. What would become of the slogans “No new stadium, no baseball” and “There is no alternative”? Would Andy Mick rush back to his newsroom and holler, “Stop the presses”? Would he summon his editors and explain that, on the basis of information he had just obtained, it was no longer accurate to repeat those slogans? Would he insist a story be written to clear that up?

  Evidently, Andy must have left on a vacation right after our meeting at the North End, because in the days that followed there was no discernible difference in the reporting, the columns, or the editorials of the Berkshire Eagle. That’s when it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to write Andy Mick a letter, outlining the plan we had presented at the North End.

  Sort of a paper trail.

  A week later we got an email from Jay Pomeroy, the General Electric Guy Who Just Loves Baseball. Pomeroy said he wasn’t giving us an official view or anything—only Andy Mick could do that—but that he did want to warn us that “there is a minority in Pittsfield who are against any kind of change and have such a suspicious nature that it is scary!” Pomeroy also wanted us to know it had been nice talking to us, and he looked forward to talking to us again in the near future.

  The official view came on March 14, 2001, a little over a month after our meeting at the North End. Andy Mick called Chip to say that he wanted to meet with us, and that he’d be willing to come down to our neck of the woods.

  We wondered if Mick’s phone call had anything to do with the fact that we had recently shown copies of Plan B to some Berkshire Bank board members, one of whom hadn’t heard anything about it and wasn’t too happy about that omission. In any case, we agreed to have lunch with Andy at a sushi place in Great Barrington.

  When Andy walked in with Mick Callahan, I became optimistic. At our North End meeting, Callahan had been the only one who seemed even halfway open to our plan. Maybe BS&E had decided to run with it. Then again, Andy Mick was looking fiercer than a peregrine falcon. It was hard to tell what might happen. Until the waitress took our order. They chose the cooked fish. And we ordered sushi. Or as Callahan called it, “bait.”

  Before we had a chance to eat fish or cut bait, Andy Mick gave us the bad news: BS&E was going ahead with its new stadium.

  We needed to have lunch to hear this?

  Refusing to take no for an answer, which my mother always said was the problem with me, I suggested that BS&E at least do a market test of Plan B by offering it as an alternative. “Give the people a choice,” I said. Do it now and BS&E would have almost three months to get a reading before the Civic Authority vote on June 5.

  “By making Plan B public before the vote,” I said, “you can see how the people react, and if that’s what they want, you can adopt it. Whereas after the vote, if you lose, they might not listen to you on a new alternative.”

  There was an abrupt silence. Mick Callahan stopped eating in mid-fork.

  “We’re not going to make it public,” said Andy Mick. He did not look pleased.

  “Maybe we’ll make it public,” said Chip, brightly.

  Andy Mick’s head swiveled in Chip’s direction, and his eyes glared, as if he had just spotted a bunny from two hundred feet.

  “That’s blackmail!” Mick shouted angrily, waggling his finger in Chip’s face.

  We were stunned. People looked over at us from nearby tables.

  Callahan shrugged. “You’ll only confuse the voters,” he said.

  We said we’d think about it. And this time we picked up the tab.

  Blackmail. What a notion!

  And we would never let such an accusation stop us. But there was a good reason not to go public and it was this: If BS&E were to lose the Civic Authority vote, they wouldn’t be able to blame us. Chip and I just had to hope that BS&E would lose without the voters knowing there was a Plan B, without their knowing that baseball was still possible in Pittsfield, and without their knowing we wanted to restore Wahconah Park.

  A few days after being accused of attempted blackmail, Chip wrote to Andy Mick explaining our decision to keep quiet “so as not to confuse the voters.” Chip said we would call Andy on June 6, “either to congratulate you, or to suggest serious reconsideration of Plan B.”

  The funniest thing was that a week later Chip got a note from Andy Mick that read, “Thanks for your support on the stadium issue.” And it wasn’t a form letter, either; it was a handwritten note. The best part was where Andy said, “Let’s get Jim working on a couple of ‘Old Timer’ baseball games. They could be a big draw in the Berkshires.”

  What a guy! Maybe I could become director of special events.

  Time seemed to slow down over the next few months. Chip and I resumed our squash games. We have these fiercely competitive games where we battle for every point but absolutely refuse to accept a point on a questionable call. We’re the anti-McEnroes of the squash court.

  Chip learned to play squash at Oxford University, where he spent a year on a Reynolds Fellowship, studying philosophy, politics, and economics. Chip has a boyish preppiness about him, with thick dark hair, warm brown eyes, and an easy smile. When he walks, he leans forward slightly, with his elbows back, taking small quick steps, like a penguin who’s late for a meeting. He’s fifty-four, but he looks much younger, and sometimes people ask if he’s my son. Our games get really competitive after that happens.

  I’m more of a racquetball-type guy from Western Michigan University. Old alumni version. I try to stay in shape by pitching batting practice to the local sushi chef, Shige Tanabe, who played ball in Japan. And I like to build things out of stone, like walls and pillars. So I’m in pretty good condition. But at sixty-two, I’m getting a little gray or, as I explain to Paula, ultra blond. When I look in the mirror I see a much younger man than the impostor who shows up in photographs.

  The March mud gave way to April mud. Could the May mud be far behind? And what about that Civic Authority referendum up in Pittsfield? Wasn’t that coming up soon? Every once in a while, we’d see something in the Eagle.

  STADIUM SUPPORTERS GEAR UP TO PROMOTE YES VOTE

  “If it doesn’t pass,” said Mayor Doyle, “we’ll lose the ability to ever attract minor league baseball to the city.”

  ALL WE HEAR FROM STADIUM OPPONENTS IS NEGATIVITY

  TIME TO SAY GOODBYE TO OLD BALLPARKS

  “Our group believes this is really a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ vote for the new stadium,” said Jay Pomeroy.

  There was our man Pomeroy again, the General Electric guy. Boy, he sure loves baseball—played in a new stadium, if at all possible.

  Meanwhile, BS&E was spending a ton of money—some estimates went as high as $250,000, versus less than $1,000 by their opponents—to get its message across. Large, red “Stadium Yes!” signs were plastered all over town—on billboards, store windows, front lawns, and bumper stickers. The Chamber of Commerce, the Berkshire Visitors Bureau, and a group called Downtown Inc. invited Larry Bossidy to speak in favor of the new stadium at an “Economic Development Breakfast.” The ticket price was $15
for members, $23 for nonmembers. I assume Bossidy waived his usual fee.

  While Larry Bossidy was speaking indoors in support of a new stadium, Joe Guzzo, a city councilman, was marching outdoors against a new stadium. With an American flag sticking out of his backpack, Guzzo, in whose district Wahconah Park is located, went on a twenty-four-hour “sleepless vigil” march at the new stadium site to express his displeasure with the Civic Authority.

  Guzzo, Dan Bianchi, and Rick Scapin—known as “The Three Amigos,” originally a derisive term, now adopted as a badge of honor by supporters—were the only city councilors to vote against the Civic Authority. The other eight had been solidly in support.

  Joe’s sleepless vigil was a low-budget approach to an under financed campaign. “We don’t have any high-dollar backing, like the new stadium proponents do,” said Dave Potts, a quality control inspector who had led the petition drives that forced the Civic Authority onto the ballot. “We’re just a little grassroots organization, if you want to call us an organization.”

  Wahconah Park was about to be buried in a landslide.

  And then the people voted.

  In one of the most stunning election upsets in the history of Berkshire County, the Civic Authority went down to defeat by a 54–45 margin. It was the largest turnout in memory, with 50.6% of the city’s 28,495 registered voters having had their say. A huge victory for the naysayers.

  Now they were the yay! sayers.

  “This is for the people of Pittsfield,” said a happy Anne Leaf, “God love ’em.”

  It was a remarkable turn of events. Chip and I never believed the Civic Authority would be defeated. The BS&E guys we met were pretty confident, plus they had all that muscle behind them. They seemed impressive, if somewhat single-minded. And we had never met any of the opponents, who were just names in the newspaper.

  This was also exciting. And very odd. Here we were, back in the game, as the result of a Herculean effort from total strangers who had no idea what was around the corner. What would they think of Plan B? Would they be against it because they really are naysayers?