Embedded Files
For nearly 50 years, Pawtucket had a baseball team. In 2021, they parted ways.
by Linus Lawrence
Paul Baker was used to being the last one to leave McCoy Stadium.
From 2000-2012, the Rhode Island native and die-hard sports fan worked at the home of the Pawtucket Red Sox. It’s where he met some of his closest friends, and where his children — who would accompany him to the ballpark — were essentially raised.
“It was being part of a family,” Baker said. “I’ve found other things to fill the gap, but it’s not the same. Nowhere is home like McCoy was for a long time in my life.
On this night, Baker wasn’t there to work. He was there to eat. After two postponements due to weather, he was finally attending “Dining on the Diamond” — a series of dinners served at socially distanced tables in the stadium’s outfield grass during the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic in the summer of 2020 — on its last night offered.
Things weren’t supposed to be this way. The suddenly canceled minor league baseball season didn’t just mean a year without the PawSox, whose consistency in Pawtucket had held steady since their inception in 1973 — but an abrupt death in the family they'd formed. Prior to the 2020 season, it was announced that the team would be relocating to Worcester. The lost season meant the end of the PawSox time — and, effectively, the end of McCoy Stadium as well.
So instead of witnessing a grand ceremony, an epic walk-off or final curtain call, Baker’s goodbye had to come in the moments after finishing his meal.
He tried to savor every last second he could get on the sacred field. “They would have had to drag me out of there,” he recalled.
As he finally went to leave, he caught the attention of some of his old co-workers.
“Oh, Paul,” they said. “You’re closing down the place again.”
This time, who knew if it’d re-open.
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“Granddaddies of Minor League Baseball”
The Reading Fightin Phils, the Lakeland Flying Tigers, and the Omaha Storm Chasers. These are all, in fact, real Minor League Baseball team names — but more importantly, they’re the only three teams who have remained an affiliate of the same organization, in the same city longer than the Pawtucket Red Sox had when they relocated after forty-seven years.
During those decades, the atmosphere, culture, and community created by their presence at McCoy Stadium became a staple for locals, and a tradition passed down through generations.
“They were one of the granddaddies of Minor League Baseball, that’s for sure,” said Baker. “It was really ingrained in the city…and they were the leading employer of high school kids in the town.”
“The PawSox were so very generous to the community,” said Bethanie Rado, President of the Pawtucket Slaterettes’ Girls Baseball League. “They were mindful of every organization that was in the city. They would frequently have all of the public schools there for games.”
Jason Montero, a Pawtucket native, recalled a lifetime of memories with the team, from getting free tickets through such elementary school trips, to waiting outside for players to exit “hoping to get an autograph” in High School, to eventually taking his son and daughter to games.
“Tickets weren’t that expensive,” he explained. “It was like eleven dollars to sit (in) front row seats, you can get a nice cup of beer for five dollars. It was a good time every time I went there.”
One aspect of the Pawtucket Red Sox’ special connection to their community was through the Major League Club in Boston of the same name. The PawSox were Boston’s triple-a affiliate, meaning they typically acted as the final stop a rising star player would make before reaching Fenway Park — or the closest testing grounds for a player returning from injury.
Montero saw all-stars like Mookie Betts, Rafael Devers, and Xander Bogaerts all play in Pawtucket, but singled out an experience at McCoy involving an injured icon. “David Ortiz, when he was doing a rehab in Pawtucket, and he was playing down there for like three games, we got to sit right behind third base and watch David Ortiz go up and bat” he recalled. “That was one of my favorite moments.”
The thrill of seeing potential future superstars and current ailing ones up close for cheap prices is part of the appeal for any Minor League club, but that appeal is multiplied when its proximity is so close to its affiliated Major League city that the team’s fans almost entirely overlap. This proximity also allowed the team’s front office extra flexibility in making last-minute roster moves.
“Nowadays, it’s kind of a model that a lot of teams have followed,” Baker said. “A lot of teams hae moved their (top) minor league franchises close to home so they can have that kind of convenience that the PawSox and the Red Sox had for all those years.”
“From a fan’s perspective, you got to follow the guys really closely” he added. “You’d see ‘em at McCoy, and then you’d see ‘em on TV that night.”
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“A badge of honor”
If there’s a single game that defines the PawSox’ forty-seven year history in Pawtucket, it’s the one played on April 18, 1981 — or, to be precise, the one started on April 18, 1981. After all, the game continued into April 19…and June 23.
The contest lasted for thirty-three innings, and is still the longest game ever played in the history of professional baseball. It also set a slew of other professional records, including most team and total strike outs, most team and total putouts, and most player, team, and total at-bats.
Along the concourses at McCoy Stadium, there was for years a large, wrapping box score displaying the scores from every inning of the legendary affair. “It was really a badge of honor for us that McCoy Stadium hosted such a historic event,” said Baker.
In addition to the sheer novelty of the feat, there are a variety of other factors which combined to make it particularly memorable and have helped infuse it with an almost mythic quality over the years.
For one, it featured multiple future Hall of Famers in a 20-year-old Cal Ripken Jr. and a 23-year-old Wade Boggs. For another, it began on a cold Easter Saturday night. Additionally, between the time it was started in April and was finally finished in June, Major League Baseball games had ceased due to a players’ strike, putting more media attention and anticipation on the conclusion of the phenomenal minor league game.
“The whole sports world’s eyes were on little McCoy Stadium, which was really unknown at that time,” said Baker.
When the game was resumed at McCoy on June 23, about 5800 fans were in attendance. Two months earlier, by the time the game was suspended in the early morning hours of Sunday, April 19, only fourteen fans remained — though, if you walked through the streets of Pawtucket, that number would soar based on the number of locals claiming to have been there that fateful night.
“You’ll hear hundreds and hundreds of people say that they were at that game,” Baker said. “But the actual attendance was a couple hundred.”
The fourteen fans who stayed to make it through the first thirty-two innings received lifetime passes — or, at least until the relocation.
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“Stages of grief”
One day during the 2010s, the Pawtucket Slaterettes celebrated the continued legacy of the thirty-three inning game by recreating it on the McCoy Stadium diamond with a rotating cast of women from the league’s various age groups, from tee-ball to women’s.
“Some of our players will tell you that it was a highlight for them to play in a semi-pro stadium,” said Rado.
Now, the once pristinely-trimmed grass and golden dirt of McCoy’s field lies unattended, silently sitting lifeless like a dystopian diorama. The PawSox may have died, but their body is still left in the heart of Pawtucket — a reminder of the gut-wrenching loss the community suffered.
“It was a big chunk of Pawtucket, and all of our hearts kind of got ripped out of our chests a bit when they left,” said Ally Zagroski, the Slaterettes’ Youth Division Director. “The kids loved going there. I loved going there…it was such a part of my childhood, and now that it’s gone it’s really sad to see an empty stadium.”“The city is going through the stages of grief,” said Rado. “It really was something that Pawtucket took a lot of pride in.”
In November, residents voted to demolish McCoy Stadium and in its place construct a new high school — a prospect which, even for those most distraught over seeing McCoy fall, promises clear merit.
“It’s something that the city needs badly, so it’s a good use of the site,” Baker said.
“I have two children myself, so having one big new facility for the kids is gonna be a big thing,” Montero said. “I think it’s gonna be beneficial for the kids of Pawtucket.”
As for the sports and entertainment hole left by the PawSox’ departure, the city has been working to get a soccer stadium built at Tidewater Landing, though the project recently hit a roadblock, and some have been skeptical if it will in fact ever get built.
And while the PawSox themselves may have never gotten to say goodbye thanks to the cancellation of the 2020 season, Pawtucket may get to bid a proper farewell to its beloved stadiumm, as a July 4th celebration is in the works which would act as a final send off for the stadium before its destruction.
Though Baker may have already said one goodbye after his dinner on the outfield grass in the summer of 2020, there wasn’t a second of hesitation when asked if he’d be attending the final event: “I’ll be there. Absolutely.”
Linus Lawrence is a sophomore, concentrating in English, whose hopes and dreams rest entirely on whether or not the Mets win.
Commentary:
When I was a kid visiting my older brother at Brown, my favorite part of the trip would be to head north and catch a Pawtucket Red Sox game. There was a type of magic in the family-friendly atmosphere, the visible connection between the team and the local fans, and the knowledge that some of the men right in front of you could be hitting home runs over the green monster in Boston the next week. Whatever grief I felt when the PawSox relocated just before I arrived at Brown as a student, I knew it was a mere fraction of what those in Pawtucket were dealing with. Hence, I began work on this story with a broad two-part research question: why did the PawSox leave, and how have their fans dealt with their departure? A highlight of the research process was the afternoon I spent ambling through Pawtucket, where I ended up interviewing my uber driver Jason Montero, as well as an anonymous, ultimately unquoted, but quite memorable (and rather drunk) man in a bar just a couple blocks from McCoy Stadium. Over the course of the semester, the shape of this story changed many times. At one point, I imagined it as a narrative chronology of the events leading to the team’s departure; at another, I imagined it as a profile on mega-fan and McCoy worker Paul Baker. Eventually, I settled on a structure which emphasizes the second part of my initial question, hoping to celebrate the strength of the connection between the PawSox and their community and reflect three years later on the emotions surrounding the move as McCoy prepares to fall.
Sources:
https://www.milb.com/news/the-longest-affiliations-in-minor-league-baseball-2021
https://www.milb.com/pawtucket/ballpark/longest-game
https://wbsm.com/pawtucket-mccoy-stadium-demolition-plan/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/sports/baseball/pawtucket-red-sox-worcester.html
https://www.stadiumjourney.com/stadiums/i-never-got-to-say-goodbye
In-person interview with Jason Montero (2/24)
Phone interview with Paul Baker (2/25)
Phone interview with Bethanie Rado (3/30)
In-person interview with Ally Zagroski (4/15)
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