Mourning for McCoy

View from the Grandstands of McCoy Stadium on a summer night

It’s Opening Day for the Pawtucket Red Sox and Division Street is teamed with cars backed up for nearly a mile leading to McCoy Stadium. I walked the same path that I have for as long as I can remember. My girlfriend Megan and I walk across Division Street and down Kepler Street. We take a quick left down Meadow Street and an immediate right onto North Bend Street. The ballpark in sight we walk down Ben Mondor Way, the service road leading to McCoy Stadium, aptly named for the late owner of the Pawtucket Red Sox. There before us stands McCoy Stadium with thousands of fans buying tickets, taking pictures and entering this most historic ballpark.

The Pawtucket Red Sox have called McCoy Stadium their home for 45 years ever since the Boston Red Sox moved their minor league franchise from Pittsfield, MA. The first six seasons didn’t seem like they were going to be successful for the city of Pawtucket and the Boston Red Sox minor league team. Then, Ben Mondor, a retired businessman, made a purchase in the best spirit of the game of baseball. Mondor and team President Mike Tamburro worked together to build a team and stadium with which the city fell in love. In 1998, Mondor ordered the complete restoration of McCoy Stadium. A relic of the Great Depression and a WPA project commissioned in 1938, McCoy was a cold concrete building that was falling apart and hardly suitable for a Triple-A team, despite its “big sister” ballpark being Fenway Park. The renovations to McCoy brought the International League All-Star Game in 2004. The Pawtucket Red Sox led the league in attendance for much of the early 2000s and McCoy grew to be considered one of the jewels of minor league baseball.

The beauty of McCoy Stadium is twofold. First is Ben Mondor’s dream of baseball. Mondor was first and foremost a fan of the game of baseball. It was a sport that he loved and wanted to share with the local community. That is why since their inception McCoy Stadium has been an affordable night out for the family. For less than $10 a ticket, fans young and old can come out and see professional baseball every summer night. Pawtucket was and is a working class city and Mondor felt baseball should not be considered an activity for the privileged few. For nearly 50 years, the City of Pawtucket has seen future greats like Fred Lynn, Jim Rice, Carlton Fisk, Trot Nixon, Jason Varitek, and Dustin Pedroia have graced the little jewel in Pawtucket.

For those who are unaware, on Easter Weekend in 1981 baseball history began at McCoy. It was April 18, 1981 when the Pawtucket Red Sox locked horns with the Rochester Red Wings. At 4:07 am on April 19^th the game was not yet over but league officials finally gave permission for the two exhausted teams to suspend the game after 32 complete innings. The game was national news that got a relatively new sports network called ESPN to venture to Pawtucket and cover the 33^rd and final inning. On June 23, after 18 more minutes of play, the Pawtucket Red Sox walked off with a victory over Rochester completing the 33 inning spectacular. The game took a total of 8 hours and 25 minutes and is enshrined forever in both the Boston Red Sox and National Baseball Hall of Fame.

McCoy Stadium is more than just a home to baseball history - It is also home to the residents of Pawtucket. McCoy Stadium has been home to the Tolman Tigers, the city’s east side high school, for both football and baseball. Every Thanksgiving since the Stadium opened in 1942, McCoy has lit up for football. It was the home of one of Rhode Island’s longest football rivalry games between the Saint Raphael Academy “Saints” and the Tolman “Tigers.” Decades of Tiger and Saint Alumni recall close games, blow out games, and motorcade parades leading gridiron warriors to battle. Tolman and Saint Raphael’s ended their 86 year tradition in 2003 but McCoy Stadium remains home to high school football. It now plays host to both schools’ respective Thanksgiving Day games (Tolman vs. Shea and SRA vs. Moses Brown). While football in the outfield of McCoy is an autumn treat to the City and its youth players, McCoy is primarily home to America’s pastime. Tolman High School Varsity baseball has called McCoy Stadium home for decades, allowing high school players a chance to play on a professional ball field. Some of those high school players went on to play in other minor league fields continuing their career as baseball players, but for countless others, the chance to grace McCoy Stadium in uniform playing the game they loved was a highlight of their career.

For this lifelong Pawtucket resident, McCoy Stadium was the launching point for many things in my life. I spent countless summer nights with my windows open hearing Jim Martin, PA Announcer for the Pawtucket Red Sox, echo down the street. That is home run number 10 for Mo Vaughn… Right Fielder, number 7, Trot Nixon… now pitching for the Pawtucket Red Sox Derek Lowe. Before its renovations in 1998, I used to practice on the fields behind the outfield walls of McCoy. Most times I would watch the afternoon games from a hole in the right field wall under the original scoreboard.

I fell in love with baseball because of McCoy. Sure, the Boston Red Sox are my team, but Fenway is an hour from home, and McCoy is down the block. If I wasn’t playing behind the stadium I was going to games with my family or friends. For years I spent my summer nights listening to the PawSox on the radio while helping my grandfather run a parking lot for fans going to McCoy for the game. And who can forget every July 3^rd as the skies of Pawtucket light up after the game and the fireworks celebrating the birth of our country. I watch with my family from my front yard the spectacle coming from McCoy Stadium.

I was in Maine when I learned that the Pawtucket Red Sox were sold by Ben Mondor’s widow. Reading that the new owners were moving the team out of Pawtucket and McCoy was gut wrenching. The new owners don’t understand what Ben Mondor’s dream and McCoy Stadium means to Pawtucket and their residents. The city has changed so much since 1942 and through it all there has been baseball. The mills have closed and downtown saw retail stores leave, but the people in Pawtucket had baseball. With the team moving out many residents wonder what will become of Pawtucket. The team and that Stadium are like a family member that we are fighting to keep at home with us.

Sadly, I am coming to terms with the idea that April 16, 2015 may have been the final Opening Night for the Pawtucket Red Sox. Megan and I sat in the red box seats on the third base side. I reminisced about McCoy over a sausage and pepper grinder and flat beer, a meal in itself that is a McCoy tradition. The PawSox walked off with a 9^th inning homerun and the sellout crowd cheered. We walked down the original tower exit past the murals of PawSox heroes. I thought what I would want to happen if McCoy Stadium’s lights were to go dark for good. Ben Mondor wanted baseball to be accessible for the youth of Pawtucket. In place of McCoy, I would like to see Ben Mondor Athletic Complex. The complex would be a collection of football, soccer and baseball fields that would encompass the entire property on Division Street and Columbus Ave with Mondor’s statue and a plaque at the main entrance. In my head I see the plaque in the shape of home plate.

Here stood McCoy Stadium home to the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Longest Game in Baseball History.

“It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart.” These are the words of former Major League Baseball Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti’s award winning essay Green Fields of the Mind. I have had my heart broken by baseball in my 30 years of being a fan. Whether it was Aaron Boone’s homerun in the 2003 American League Championship Series or the loss by the Plymouth Pilgrims in the 2014 NECBL Southern Division Championship Series, I have spent a lifetime being hurt by baseball only to return to it again in April. Unfortunately, this time it isn’t because of a late inning homerun in the playoffs; it is instead because the new owners of the franchise that I consider family doesn't see how special their new “toy” is to people like me. Moneyball has broken my heart and stolen baseball from my home. And that is a heartache that will not be healed next April, or ever.