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| Few things beat a fine summer night at the ballpark. |
I don't like the Red Sox, but Pawtucket is only about an hour away, so I've gone to several games there. The ballpark isn't the greatest, certainly not Hadlock Field in Portland, the absolute gem where the Red Sox AA affiliate plays, but it's a nice place to watch a game. The first time I went, I was actually pleasantly surprised, as I had only seen the park on TV, and the high backstop behind home plate makes the place look completely soulless when shot by the center field camera.
The neighborhood the park is in isn't the nicest you'll ever see, but the parking is right across the street, and the walk gave my wife and I the priceless moment of seeing Carl Pavano's picture adorning a lamppost as a famous former PawSox player ... above a handicapped parking space. Someone had to have planned that, we thought.
But I also know how these things go. Providence is probably going to build them a beautiful little stadium in a prime location, and although it'll be a little bit longer of a drive, especially when you consider Providence traffic, it's not like the team is moving all that far away.
And I must confess, I'm looking forward to games in Hartford while visiting my in-laws once the New Britain Rock Cats move there.
Then I read this today from Dan Barry, the author of “Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball’s Longest Game," which, of course, took place in Pawtucket.
"As the years passed, the city’s infrastructure declined, its once-ubiquitous newspaper lost most of its circulation, and even its tired zoo — featuring a beleaguered local celebrity, Fanny the elephant — mercifully closed. The children and grandchildren of millworkers moved up and out, to Cumberland, to Lincoln, and across the Massachusetts line, to Attleboro. Other immigrants settled into the triple-deckers looming over narrow streets, seeking elusive stability during fits of protracted recession, while entrepreneurs imagined other uses for old mills.
But Pawtucket always had McCoy, where future Red Sox stars made their names, and often returned when on rehab assignment. In these ways, Boston royalty was granted to a city nicknamed the Bucket."
And I started thinking about the ballpark of my childhood ... Heritage Park in Colonie, NY.
There was nothing special about the park. Across the street from the former Albany County Airport (more on that later), it was a utilitarian, symmetrical ballpark with mostly metal bleachers unless you ponied up a few more bucks to sit behind home plate.
But it was ours.
I was a kid when the park opened as the home of the Eastern League Albany-Colonie A's, and it was amazing to me that professional baseball was within an hour of my parents' house, close enough that I was actually able to drive to games when I got older.
One night, my family and my friend Kenny went to a game, but it was rained out, and as we were driving home, there was some noise that cause Kenny to shout, "Listen! You can smell it!" We still sometimes pull that line out today.
I got my first autographs there -- future journeyman backup catcher Charlie O'Brien is one in particular that I remember -- and I was so excited to turn on a game one Saturday to see Mickey Tettleton playing for the A's, since I had seen him in Colonie not that long before.
One night, I bought a plastic replica A's helmet that I wore everywhere, until I cracked it so badly one night during an argument with my brother that my father threw it away. I was so mad.
Then the A's moved out ... and the Yankees moved in.
The Yankees, my Yankees, had a minor league team ... in Colonie! What could possibly be better?
Strangely enough, I don't have any memories of future Yankee stars playing at Heritage Park, and the team eventually moved, first to Norwich, CT (a Norwich Navigators hat is buried in my hat collection somewhere), and then Trenton, NJ.
Its replacement was an independent team, the Albany-Colonie Diamond Dogs. The games were still fun -- instead of the traditional activities, my bachelor party was my boys and me going to a Diamond Dogs game -- but it's clear in retrospect that the Yankees leaving and independent team coming in was the beginning of the end for baseball in Colonie.
The Tri-City ValleyCats were the end of the end. They got a nice ballpark in Troy, named for then-state Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, who got the money for the field, and Heritage Park faded away, first as a relic with some depressing pictures before being torn down. I haven't been by the site in years, so I couldn't tell you what's there now.
(A side note, and back to the airport. After an expansion project, it is now Albany International Airport, and I once had the occasion to be there for a milestone in the project, the opening of the new parking garage. I was standing on the fringe of a conversation Bruno was having, when out of nowhere, his assistant came and yanked the juice box he was holding out of his hand. He snapped his head around and looked at her funny, and she just pointed to the site of the ceremony, which was about to start. I said to myself, "Someday, I want to be so big that I have someone to take my juice box.")
I haven't been to "The Joe" since it opened, and I once vowed to never go to the ballpark, angry that (in my mind) Heritage Park had to be sacrificed to Joe Bruno could have another plaything. My stance has softened somewhat, ever since the ValleyCats helped rebuild the field where I played Little League after it was damaged (along with most of my hometown, and my parents' house, although in my parents' case they were able to repair it) by floods from Tropical Storm Irene.
So maybe I'll go to a ValleyCats game someday. I'm sure I'll enjoy it if I do. But it'll never match my youth and young-adulthood at Heritage Park, the same way I'm sure a night at whatever beautiful stadium is built in Providence won't be the same as days and nights gone by in Pawtucket for people who have fond memories there.
