Foul Ball

by Jim Bouton

  Chip and I figure that once we make our pitch in public in front of the City Council tomorrow night, we’re “in.” Not only do we have the best plan for Wahconah Park, we have the only plan. Nothing has come of the mayor’s statement ten days ago that he still wants a new stadium, and a college league can’t afford to pay the upkeep at Wahconah Park.

  My only concern is that Berkshire Sports & Events will try to head us off by putting its own team into Wahconah Park—run by somebody like Jay Pomeroy—with the intention of moving into a new stadium as soon as they can get one built. To keep its new stadium hopes alive, BS&E needs to block us from getting a lease on Wahconah. The next few weeks are crucial. We need to get approved by the park commissioners before BS&E comes up with a team.

  The commissioners meet in a place called Springside House, which looks like an old inn or a college president’s house gone to seed. The meeting room is about twenty by thirty feet, with beat-up linoleum floors, and a pair of fat columns, toward the front, that seem to have no purpose except to partially obstruct the view of the audience. The commissioners sit behind a wood-grained, Formica table that faces about forty cafeteria-style chairs, divided by a makeshift aisle. A Coke machine sits in the stairwell just outside. It does not look like a place where momentous decisions are made.

  Before the meeting, Chip and I introduced ourselves to the four commissioners in attendance: Jim Conant, Cliff Nilan, Anthony Massimiano, and the chairman, Bob Smith, aka Smitty, the mayor’s drinking buddy. The fifth commissioner, Sue Colker, was absent.

  Following Arlos’s advice, we sat in the back by a radiator.

  There were fewer than a dozen people in the room, each petitioning for one thing or another. Arlos himself was there with three petitions of his own, covering everything from park fees to carnival usage to preserving Wahconah Park—a light evening for him. Councilor Joe Guzzo made “yet another request” to have Wahconah Park submitted as a candidate for the Massachusetts Historical Register. The commissioners promised that this time they would follow up, and Joe returned to his seat, rolling his eyes.

  Following a guy who wanted to add a three-piece band to his parade permit, Chip and I were startled to hear our names called, under “new business.” Okay. It’s not what we expected, but we’ll wing it.

  Moving to the front of the room, we made an impromptu pitch for a 30-year lease on Wahconah Park that would enable us to do two important things: secure a team on the best terms for Pittsfield, and give us time to recoup our upfront investments in the ballpark. We also emphasized that we needed a decision as soon as possible to put us in the best bargaining position for getting a team.

  The commissioners nodded and didn’t say much. Evidently they were so impressed they were speechless. The only question came from Cliff Nilan as Chip and I were on our way back to our seats.

  “How does Bouton stay so skinny?” he wondered aloud.

  It looked like Arlos was right about us sitting in the back. He doesn’t call himself The Oracle of Delphi for nothing.

  On the drive home, we felt confident. We were surprised that the reception was as good as it was—no negative vibes from anyone. Chip said he thinks BS&E will just suddenly quit on a new stadium, pick up the cause of the arena, and ask for our support. Chip is the only person I know who is more optimistic than I am—and Paula calls me a pathological optimist.

  “You represent a new force in town,” said Chip as we wound our way home over the increasingly familiar back roads. “A gravitational pull, knocking their planets out of alignment.”

  This led to a discussion about the moon, looming in the sky ahead. I told Chip I could never figure out whether it was waxing or waning. He said, “It’s simple. All you have to remember is the code: Wane-right—a play on the word wainwright, you know….”

  “Carpenter,” I said.

  “Right,” said Chip. “A builder of wagons.”

  “I’ve heard the expression,” I said, “but I can never remember what’s supposed be on the right—the light or the shadow?”

  “The shadow,” said Chip.

  “But there’s nothing in the code that says that,” I said. “So what good is it?”

  “That’s true,” said Chip. “You do have to remember something.”

  “So why isn’t the code: wane-shadow-right?”

  “There’s no such word,” said Chip.

  “It would soon become a word,” I said, “more useful than wainwright. Who makes wagons anymore?”

  “A lot of people use the wainwright code,” said Chip.

  “Might as well fix the wax and wane problem, too,” I said, “for folks who don’t know what those words mean.”

  “Are you suggesting decline-shadow-right?” said Chip.

  “Shadow-right-decline would be a more logical progression,” I said. “We could coin a new term.”

  “Let’s get the lease on Wahconah Park first,” said Chip.

  JUNE 26

  TUESDAY

  The Eagle has landed on us again.

  An editorial headlined BALLPARK PLAN HITS SOME BAD HOPS accuses us of “Orwellian semantics,” saying our plan to sell stock to local people “shouldn’t disguise the indication that the group doesn’t have the financial wherewithal to make the bid on its own… in sharp contrast to Larry Bossidy, the deep-pocketed former Pittsfield resident.”

  Now how did Scribner arrive at this? Is he running credit reports on us? Paula and I have several accounts and a construction loan at Berkshire Bank. Is the Eagle checking our balances with its BS&E partner? I don’t know what Chip’s finances look like, but Eric Margenau’s firm, United Sports Ventures, Inc., already owns five successful minor league teams, and that’s available on the Internet. But the larger question is this: How can Scribner print something like that without speaking to us first? In fact, he has yet to talk with any of us about anything.

  Of course we don’t have the $1.5 million we’ll need, any more than BS&E had the $18.5 million it needed for a new stadium. Larry Bossidy, the $70 million man, was only going to spring for a team. And our proposal would use 100% private financing, whereas BS&E would have used mostly public money to finance a new stadium. The point is, we’ve got a much better shot at raising our money than BS&E had.

  Hell, we’ve already had guys handing us their business cards, wanting to get in. These are substantial people who would love nothing more than to be part of this project. At the Jacob’s Pillow Gala alone, Chip and I collected half a dozen cards. Imagine if our wives had allowed us to say the words Wahconah or Park.

  In any case, as Chip says, “a good plan without money is better than a bad plan with money.” Just look what happened to the Civic Authority.

  But we’re dealing with perceptions, and a lot of people are awed by money. Especially $70 million. So, for the Eagle, still pushing a new stadium, it’s a cheap and easy argument to make—and impossible to refute without putting a stack of bills on the table.

  Let’s see, where can we get a stack of bills?

  We called Eric Margenau at his office in New York City. Margenau is the money guy—our plan calls for him to put up $500,000 seed money, and for Chip and me to sell $1.5 million worth of stock and then give him back his $500,000. That’s assuming we get Wahconah Park, of course. If we don’t get it, Chip and I would be the only losers—some out-of-pocket dollars, and a few months of wasted time. We figured that made us all equal partners.

  Margenau laughed when we told him about the Eagle’s editorial.

  “It’s a joke,” he said. “I could write a check for a million and a half tomorrow.”

  That’s a decent stack of bills.

  With $1.5 million practically in our back pocket, Chip and I got in the car and headed back up to Pittsfield and our first City Council meeting.

  We were juiced. Tonight we would be introducing ourselves to the people of Pittsfield. The city council meetings are televised and everyone watches them, either live or on one of the repeats. We hadn’t though
t fast enough to get on tonight’s agenda, but we can make a quick pitch during the “open mike” session, which is what everyone tunes in for.

  The Pittsfield City Council chamber looks like all the council chambers you’ve ever seen, as if local municipalities ordered from the Council Chamber Catalog. A curved, laminated wood dais, with chairs, microphones, and name plates, sits on a platform facing eighty seats, in a room decorated with flags and framed prints of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights. Catalog item C, without drapes.

  Chip and I arrived a half hour early for the 7:30 meeting and parked in our lucky spot outside City Hall. Once inside, we collated our handouts which we had color coded for easier identification: white for our original Plan B, blue for Chip’s letter to the mayor explaining how we plan to proceed, and beige for my piece in the Record where I called Wahconah Park “our own Field of Dreams.”

  We put collated sets at the place of each city councilor, at the table where the mayor sits just below the dais, and on every chair in the room. We added our names to the open mike sign-up sheet in slots seven and eight—not first, but not last either. We introduced ourselves to the people as they filed in. We were so organized it would make your head spin.

  And we met some folks we had known only from the newspapers—the famous “naysayers” who had made our bid for Wahconah Park possible: Anne Leaf, Dave Potts, and Gene Nadeau, plus a lot of their friends and neighbors. They were smiling and seemed happy to meet us. They sure didn’t act like naysayers.

  Unfortunately, our first public appearance was all over in a matter of minutes.

  Six minutes to be exact. For the first time in anyone’s memory, the Council voted 8 to 3—with Bianchi, Guzzo, and Scapin dissenting—to enforce a three-minute rule during the open mike session. Prior to tonight, people had been allowed to ramble on until they were finished. But tonight—for some strange reason—the gavel would fall sharply after three minutes.

  Chip went first, explaining the logic of our plan to folks unaccustomed to the concept of local control. “Think of us as a ballpark shopping for a team,” said Chip, “rather than the other way around.” He then addressed the money issue raised by today’s Eagle. “If no one is willing to invest,” said Chip, our partnership is prepared to do it “all by ourselves.”

  Of course, Chip and I believed that we’d never have to take Margenau up on his boast that he could “write a check for $1.5 million,” but it allowed us to justify saying we could do it “all by ourselves.” And what would Chip and I do if it turned out we couldn’t sell any stock? Simple. We’d sit down with Margenau and have a long talk about how the two of us could help him run his ball club.

  Following Chip at the microphone, I used my three minutes to extol the virtues of independent Northern League or Atlantic League baseball over the Class A New York–Penn League. And I explained why we needed a speedy decision—by the Fourth of July if possible. Evidently the people in the audience had no trouble understanding the brilliance of our plan, because we got the most vigorous and only sustained applause of the evening.

  As with most political events, the best stuff happened afterwards in the hallway. The people who had just applauded us inside were now crowded around us in a stairwell outside. Could these be the same people that Jay Pomeroy had warned us about, that “minority in Pittsfield who have such a suspicious nature it is scary”?

  Hardly. The funny thing was, it felt like a reunion of long-lost relatives. Comrades in arms. Regiments from allied armies bumping into each other in Paris. They had won the war—and we had the reconstruction plan.

  At that moment, a familiar figure walked by and conspicuously refused to say hello to either Chip or me. It was Mayor Doyle. The very same mayor who had invited us to his office just last week—the one who offered to take care of our parking ticket.

  Not a good sign.

  We turned back to our new friends in the hallway and tried to answer their questions. Did we know why Berkshire Sports & Events is so fixated on a new stadium? Why do they keep pushing something the people don’t want? Why won’t they listen to other ideas?

  That’s when I floated my pollution theory.

  “Is it possible,” I said, “that the new stadium site is a toxic waste dump? That PCBs have migrated from General Electric property?”

  “It’s funny you should say that,” said Dave Potts. “There were some test borings done there in 1994 that have never been made public. The recent borings that showed that a baseball stadium was okay were done by a guy who is part of Berkshire Sports & Events.”

  “Phil Scalise?” I said, remembering the guy we’d been referred to by BS&E at the North End restaurant back in February.

  “That’s the one,” someone said.

  “I’ll send you some EPA stuff from Tim Gray,” said Potts. “He’s with the Housatonic River Initiative. He may know something about those test borings. And he can tell you about the GE settlement where the city got half of what it should have gotten.”

  On the drive home, Chip and I reviewed our roller-coaster ride.

  “Number one,” said Chip, “the mayor is not our friend. It’s clear he and Murphy were just pumping us for information last week.”

  “It was like asking the opposing team for a copy of its game plan,” I said.

  But it really doesn’t matter, because we aren’t keeping any secrets. All candor all the time is our strategy. Or as Chip says—quoting Woodrow Wilson’s 1918 prescription for avoiding wars—“Open agreements, openly arrived at.”

  So where are we now? The Eagle is against us. The City Council is waiting to hear from Andy Mick. And the mayor is ignoring us. Can his hand-picked park commissioners be far behind? It seems our only friends are the people who were against a new stadium.

  The battle lines are drawn.

  And it’s time to shoot back.

  Starting tomorrow we are adding a few items to our web site—namely our February and March letters to Andy Mick, which reveal that, contrary to what the Eagle and BS&E had been saying prior to the Civic Authority vote, there was an alternative plan to keep professional baseball in Pittsfield and what’s more, they had asked us not to make it public.

  “Might as well let everyone know what we’re dealing with here,” I said.

  There was a long silence in the car. I asked Chip what he thought our chances were.

  “Fifty-fifty,” he said.

  And we drove on, into the darkness.

  JUNE 27

  WEDNESDAY

  Chip and I talked on the phone today with Eric Margenau, who told us about his conversation with Jonathan Fleisig, the New York City commodities trader who owns one of the dormant Northern League franchises. Margenau said he had invited Fleisig to join forces with us but that Fleisig declined.

  “I have the front position in terms of the Northern League,” Fleisig told him, “and the front position in terms of Wahconah Park.”

  This means that Fleisig believes he already has a deal—or at least an understanding—with somebody in Pittsfield, most likely the mayor. If that’s true, we not only have to get a lease on Wahconah Park, we now have to wrest it away from someone else.

  Of course, nobody in Pittsfield would ever know if a back-room deal already exists with Fleisig—except for the mayor and BS&E.

  And they’re not exactly famous for “open agreements openly arrived at.”

  JUNE 28

  THURSDAY

  Turns out we’re battling not only Jonathan Fleisig but also the commissioner of the Northern League. Eric Lincoln said Miles Wolff had told him that “Fleisig has first refusal on Wahconah Park because he’s been dormant for two years,” and that any dormant franchises “are ahead of the Bouton group.”

  When Eric asked Wolff if that made him “the king-maker,” Wolff said, very matter-of-factly, “Yes, I’m the king-maker.”

  This, of course, is how the game is played: a league or team dictates to a city exactly who will play in
that city’s ballpark. Or not play if the city refuses to renovate or replace that ballpark on demand.

  But it would be a whole new ball game if we got the lease on Wahconah Park, because then we’d have choices—not just among teams but among leagues—as follows: (1) we could buy one of the dormant Northern League franchises, (2) we could buy the struggling Northern League franchise in Glens Falls, New York, or (3) we could buy an Atlantic League expansion franchise, which would balance their current seven-team lineup, thus solving a major scheduling problem for them.

  Let Pittsfield be the king-maker.

  A bit of good news: Bob Mellace, the parks director who serves as an administrator for the park commissioners, told Chip that he wants an “open discussion in public” before granting a lease. Chip told Mellace that we would welcome that.

  More good news: Peter Arlos says he’s been hearing from people that Chip and I came across very well at the televised city council meeting. “It’s all highly positive,” said Arlos.

  It can’t be just our good looks.

  JUNE 29

  FRIDAY

  Pittsfield won’t have Mayor Doyle to kick around anymore.

  At least not after 2001. Today he announced that he will not run for a third term in November. Coincidentally, it was revealed that the state attorney general is investigating the management practices of the Doyle administration. Or, as Chip says, “having a sit-down with Tony.” Maybe this is what the mayor was thinking about while he was puffing on that cigarette during our meeting eleven days ago.

  So, is this good for Wahconah Park, or bad for Wahconah Park?

  Possible clue: The same afternoon that Doyle was announcing he wouldn’t run again, his press secretary, Curt Preisser, was announcing that the mayor was still “entertaining the idea of a new stadium.”

  What’s worse than a lame-duck mayor with a chip on his shoulder? A lame-duck mayor with a chip on his shoulder who needs powerful friends.