Most people outside Rhode Island probably know McCoy Stadium and the Pawtucket Red Sox from Family Guy as they were featured in multiple episodes. Outside the cartoon world, both were part of the local fabric of the city and, dare I say, Rhode Island for decades. However, the Triple-A side moved to Worcester after the 2019 season with the pandemic preventing a farewell game.
It looked like the same fate would befall McCoy Stadium as well. That was until a billionaire announced his intention to save the minor league baseball stadium. It sounded great. Unfortunately, plans hit a roadblock with city officials saying he can’t.
Okay, so that is a bit of an oversimplification. Here’s an abbreviated version of events and why McCoy Stadium should be saved.
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The real McCoy
McCoy Stadium was never the newest or nicest minor league ballpark in America. But it has a lot of history and is one of those baseball stadiums you see photos of and want to visit. Look at it, this is a venue that oozes baseball.
For starters, McCoy is where the longest game in professional baseball history occurred—a 33-inning showdown featuring a young Wade Boggs and Cal Ripken Jr. The contest started on April 18th, was suspended after 32 innings at 4:07 am on April 19th and finally concluded on June 23. You can read more about it here.
There are also other moments at McCoy Stadium you may remember. It’s where Izzy Alcantara’s famous catcher kick and Delmon Young’s bat throw at an umpire happened. I mean, if that isn’t reason enough not to demolish the venue, I don’t know what is.
Things for the stadium and Pawtucket Red Sox took a turn for the worse when longtime owner Ben Mondor in 2010 passed away. He had done his best to keep McCoy in good condition while attendance and support for the franchise was healthy overall.
His estate sold the PawSox to Larry Lucchino and some others who turned out to be greedy asshats in 2015. They didn’t want to pay to renovate McCoy Stadium. And while they eventually secured public financing for a new stadium in Pawtucket, this group didn’t like terms that required these wealthy folks to, you know, use their own money to build something that benefits them.
Lucchino and his cronies tried to blame the city and state for his blatant display of greed, an absolutely shameless display of douchbag-ry if there ever was one. The Triple-A team eventually moved to Worcester in 2021 and left Pawtucket with an empty diamond.
With no teams in sight, the city drew up plans to tear down McCoy Stadium and build a new high school to replace the city’s two aging ones. By the way, I’m all for education investment but that seems like a bad plan. A high school with 2,500+ students would be awful and reduces the opportunities available to kids to participate in everything from sports to arts. Fewer teams, fewer plays, fewer student government positions. And so on. Just a thought.
That being said, voters approved a $330 million bond to green-light the project. And then something interesting happened.
A new hope
Billionaire Stefan Soloviev recently visited McCoy Stadium with his son and a few friends when he realized it was worth saving. One important thing to note, Soloviev has ties to Rhode Island. He attended URI in the 1990s and helped fund improvements to the Rams’ basketball training facilities. This is some rando looking to make a quick buck.
Soloviev has already gone on record saying he’d offer $1 million above the appraised worth of the stadium while also funding the ballpark’s rebuild and attempts to bring in a minor league or independent league team. Sounds great, right? Here’s the response Pawtucket Mayor Don Grebien gave the Providence Journal:
“I wanted to explain to him some other opportunities that might be interesting, but as far as McCoy is concerned—and he doesn’t know this—but the voters approved [a bond to build a new high school]. I don’t know where his interest came from, and don’t get me wrong, I’m always the type where I’ll entertain anybody’s ideas.”
There’s a lot to chew on here but let’s start with the most obvious. Soloviev wants to save McCoy Stadium and you’re trying to pawn off other projects on him. This is like someone going into Best Buy, offering to pay double for a television and the manager saying that’s not possible but there’s a shower radio you can buy instead.
As for the bond, usually they refer to a project without tying it to a specific location since things can change during the planning phase. Surely, the city government wasn’t dumb enough to specify a location as part of the measure.
Finally, you can’t claim to entertain anybody’s ideas while saying this idea isn’t possible in the next breath. Are you telling me a $1 million cash windfall isn’t enough to secure a different and even larger land plot for the high school while maybe even covering some of the building costs?
Or better yet, come up with a plan that doesn’t involve cramming 2,500 kids into one high school, something that is universally seen as being bad for education. I am anyone and the Pawtucket Mayor said he would entertain anyone’s idea.
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Why let this billionaire save a minor league baseball stadium?
There are two reasons why a billionaire should be allowed to save this minor league baseball stadium. First, the pragmatic one.
The minute a stadium is torn down, the likelihood of a new one being built dramatically reduces. When Sacramento tore down Edmonds Field in the 1960s, it took 30 years for a new ballpark to be built. And that is just one example. Countless cities from coast-to-coast opted to move on from stadiums only to see sports never return.
The second reason is emotional. Places like McCoy Stadium are Americana. It takes us back to a different time in history. People love Wrigley Field and Fenway Park for this reason. These ballparks offer a different experience that harkens back to a time we can’t return to.
That doesn’t mean stadiums can’t be restored, updated or improved. But tearing them down completely tears down our connections to sport and society from a bygone era while robbing locals of memories and a chance to make more in the future.
Make no mistake though, this isn’t a plea for nostalgia. Not every stadium should be saved. Blowing up the Kingdome made sense. As much as I loved Arco Arena, it wasn’t needed, and no one was willing to fund keeping it around.
Importantly, that is not the case with McCoy. A billionaire is ready to step in and save this minor league baseball stadium. No one is asking for a handout or demanding to keep a ballpark around without having the means to support those efforts.
The only thing standing in the way at the moment is a Pawtucket city government that is too lazy to do some extra work in finding a suitable site for a high school, even though it could save them some cash while improving the experience for students.
At the end of the day, if Soloviev’s offer isn’t genuine or wants the city to pay for something, then you got to do what you got to do. It’s hard to justify saving McCoy Stadium without someone having a plan and the finances to back it up.
However, if the offer to save the ballpark is real, it’s 100 times better than the alternative. Why discard history and the ability to make more history in the future for a structure that teenagers will just hate anyway.
Of course, we would never have gotten to this point if it wasn’t for Larry Lucchino and greedy PawSox owners trying to extort funds from Rhode Island in the first place. What’s the point of having enough money to buy a professional sports team if you aren’t going to spend any of it?
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