In Pawtucket, this Stadium is still the Real McCoy

Today is the day of the Final Inning at McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.  

Plans were made for a goodbye celebration, what the city of Pawtucket is calling the Final Inning with fireworks, live music, and family-friendly activities at their 81 year old ballpark.  Originally scheduled for June 9, the event was postponed until July 3 but canceled because of thunderstorms.  It was rescheduled two weeks later, and then postponed again due to heavy rain.  It was finally penciled in for Labor Day Weekend.  “Don’t miss the farewell send off to historic McCoy Stadium,” advertised RI Blogger over the summer.  “The events will allow for three thousand people to be let onto the field to watch the city’s annual fireworks display there one last time.”

Baseball ended at McCoy Stadium when the Pawtucket Red Sox officially moved to Worcester in 2021, leaving the ballpark empty.  Post-game fireworks were a tradition at McCoy Stadium, which is why they will be used to cap off ‘McCoy’s Final Inning’, the last public event to be held at the stadium before it is demolished and replaced by a state of the art high school.  

Completed in 1942, McCoy Stadium was constructed as part of a Depression era federal recovery program granted to the state of Rhode Island.  Originally called Pawtucket Stadium, the park was later renamed in honor of Mayor Thomas P. McCoy.  The earliest teams to play at McCoy were the Pawtucket Slaters, a Boston Braves affiliate, and the Pawtucket Indians years later during the 1960s.  The Boston Red Sox began their relationship with Pawtucket after moving their Eastern League Double A team from Pittsfield, Massachusetts to northern Rhode Island in 1970.  By 1973, the Red Sox had moved their Double A team to Bristol, Connecticut and McCoy Stadium became the permanent home of the Triple A Pawtucket Red Sox.  

Over the course of the past five decades, baseball has become an integral part of the Pawtucket community.  Carlton Fisk and Rick Burleson played in Pawtucket, as did Fred Lynn, Jim Rice, Butch Hobson, Bob Stanley, and Wade Boggs.  Bobby Ojeda, John Tudor, Bruce Hurst, Oil Can Boyd, and Roger Clemens all pitched at McCoy before making it to Fenway.  Marty Barrett, Mike Greenwell, Ellis Burks, and Jody Reed played for the PawSox.  Nomar Garciaparra, Mo Vaughn, Tim Naehring, and John Valentin all came to Boston after learning the ropes in Pawtucket, as did Trot Nixon, Dustin Pedroia, Mookie Betts and Xander Bogaerts.  Baseball roots run deep in this northern Rhode Island industrial city. 

But those days came to an end in September 2019 when the Pawtucket Red Sox defeated the Rochester Red Wings in extra innings to complete the final game ever played at McCoy Stadium.  The years following gave way to failed bids and political bickering, not to mention the pandemic eliminating the city’s only legitimate chance to find collective closure.  After purchasing the Pawtucket Red Sox in 2015 from Madeleine Mondor, widow of respected long-time PawSox owner Ben Mondor, former Red Sox managerial architect Larry Lucchino made several attempts to keep the minor league team in the area with plans of building a new ballpark in Providence.  Lucchino’s plan was met with obstacles put forth by Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo regarding concerns about the suitability of the land on which the new ballpark would be built.  Lucchino made his preference to keep the team in Rhode Island public, but his fallback plan of renovating McCoy Stadium proved to be too costly for wealthy state investors.  As a result, Lucchino announced he would be moving the team to Worcester to begin the 2021 season.  According to a statement contributed by the city of Pawtucket, “The Mayor [Donald Grebien] fought tirelessly for the PawSox to stay in Pawtucket and to keep the stadium alive.  The city searched for individuals and developers to invest and reinvent the stadium.  However, nothing came to fruition.”  

I stopped into the Right Spot Diner, an establishment that has been serving the city of Pawtucket for as long as the PawSox played at McCoy Stadium.  As morning preparations were being made next door at McCoy for the stadium’s farewell event, people at this popular diner were quick to offer opinions.  “Nobody wants it to happen,” said waitress Rose Martelle immediately weighing in on the prospect of losing McCoy Stadium.  Andrew Thornley, who comes to the Right Spot Diner for breakfast every Sunday, added from a nearby booth, “It’s another staple of the town being torn down, taking a chunk of history away.  The park always stayed pretty full.  It was something a lot of people looked forward to.  Me, my dad and my brother went to games and really enjoyed it.  It was definitely a great thing for this place.  There’s not much here, not as much to do, and it was good for the kids.”  Busy taking care of tables, Martelle looked over in agreement with Thornley.  “It was affordable, too.  Now there’s nothing here.  Even the hospital closed,” she said.  “That’s another place they could put the school,” shouted a man from all the way down at the far end of the diner contributing his own viewpoint after being reminded of the city’s vacant hospital.  “It doesn’t need to be built where McCoy is.  There were a lot of other places in Pawtucket where they could have built a school.  It didn’t have to be here.  They don’t have to tear down the park.”  Thornley added, “We understand the need for a school, but we don’t want to see a school there.  They’re tearing all of these buildings down and nobody seems to care about it, not the people that matter anyway.”  Martelle expressed concerns about the volume of traffic.  “Every day there was a game, traffic was backed up to the highway, but that was only a few months a year.  Building a school?  It’s a terrible idea.  The roads can’t support the traffic.  We want McCoy.” 

As with the Final Inning celebration, the demolition of McCoy Stadium has been rescheduled more than once, but it appears to be slated for this January or February according to Rose Martelle.  “I’ll be sad.  The longest game in history was played here.  Isn’t that historical?” Martell said referencing the 33 inning affair played at McCoy in 1981, intimating that the simple existence of this event should somehow be enough to save the park.

“I’ve lived here for a long time.  I always look at that bear on my way to work.  I look at that bear for some reason,” said Andrew Thornley referring to Paws, the Pawtucket Red Sox mascot whose statue can still be found outside McCoy Stadium.  “Heartbroken, for sure, emptiness,” said Thornley about the prospect of losing McCoy.  “A huge chunk of the city will be gone.”

After taking care of the waitress, Andrew Thornley made his way to the door of the historic diner.  But before leaving Thornley added one final thought that appears to be common among those who call Pawtucket home.  “When McCoy Stadium is gone, a little bit of the heart of Pawtucket will also be gone.”