The PawSox are still in Rhode Island even though the team has announced plans to move to a new stadium in Worcester in 2021. The team played home games this weekend at McCoy, and fans were emotional about the prospect of losing the team.
“Devastated, just devastated,” said Seekonk resident Kelly Adams. She spent her childhood in Pawtucket, with trips to McCoy Stadium a regular family ritual.
“My father started taking my sisters and I here in like ’73, ’74, and we’ve been coming here ever since,” Adams said. “I take my daughters here now. I’ve spent so much of my life here.”
Adams came to catch a home game between the Sox and the Durham Bulls out of North Carolina Friday night. Though the ball park filled with cheering families, and a summer breeze drifted through the stands, a pall now hangs over the stadium.
After decades here at McCoy, the days are numbered for the PawSox in Pawtucket. The team will move to Massachusetts in three years.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself after 2020, because we come here the first weekend they open, and we’ll be here until the last game of the year,” Adams said. “I don’t what I’m going to do with myself. I’ll have to find a hobby or something.”
Of course Adams, could go to Worcester, but for some die-hard fans, That’s not such an appealing option.
Bob and Kerry Spurr bring their two boys to McCoy about a dozen times a year. Though they live in Raynam, the family doesn’t think they will follow the team to the new stadium in Massachusetts.
“I’ll go check it out to say I’ve done that one, but this is where the PawSox are to us,” Bob Spurr said.
“Worcester for us is an hour away,” said Kerry. “So even though we live in Massachusetts, this is where we want to come. This is home, this is where they belong, it’s where we belong. This feels like home to us.”
Fans like Bob Spurr are quick to express displeasure with Rhode Island leaders, who they say let the team slip through their fingers.
“Rhode Island messed up,” Spurr said. “This was Rhode Island’s to lose, and they lost it. Mass gave them a great offer from what we can tell. But Rhode Island could have made them a great offer too.”
Rhode Island offered the team $38 million in state and city funding to help build a new stadium in downtown Pawtucket. But the deal took time to get through Rhode Island’s General Assembly. And lawmakers in the house added costs that the team didn’t agree to. Still, Mike Mack of North Providence lays the blame for the deal’s collapse at Governor Gina Raimondo’s feet.
“I understand that it’s not all her fault; she actually had a deal on the table already,” Mack said. “But at the end of the day it’s her state. It’s on her watch; she couldn’t make a deal with the speaker, couldn’t make a deal, and while they’re sitting, playing games look what happened.”
What happened is that Worcester worked for the last year to woo the PawSox. They offered more than $100 million to build a new stadium plus 35 million in state funding for infrastructure like parking and improving public transit.
Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo said she’s disappointed the General Assembly didn’t act quicker on her proposal.
If fans are disappointed, Pawtucket residents fear for the future of their city. Sitting inside the historic Modern Diner, just outside downtown, lifelong resident Jim Douglas said other Rhode Islanders didn’t understand the importance of the stadium for Pawtucket.
“Some of it might be the public in general are afraid of having their taxes go up, and don’t give a damn about the Pawtucket Red Sox, and think that the people that own it should have paid the money, and think that’s probably what caused the problem,” Douglas said.
At 84 years old, Douglas remembers when the Pawtucket Slaters played at McCoy in the 1940s. At the time, the city was a thriving manufacturing, hub. Now after decades of decline, Douglas hoped a new stadium could turn the city around.
“I think it’s a big loss for Pawtucket,” Douglas. “And I thought there was a possibility of resurrecting the city if they put the deal through, and moved it to the Apex area, and built the hotel, and I think it would have revitalized the city of Pawtucket I really do.
Now those hopes seem more unlikely than ever. The baseball team’s announcement of a deal to move to Worcester comes after a several other setbacks including the closing of Memorial Hospital, a major provider of jobs in the area.
For former resident Kelly Adams, the PawSox were a lasting vestige of a childhood hometown fast disappearing.
“There’s nothing left here,” said Adams. “It’s very sad because it was so different when I grew up here. It’s very sad to see the direction that it’s gone in, and that it’s going to continue to go in once they leave here in a few years.”
The future for McCoy stadium remains unknown for now. In a statement following the announcement of the team’s decision to leave, Mayor Donald Grebien said “the PawSox do not make Pawtucket” and the city “will move forward to a brighter future.”
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