Pittsfield's pastimeBACK TO the dugout, Cooperstown and Hoboken -- two pretenders to the honor of being the birthplace of baseball back in the 19th century. It turns out that the game was played so vigorously in the 18th century in Pittsfield that officials banned it within 80 yards of the Congregational meetinghouse. A baseball historian's discovery of a 1791 ordinance drawn up to protect the new building's windows has brought a glow to the Western Massachusetts city. Now it can join Springfield, where basketball was born, and Holyoke, where volleyball was, on the state's roster of historic sports cities. No one thinks the Baseball Hall of Fame will relocate from Cooperstown, but Pittsfield's new distinction as, in Mayor James Ruberto's term, "baseball's Garden of Eden," should boost efforts to restore the city's minor league stadium.
Lou Gehrig, George Scott, and Greg Maddux are among the giants who once played in 85-year-old Wahconah Park, a wooden structure that lost its last minor league team with a major league affiliation in 2001. A leader in restoring the park is Berkshire County resident Jim Bouton, the former Yankees pitcher whose unvarnished chronicle of baseball life, "Ball Four," is a classic of sports writing. Wahconah, built when all games were day games, now has lights but is situated so that a setting sun blinds batters looking out to the mound. This gives the field the rare distinction among professional stadiums of having sun delays as well as rain delays. All of the stadium's history and quirkiness might have been lost if a plan to have taxpayers subsidize a new ballpark in 2001 had succeeded, but voters turned it down. Bouton describes his own efforts to renovate Wahconah in his newest book, "Foul Ball," which throws brush-back pitches at media monopolists and industrial polluters as well as city officials who initially blocked his plan for the stadium.
The document unearthed in Pittsfield is no proof that the "baseball" that had town fathers so worried bears much resemblance to the modern game. It is also a reminder of how little written record is available of the 18th century life of Americans who were plowing fields and hitting line drives while others were writing the Federalist Papers. In memory of the former, good luck to Bouton and Co. If you renovate it, they will come. Maybe. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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