Foul Ball

by Jim Bouton

  As if it were perfectly normal that two guys would seek out a total stranger who happened to write a letter to the newspaper, Chip and I—very politely—clarified a few things about our proposal. Not the type to roll over for a couple of smart-asses in sports coats, Bonnevie aggressively defended his belief in a new stadium.

  “Well, I think we should keep Wahconah Park,” announced a woman who had just walked into the room. She appeared to be in her mid-twenties and was carrying some cleaning supplies.

  Bonnevie gave her a pained look. The topic did not seem to be a new one between them. And pretty soon it was three against one, with Bonnevie refusing to yield, and us trying to change his mind as if he were the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

  At this point it was all just sport. We had already confirmed that there was, in fact, a Frank Bonnevie, and that he was certainly articulate enough to have written that letter to the editor. I’m not sure Bonnevie understood just who we were—two nuts on a mission, with time to kill in Pittsfield.

  And that was just the morning.

  After a quick lunch at the Lantern, we suddenly had a great idea. As long as we’re in town, why not drop into the Eagle’s nest? See if anybody’s around. Maybe Chip can meet his new pen pal, Bill Everhart. Find out if and when he plans to run Chip’s letter/op-ed piece.

  The Eagle’s headquarters is a massive, factory-like brick building with an impressive clock tower rising above the five-story structure. We pulled into the parking lot and headed for the entrance.

  “This is like walking behind enemy lines,” said Chip.

  “Watch for a muzzle flash from the upper windows,” I said.

  At the reception desk, we asked for Bill Carey because we figured he’d at least say hello to us. Maybe Carey could arrange for us to meet Everhart. To our surprise, we got more than that. Carey, a big man with a full head of healthy-looking hair combed straight back, invited us into the newsroom. There, he introduced us to Everhart and Clarence Fanto, who led us to a small conference room where we were eventually joined by David Scribner and a photographer.

  It was almost as if they had expected us.

  The conversation began with Carey asking us questions while he took notes on a pad of paper. Chip and I reviewed the brief history of our quest for Wahconah Park and conveyed our disappointment that the Eagle, which had criticized the naysayers for not having a plan, was now criticizing us for having one. Carey nodded, in apparent understanding.

  “Now we’re the naysayers,” Carey said.

  As we spoke with Carey, Everhart edited Chip’s letter/op-ed piece by crossing things out with a ballpoint pen, while Scribner wandered in and out of the room.

  Everhart and Scribner make quite a pair. Everhart, about six-foot-two, with watery eyes and a drooping mustache, is a dour fellow with a somewhat startled look behind his glasses. Scribner, or “the little twerp in the cowboy hat” as he’s called by a few of his colleagues, is five-foot-six with wavy brown hair and a squinty-eyed smirk on his face. Today he was hatless, but he was wearing cowboy boots.

  The only contentious moment came when Scribner challenged our view that BS&E and the Eagle were hindering our efforts.

  “BS&E is finished,” said Scribner. “You’ve seen the For Sale sign on the property. What do you think that means? There isn’t going to be a new stadium.”

  “That doesn’t prevent the Eagle from campaigning against our proposal for Wahconah Park,” I said.

  “That’s ridiculous,” said Scribner. “Go make your case! No one is stopping you.”

  As Scribner talked he walked around, waving one hand for emphasis and playing with his hair with the other. At one point he looked at us and said, “I’m suspicious of you guys.”

  “Suspicious of what?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” said Chip. “How do we stand to enrich ourselves at the expense of the city?”

  “I don’t know,” said Scribner, touching his hair again. “I’m just suspicious.”

  Well, there it was. Finally, we had found one of those people whom Jay Pomeroy had been talking about—that “minority in Pittsfield who have such a suspicious nature that it is scary.”

  On the way home in the car, we tried to figure it all out. It looked like the Eagle was going to run Chip’s letter, and probably do a story about our visit.

  But that didn’t mean we had changed anyone’s mind or that we were going to start getting a fair shake.

  “They have too much invested, emotionally and financially,” said Chip, “even if they believed we had the best deal for Pittsfield.”

  “Why can’t they see it?” I said. “These are newspaper guys. They’re supposed to be the ones with the shit detectors.”

  “It’s a metaphysical problem,” said Chip. He then launched into a discussion about post-deconstructionist philosophy, which postulates that there is no objective truth—that events only make sense by the way we interpret them, adding meaning to what’s happening.

  It was all very abstract, and the more Chip talked the slower the car went, because he can’t think and drive at the same time. I know he’s digging deep when we’re going forty mph in a fifty mph zone, where he normally goes sixty.

  Here we were doing twenty mph in a forty.

  “It’s like play-by-play announcers,” said Chip, “making sense out of what might otherwise be seen as an incomprehensible free-for-all.”

  “So does that mean their view is just as valid as ours?” I asked.

  “Theoretically,” said Chip.

  “Then how do we know our view is correct?”

  Chip pulled the car over to the side so he could think harder. This was in lieu of stopping altogether in the middle of the road.

  “We don’t,” said Chip, “in any absolute sense. Ideally, everyone should be intellectually honest enough to admit the possibility that they’re wrong. The people who scare me are the ones who know for sure what truth is.”

  “Like religious fanatics,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Chip, “but it’s not limited to religion. Any uncompromising belief system will do. Look at the Communists.”

  “Do the new-stadium guys believe their view is correct?”

  “I’m sure they’ve convinced themselves,” said Chip, “but our arrival on the scene makes it harder for them to hold onto that, and to convince others.”

  “That’s why they’re pissed,” I said.

  “One of the indicators of the correctness of a particular view in our culture,” said Chip, “is the extent to which the behavior of the participants matches the principles of a free, democratic society.”

  “We score well on that,” I said.

  “Their refusal to debate,” said Chip, “or engage in rational discussion, or involve the public in any meaningful way, doesn’t jibe with their stated goal of contributing to the public good.”

  “You convinced me,” I said. “Where do I sign?”

  Chip put the car in gear and pulled back onto the highway. But that didn’t mean he was finished thinking.

  “Remember in the meeting when Scribner said, ‘Go make your case! Nobody’s stopping you,’” said Chip.

  “Right,” I said. “What about it?”

  “That’s the same thing Everhart said in one of his emails.”

  “So maybe they collaborate on the editorials,” I said.

  “You know, we never did find out,” said Chip, “which one did the writing and which one did the editing.”

  “Maybe they want to keep it a secret,” I said, “so people don’t know who to snub at cocktail parties.”

  “That’s not fair,” said Chip. “They should have to face the music together.”

  “They’re like Siamese twins,” I said, “joined at the spleen.”

  “And they share a bile duct,” Chip added.

  “They should have a single name,” I said. “Like Ever-Scrib.”

  “Right,” said Chip. “People could say, ‘Did you see what that idiot, Ever-S
crib, said today?’”

  CHAPTER 4

  “We’re like the U.S. Marshals”

  JULY 17

  TUESDAY

  I picked up Chip at 7:30 this morning for the trip to Pittsfield and our meeting with Mike Daly, a vice president at Berkshire Bank, and Gerry Denmark, the bank’s lawyer. We wanted to find out where the bank stood with respect to Berkshire Sports & Events and explain how that relationship might be hurting all of us.

  It figured to be an interesting meeting. Daly had given Paula and me our first mortgage when we built our home here nine years ago. And Denmark was representing the bank. Denmark has a good sense of humor and we had almost become social friends, but we could never fit a dinner into our busy schedules.

  A secretary brought Chip and me to the mandatory wood-paneled conference room. Daly and Denmark entered a few minutes later. They smiled and shook hands, but there was an undercurrent of tension. They were not happy about something.

  “You called the meeting,” said Daly. “What’s up?”

  “There’s a high risk that Pittsfield could be without baseball,” said Chip. “Berkshire Sports & Events is threatening to build a new stadium anywhere in the Berkshires, possibly North Adams, which could make the bank look bad.”

  “And,” I said, “city officials won’t take action on our proposal for Wahconah Park until they’re released by BS&E.”

  “We’re not doing anything,” said Daly.

  “You’re part of BS&E,” I said.

  “Don’t put us in a box,” said Daly.

  “We’re not putting you in a box,” said Chip. “Everybody else is. We’re just reporting to you how you are being perceived.”

  “There is no BS&E anymore,” said Denmark. “We’re in the process of dissolving it.”

  “The public perception,” said Chip, “is that it still exists.”

  “You see that For Sale sign?” asked Daly, pointing out the window toward the new stadium site. “That’s all that means, a public declaration. That’s as public as you can get. But I have to tell you that we’d support a new stadium, if it was in Bousquet or anywhere else.”

  “Why would you do such a thing after the people voted against it?” I asked.

  “The Civic Authority went down for a lot of other reasons,” said Denmark. “It wasn’t baseball, it was the firemen who didn’t have a contract, the teachers…”

  It went back and forth like that, and every once in a while it seemed like they were starting to get it. But as soon as Daly would say, “We’ll take another look at this,” in the next breath he’d add, “but we’d still support a new stadium if anyone wanted to build it.”

  Timing our exit, Chip and I rose to shake hands immediately after Daly’s next “We’ll take another look at this.”

  But Denmark had the last word as Chip and I went out the door.

  “You won’t be able to point to Berkshire Sports & Events as the reason for failing to save baseball for Pittsfield,” he said. “It’s your ball game to win or lose.”

  We came back home right after the meeting because Paula and I had to catch the twelve-thirty ferry in Bridgeport, Connecticut, for a few days in the Hamptons with Paula’s family.

  I drove so Chip could think.

  “The bank and the Eagle have interests outside Pittsfield,” said Chip. “They can dodge responsibility. But the elected officials can’t.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “The city officials are stupidly following Berkshire Sports & Events’ new-stadium agenda—which has simply moved underground.”

  “Did you see how Daly pointed to the For Sale sign?” said Chip. “Just like Scribner did yesterday?”

  “Look over here at this sign!” I said, doing my wizard imitation. “Pay no attention to what’s happening behind the curtain.”

  “By Daly’s own words to us,” said Chip, “he basically confirmed what we’re saying. If that meeting were played on TV, what lesson would the public take from it?”

  “That nobody gives a shit what the public thinks,” I said. “Write that down.”

  JULY 18

  WEDNESDAY—WATERMILL, NY

  While I relaxed in the Hamptons, my partner was holding the fort in Massachusetts.

  “Did we get the lease yet?” I joked into my cell phone.

  “No,” said Chip. “But we got a letter from Phil Weiner, the WUPE guy, who writes, ‘Evidently there are others, in addition to your group, interested in providing baseball at Wahconah Park.’”

  “Sounds like he has inside information,” I said.

  “He’s definitely part of the old-boy network,” said Chip. “The ones who know what’s best for everyone else. Weiner says things like, ‘Those that will make the decision’ and ‘what they decide is best for the city.’”

  “What did he say about sponsoring a debate?” I asked.

  “He said, ‘It doesn’t seem that a public forum now would serve any purpose.’”

  “Not their purpose, anyway,” I said. “Is there anything positive in the letter?”

  “He wishes us ‘the best of luck,’” said Chip.

  “At least Weiner got back to us,” I said. “That’s better than the rest of them.”

  “I’m going to write him a nice letter back,” said Chip, “saying that no matter what ‘others’ may be interested—a collegiate team, New York–Penn League team, an independent league team connected to BS&E—we are the only ones making a long-term commitment to Wahconah Park.”

  “You think we’re being too pushy?” I asked.

  “Pushy?” said Chip. “What do they expect? We write letters, get no reply. Emails go unanswered. Phone calls aren’t returned.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “If we backed off, they would just think we quit. That’s what they want us to do. Potsy had said what they try to do is wear you down. Hope you get discouraged and go away. And Dan Valenti had said the same thing.”

  “We just have to keep moving forward,” said Chip, “with sweet reasonableness.”

  The most recent sweetly reasonable thing Chip did was to write another open letter, addressed to Mayor Doyle, City Council President Tom Hickey, and Parks Commission Chairman Cliff Nilan, asking for prompt consideration of our proposal. And to counter the reasons previously given by city officials for not taking action—“we can’t do anything until BS&E says it has given up on building a new stadium, or until BS&E folds its tent”—Chip reported our recent visits to the Eagle and Berkshire Bank.

  “The editor of the Eagle,” wrote Chip, “pointed to the For Sale sign on the stadium property as a clear signal that ‘there isn’t going to be a new stadium,’ and a senior representative of the bank told us that ‘BS&E was being dissolved.’”

  In other words, no more excuses. Act on our proposal.

  Chip made one more pitch to have the July 23 Parks Commission meeting rescheduled and “held at a school auditorium, where a large number of citizens can attend, and where TV and radio stations can broadcast the proceedings. We would be prepared to present and defend our proposal in all reasonable detail, and we welcome the opportunity to share the stage with any representatives of competing proposals in a real give-and-take format.”

  So reasonable it brings tears to my eyes.

  JULY 19

  THURSDAY—WATERMILL, NY

  Speaking of tears, I was on the phone with Tim Gray and we got to talking about the Housatonic River Initiative (HRI) and how he learned about the pollution in Pittsfield.

  “Basically, from GE employees,” said Gray. “They would come and tell us where the barrels were buried, and about the midnight dumping. GE was even trucking in PCBs from outside Pittsfield.”

  “Did city officials know about that?”

  “The rumors were that the city was somehow involved,” said Gray. “We went to the EPA, but they wouldn’t do anything. For two years they were telling us there was no pollution. Then the bulldozers hit the barrels—867 barrels full of toxic stuff. And that was just o
ne site.”

  “It doesn’t sound like the EPA is anxious to find problems,” I said.

  “The EPA is a creation of Congress,” said Gray. “And polluters like GE have close ties to the political establishment. For a year, Kennedy and Kerry had canoed the river with us. Then they stopped returning our calls and got on the settlement bandwagon.”

  I told Gray about a framed newspaper article Chip and I had seen in the mayor’s office, showing Doyle signing the settlement agreement.

  “It was all done in Boston, behind closed doors,” said Gray, “with Doyle and Hickey representing Pittsfield. Which was a joke, because it was Doyle and Hickey who had been against our efforts to uncover the pollution. They essentially just sat there while GE fought with the EPA. We had all the facts, we could have made a much stronger case, but GE refused to negotiate if HRI was involved.”

  “Who chose Doyle and Hickey?” I asked.

  “The EPA,” said Gray. “And the contaminated property owners were going berserk. HRI went to Boston to challenge the consent decree in court. I never saw more lawyers in my life. Then we saw pictures of Clinton playing golf with Jack Welch, in the local newspaper. We spent nine months on our brief, and everything was dismissed. By a judge appointed by Kennedy.”

  “So, was that the end of it?” I asked.

  “No,” said Gray. “Afterwards, the EPA announced they were going to clean the river and then gave Doyle credit for it.”

  “What’s your feeling about the settlement?” I asked.

  “It could have been a lot better,” said Gray. “Newell Street was never properly cleaned up, a lot of sites were left out, pollution from the river is getting dumped right across the street from a school, dumps are continuing to rise surrounded by people’s wells. If they tried to do that in any other town, they’d never get away with it.”

  JULY 20

  FRIDAY—NEW YORK, NY

  Tomorrow is Old Timers’ Day at Yankee Stadium, and I’ve been invited back again. I’m becoming a regular. This will be my fourth in a row since my first one in 1998—after a twenty-eight-year banishment for having written Ball Four.