Press Clippings

February 12, 2005- Letter to the Editor of the Berkshire Eagle: Powers-that-be sabotaged baseball

To the Editor of THE EAGLE:

I would like to address the statement in the editorial of Feb. 9, ("Pittsfield's problem in a nutshell,") that ". . . if anyone wanted to come to Wahconah Park, Jim Bouton and Chip Elitzer would have found them...."

We did find them! Miles Wolff, Northeast League commissioner, had told us that we were his choice to have the eighth team in what would become the Can-Am League. Wahconah Park would have been alive with baseball in 2005, with approximately 45 professional Pittsfield Owls games and 15 vintage Hillies games.

Our business plan called for 240,000 visitors a summer, drawing a massive influx of new people to Pittsfield, to a Berkshire attraction second only to Tanglewood. Tourist traffic and jobs would have been created in spades. After so many years of spiraling downward, Pittsfield would have been riding a "virtuous cycle" of success begetting success.

We were going to upgrade and maintain Wahconah Park at absolutely no taxpayer expense. Our committed group of 84 investors for $1.2 million included some very heavy hitters. And we were reducing the minimum investment size from $500 to $50 so that hundreds of Pittsfield residents could become owners as well.

We had the teams. We had the money. So what happened? Why did Jim Bouton and I have to walk away from a large personal investment of time and money? In a nutshell, the "powers that be" in Pittsfield didn't want us. The public bid law protest by the carpenters union was just a convenient device. The city solicitor and I had drafted a revised agreement that would have satisfied every objection raised in the attorney general's opinion and put it squarely outside of the bureaucratic public bid laws. We had told the unions and the mayor that the job was being competitively bid and that union labor would be doing the lion's share of the work. Nevertheless, on Oct. 4, 2004, the Parks Commission voted down by 4 to 1 our request for them to recommend the revised agreement to the mayor for his signature. The city solicitor, on behalf of the mayor, had asked them not to recommend it.

On Oct. 6, we withdrew. We could have waited until a similar vote the following week by the City Council, but the mayor had told me the night before that we weren't going to get anywhere. From my attempts to lobby the councilors one-on-one, I knew he was correct. At best we would have been rebuffed by an 8-3 vote. Shortly after our withdrawal, I initiated a brief e-mail exchange with the mayor suggesting a follow-up meeting, or at least a "post mortem." He said he would get back to me. He never did.

-Chip Elitzer
GREAT BARRINGTON, MA