Press Clippings

October 7, 2004 - Berkshire Eagle Editorial: Bouton, Elitzer pack it in

That Jim Bouton and Chip Elitzer would pick up their ball and go home, blaming Pittsfield officials for their woes, is graceless but hardly surprising. The city learned from their first attempt to bring a baseball team to Wahconah Park three years ago that the pair were not team players and that was re-emphasized again in recent weeks, when the partnership interpreted anything less than blind obedience to them as traitorous. Their departure comes as no shock, nor should it be mourned.

The ruling by the state attorney general's office that Wahconah Park Incorporated must follow state bidding laws in its planned renovation of Wahconah Park, and the backing for that ruling by Mayor Ruberto and the Parks Commission, is the evidence the partners offer for a lack of support from city officials. In fact, the ruling was a good one and Mr. Bouton and Mr. Elitzer could have put the project out to bid and gone on with their renovation. That they gave up so easily raises questions about the depth of their devotion to the project and reveals that they were never willing to make the compromises necessary for their effort to succeed. To them, support from the city meant allowing them to do as they please. If it had not been the ruling from the attorney general's office, it would have been something else.

It is important to note that at no time during either of their bids for use of Wahconah Park did the partnership actually have a baseball team to put there. There were hints of arrangements with this independent league or that, and most recently, emergence of a Pittsfield Owls logo for a team that would perhaps play in the Northern League should Pittsfield officials bow before the partnership and do as they were told. The baseball team shell game did nothing for the credibility of a partnership that nonetheless felt brazen enough to make demands of the mayor and Parks Commission.

Mr. Bouton is now free to write "Foul Ball 2," with a new cast of characters to flay, while Pittsfield wonders if its long, proud history as host to professional baseball has come to a dead end. The demise of the downtown stadium project, a victim of mistrust and misinformation, is even sadder now than it was three years ago. By now the city would have a stadium anchoring downtown redevelopment and a team in the well-established New York-Penn League, courtesy of Larry Bossidy, a local boy made good in the business world. It would have been spared dealing with Mr. Bouton and Mr. Elitzer.

Pittsfield cannot dwell on its blunders, but it must learn from them, and it must shake off its negativity and paralysis disguised as nostalgia. An energetic City Hall and promising downtown projects provide reasons for optimism. That professional baseball will not be part of that revival is regrettable, but the departure of Wahconah Park Incorporated is not.