McCoy Stadium will soon be gone for good. But heartbroken fans of the PawSox have one last bit of trivia left to savor.
Demolition workers have recovered not one, but two time capsules buried at the ballpark. Pawtucket officials plan to open them in June.
“It’s the denouement of some tragic decisions by the state of Rhode Island and by the baseball owners,” said Dan Barry, a columnist at The New York Times.
Barry wrote the book on the PawSox, the definitive work on the team that captured so many Rhode Island hearts: Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball’s Longest Game.
Spoiler alert: Barry has a pretty good idea what’s in those two time capsules.
The first was easy to find, buried beneath the old stadium’s cornerstone, laid in 1940 by then-Pawtucket Mayor Thomas McCoy.
“It includes a note where McCoy dedicates the stadium to the ‘health, happiness and enjoyment of the people of Pawtucket for all eternity’,” said Barry.
He added bitterly, “So that didn’t happen, as we now know.”
The second time capsule was harder to find. Workers for Shawmut Design and Construction, who have been clearing the site to make way for a new high school, reportedly deployed ground-penetrating radar to find it.
Team owner Ben Mondor and PawSox executives Lou Schwechheimer and Mike Tamburro, eager to commemorate their claim to a piece of baseball history, buried the second capsule with great fanfare in 1981 somewhere in the infield between home plate and the pitcher’s mound. In April of that year, the PawSox clinched the longest game in the 33rd inning.
The time capsule was a short metal tube, shaped like a torpedo. Town officials are now holding it in a secure location. Barry says some of the memorabilia inside the second capsule could be worthy of Cooperstown.
“There’s a baseball signed by all the participants in that game, possibly including the Rochester Red Wings, the losing team,” he said. “If that’s the case, that means there are some Hall of Fame signatures on that ball.”
The PawSox starting lineup featured future Red Sox legend Wade Boggs on third base. The Red Wings roster included the future Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken Jr. For the Red Wings, the Iron Man played third base.
“There’s already a momento or two in Cooperstown from the longest game, including Dave Koza’s bat,” said Barry. Koza was the PawSox first baseman who drove in the winning run.
Town officials plan to open both time capsules June 23, on the 44th anniversary of Major League Baseball’s longest game. That’s when the Yankees beat the Tigers after a mere 22 innings.
