WORCESTER

Worcester's Canal District, cheering baseball pitch, ready for PawSox

Dave Nordman,Mark Sullivan
david.nordman@telegram.com

WORCESTER - A ballpark in Kelley Square? Perhaps it’s only fitting if, as some say, Babe Ruth’s ghost still hangs around the Hotel Vernon.

During Prohibition, the Bambino, on visits to New England, drank at the Hotel Vernon’s speakeasy, at the time “Worcester’s best-known secret,” says the hotel’s owner, Bob Largess.

When ghost hunters in recent years did a sweep of the reputedly haunted Worcester landmark, Mr. Largess said, they recorded an angry voice declaring, “Mind your own (bleeping) business!” - reportedly what Babe Ruth said when taking a poke at a Worcester sportswriter in the 1920s.

If the Babe indeed is still enjoying phantom dollar drafts at his old Worcester haunt, Mr. Largess was asked, what would he make of the idea that the Boston Red Sox’s top minor-league club might move from Pawtucket, Rhode Island, to a new ballpark here, just on the other side of the square?

“He’d be thrilled,” said Mr. Largess of Sutton, the bearded face of Kelley Square as owner of the Hotel Vernon and driver of horse-drawn wagon tours that wind through the Canal District every Thursday night.

Mr. Largess, for his part, likewise would welcome the Sox with open arms. “We never say no to anyone in the Canal District,” he said. “We say yes to everybody.”

It was three years ago that the Canal District Alliance, on whose board he serves, invited the PawSox to consider Worcester when their lease in Pawtucket is up, he said.

“The city administration did an incredible job of making it known we had some potential,” he said. “And lo and behold, now everyone’s saying, ‘Is it really going to happen?’

“I say, if they’re smart they’ll come to Worcester,” Mr. Largess said.

Anticipation is growing locally that the PawSox, wooed by Worcester, are set to become the WooSox.

All eyes have been on PawSox Chairman Larry Lucchino since the Rhode Island House of Representatives passed a last-second stadium financing bill in June.

That gave the team two proposals to choose from: one in Worcester, the other in Pawtucket.

Only the Pawtucket plan has been made public – an $83 million mini-Fenway Park that would be financed, in part, by high-yield bonds that would cause the team’s borrowing costs to rise.

Mr. Lucchino has not commented on which direction he is leaning. This past Tuesday, after taking a tour of the Canal District, he said the team was still exploring its options.

Behind the scenes, however, there has been movement in Worcester’s favor.

On July 26, Minor League Baseball applied for three trademarks on the word “WooSox.”

Also last month, five sources — two from Worcester, two from Rhode Island and one from Boston — all said that an announcement would be coming in August, most likely by the middle of the month.

Unlike Rhode Island, a Worcester deal will not require legislative approval, only a vote of the City Council that last year authorized City Manager Edward M. Augustus Jr. to do what he had to do to attract the team.

There’s a possibility Worcester officials unveil a formal plan this coming week. The City Council next meets on Aug. 21, with an agenda due on Aug. 16.

Meanwhile, Mr. Lucchino has met with John Creedon Jr., owner of the Worcester Bravehearts, the summer collegiate baseball team that plays at the College of the Holy Cross. A deal there might also pave the way for the PawSox to use Hanover Insurance Park at Fitton Field temporarily if it felt it was necessary to vacate Pawtucket before the McCoy Stadium lease runs out after 2020.

The PawSox are said to be eyeing a 5-acre triangular parcel between Madison and Green streets as the best site for a possible ballpark.

City officials have been steadfastly tight-lipped about the status of their negotiations with PawSox officials which have been ongoing since last summer.

“As we continue to have discussions with the PawSox, we’re looking forward to the conclusion of a process in which the city has worked tirelessly to present Worcester as a great option,” Mr. Augustus said in a statement released by his office this past Thursday.

“If the team chooses Worcester, it would bring a sense of continued momentum and investment in our city which is undergoing more than $2 billion in public and private projects which have either been recently completed, are ongoing or have been proposed.

“Having the AAA affiliate of the Boston Red Sox in Worcester, the heart of ‘Red Sox Nation,’ would be a win-win situation for both the team and the city,” Mr. Augustus said.

Allen Fletcher, in whose backyard the ballpark literally would be built, has mixed feelings.

The developer of the $21 million Harding Green housing and retail complex already has a ringside seat to the remaking of Kelley Square. The site of the envisioned ballpark is directly across from his residence in a restored 19th-century schoolhouse on Ash Street. If the ballpark has a catbird seat, he’ll be living in it.

“Am I excited?” Mr. Fletcher said. “Yes. It’s very exciting for the district. I think it’s terrific for the district.” But he added: “It’s going to be a mammoth pain in the butt during construction.”

He reiterated: “I think it’s great for the district.” But “I don’t think we need it. At some level I would be relieved if it didn’t happen.

“I have real, true genuine worries that they’ll screw up Kelley Square,” Mr. Fletcher said. “I think the solution to Kelley Square is to station a couple of cops there on game day.

“People don’t appreciate how well it works and how badly attempted fixes are likely to be,” he said. “That’s my biggest worry ... People have this intuitive sense that Kelley Square’s a disaster. I think what it really does is a miracle. So it’s hard to keep people from putting their meddling hands on it.”

The notorious intersection where six streets converge without a traffic light or central rotary - “six streets in search of a stop sign,” in the words of one local wag - has inspired its own bumper sticker: “This Car Survived Kelley Square.”

If the old Brooklyn Dodgers were named for dodging trolleys, a requisite for Brooklynites, a Kelley Square ball team might inspire a nickname similarly colorful from rush-hour motorists.

“A phenomenal amount of people say, ‘Kelley Square, no way,’ ” says Gene Zabinski, president of the Canal District Alliance, who launched a campaign last year to send 10,000 postcards to the PawSox urging them to move to Worcester.

But Kelley Square would not be the only way - or even the main way - for traffic to get to and from the ballpark, Mr. Zabinski said.

The PawSox want five avenues of entrance and exit to a ballpark, he said. A main route to the envisioned park at Ash and Washington streets would be from Route 146 and Quinsigamond Avenue via Southbridge and Gold streets, he said. Madison Street would be another, he said, while a walkway to Green Street would be created from Plymouth Street. These alternate routes would relieve traffic through Kelley Square on game days, he said.

Mr. Zabinski, who also directs the Blackstone Canal Historical Museum in Crompton Place, and has been campaigning for years to bring an actual new canal to what has come to be called the Canal District, led a reporter and photographer Wednesday on a visit to the planned ballpark site at Ash and Washington, now an empty lot used for BirchTree Bread Co. parking.

“Lucchino wants a wall back there, in left field,” he said, pointing across to the Providence and Worcester Railroad bridge that runs beside Francis J. McGrath Boulevard, a piece of urban landscape that would provide a natural border for the park. With the railroad bridge as left field, the rest of the park could be envisioned, with the Worcester skyline beyond the outfield wall. The ballpark would seat a minimum of 10,000, under AAA minor league baseball requirements.

A cleanup of the spot has been underway. “A few weeks ago, they were in here with their weed whackers,” said Dave Maki, a Canal District Alliance board member. Down the right-field line could be seen the spot where a skateboard park and homeless encampment recently were dismantled. That area now is fenced.

All will be revealed when the city manager unveils the plan in coming days, said Mr. Zabinski, of Sutton, who grew up in a three-decker on Ingalls Street outside Kelley Square, and whose uncle was a delivery driver for Table Talk Pies for 33 years.

Asked how he would peg the chances of the PawSox relocating to Worcester at this point, the Canal District Alliance president said, “90 percent.”

Mr. Zabinski said, “I think it’s going to solidify Worcester and its position as being part of Red Sox Nation. We’ve got good baseball vibes in this city."

—Bill Ballou of the Telegram & Gazette Staff contributed to this report.