Death of the PawSox: A Betrayal of Trust

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Saturday, July 18, 2020

Robert McMahon, Guest MINDSETTER™

If you have watched any hospital show on television over the years, you probably have viewed a scene where, despite frantic efforts by the doctors and nurses, a patient dies.  After a brief pause, the actor playing the doctor looks at a wall clock and gravely says something like, “Let the record show that the time of death is 10:22 AM.”

The PawSox officially died two weeks ago. The time of death was 2:00 PM on Tuesday, June 30, 2020. That was the time that Major League Baseball announced that they would not be financially supporting any minor league baseball clubs, including the PawSox, in 2020. Cause of death? In this unprecedented sports year, it is tempting to blame the COVID pandemic that has turned the entire sports world upside down. 

All of us PawSox fans expected one last season in 2020 at McCoy before the new PawSox owners completed their new ballpark in Worcester and took their bats and balls up RT 146.  The COVID virus changed that. A family friend, the PawSox, that brought thousands of families together for several decades has died, and we are not able to even say goodbye to a Rhode Island public treasure.

COVID may be the immediate cause of the PawSox demise, but the death spiral for our PawSox began five years ago in February 2015 when a new ownership group bought the team from Ben Mondor’s widow Madeleine Mondor.  There was both excitement and cause for concern at the opening press conference announcing the team’s sale. James Skeffington, a long-time Providence attorney and Rhode Island inside deal maker, headed the group of ten investors, along with Larry Lucchino, Red Sox president at the time. 

The new group immediately announced that the team would be leaving Pawtucket and McCoy Stadium.  Skeffington promised an exciting new ballpark on the Providence River in downtown Providence.  Lucchino had spearheaded new MLB ballparks in Baltimore and San Diego. The prospect of a glitzy downtown Providence ballpark surrounded by restaurants and taverns seemed exciting and most Providence politicians initially embraced the idea.

This enticing ballpark vision that was waved before our eyes, however, had some mighty big small print. The new owners required “public investment” in addition to the owner’s money. And they also indicated that they were looking at sites in Massachusetts to re-locate the PawSox if they couldn’t make a deal work in Rhode Island.  A classic sports owner’s threat to get political leaders to the table.

I wasn’t too dismayed at first by this.  After all, the new owners included wealthy and long-time Rhode Island benefactors like Thomas Ryan of CVS (who was the major donor of the best on-campus college basketball arena in New England at URI) and Terrence Murray, who like Ben Mondor, grew up in a blue-collar family in Woonsocket before achieving a successful local banking career.  These guys were Rhode Islanders who loved Rhode Island and had a history of caring for the state.  They would ensure that the new owners would put enough of their own skin in the game to ensure a balanced public-private deal that would bring the PawSox to Providence.  Right?

Boy, was I wrong.  We all are sadly familiar with the rest of the narrative of this story.  The Skeffington group wanted a one-sided deal with mostly public funds for a new Providence stadium; James Skeffington unexpectedly died and with him the political skills to restructure a Providence deal; the new owners contended that McCoy would require $77 million to be first-class AAA ballpark and the location didn’t deserve this type of investment; a new site at the old Apex site in downtown Pawtucket was proposed and various public-private deals failed to get a green light from Governor Raimondo and the Rhode Island legislature as the fog of the 38 Studios deal still lingered over all public-private deals proposed to state officials. As promised, the new PawSox owners courted a new girlfriend while all of the Apex site negotiations dragged on. Worcester city officials gleefully emptied its city hall coffers to woo the PawSox owners (the new name, the WooSox, seems ironically appropriate).

Many Rhode Islanders and baseball fans outside of the state frame this narrative as the failure of Rhode Island public officials to step up to the plate and keep the PawSox in Rhode Island. I think that explanation is too superficial and mischaracterizes the loss of the PawSox. 

Ben Mondor bought the PawSox in 1977 after a successful textile career in Woonsocket. He invested millions of dollars of his own money in McCoy Stadium improvements in addition to the state infusion of millions of dollars in 1999 to increase the capacity of McCoy from 5,800 to over 10,000.  More than Mondor and state funds transformed the fan experience at McCoy—it was a genuine family experience with affordable ticket prices, affordable concessions, a clean ballpark with a beautifully groomed ballfield, and plenty of parking.  Fans felt appreciated and loved the McCoy experience.  Ben was often roaming the stands greeting fans from all over southern New England.  He was an on-site owner who wanted to personally make sure you and your family were having a good time.

The Mondor stewardship of the PawSox included a staff—from President Mike Tamburro to the ticket takers to the concession sellers—that multiplied Mondor’s customer-friendly culture for fans. The PawSox may have been a minor league team, but there was nothing minor league about the fan experience at McCoy thanks to Ben Mondor.  He developed fan loyalty and trust in the McCoy experience.

The new PawSox owners failed to see the value of the loyalty and trust of the PawSox fans.  And the fans stopped going to McCoy in 2019 when they realized that they were being betrayed by the owners. The new owners’ purchase was a simple financial investment, guided by expected short-term financial gains that would accrue to them with a new fashionable downtown ballpark in whatever downtown where the majority of funding would be public.  They blindly discounted the fans love of McCoy Stadium and its renovation potential which would have cost far less than any other stadium proposals put forth.  They never publicly issued the results of a consultant’s inflated estimate to renovate McCoy.  They never gave McCoy a shot and always wanted more taxpayer dollars than their own funds invested in any deal, despite the owners having a collective net worth of one to two billion dollars.

In the end, the loyalty and trust of the PawSox fans that took years for Ben Mondor to cultivate meant nothing to the new owners.  Ben Mondor greeted fans with a handshake.  The new owners had their hands firmly gripping their wallets while asking for public money. This was strictly a business transaction for them. The PawSox were like a car dealership or a laundromat for the new owners.  Just another deal.

 

Bob McMahon is a Providence resident, retired Providence Superintendent of Parks, and retired PawSox fan

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