Same thing with my car. For no good reason, the horn goes off if I do certain things, like close the passenger door while the glove compartment is open—or not open, I forget which. And then the lights don’t go off right away after I park the car. This causes people to say, “You left your lights on,” to which I have to explain that it’s designed that way. “It’s a special feature of the ‘nuisance package’ I bought for an extra $275,” I say.
I don’t even want to discuss my computer. Suffice it to say, I do not need a rocket ship to go to the grocery store. I told Paula the only solution was to have electrodes attached to the beach chairs of technology company CEOs vacationing in the Bahamas, which could be activated just by pushing a button on whatever device was causing the problem.
“That would put an end to it,” I said.
“It would probably backfire,” said Paula, “like your father’s squirrel zapper.”
Years ago, my dad had gotten tired of having squirrels raid his bird feeder. He had tried everything, including suspending the bird feeder from a wire strung across the backyard. The more ingenious his plan, the smarter the squirrels got. What he was doing, I explained, was training squirrels.
Finally, he rigged up an electric shock device with a transformer and a plunger that he could operate from his living room. The idea was to watch out the window and push the plunger whenever he saw a squirrel climbing on the bird feeder. The first time he tried it he burned a perfectly round circle, about the size of a Frisbee, in the living room rug.
I expressed my reservations to Chip.
“What if there’s a technical glitch and we lose our own poll?”
“It’s all computerized,” said Chip. “These guys have assured me they can handle thousands of calls in a matter of minutes. They do this all the time.”
“But why risk losing what everyone believes we already have?”
“It’s a chance we have to take,” said Chip. “We need something that even our opponents will have to acknowledge. And we’ll bend over backwards to make it fair. Maybe we can even get someone like Tom Hickey to be the moderator.”
Having the president of the City Council as a moderator would certainly lend credibility to the proceedings. Chip was thinking smart and fast, forcing me into the unaccustomed role of doubting skeptic.
“And what if our competition doesn’t show up?” I said.
“We could have Hickey present their proposals in the most positive terms imaginable,” said Chip. “That’d be okay. We’d still win, hands down.”
“Hickey would actually do a better job than Fleisig,” I said. “Maybe we should just play the tape of Fleisig’s presentation.”
“Now that would be unfair,” said Chip, flashing a wicked grin.
I took a chance and called Hickey at his home. He was very cordial. And surprisingly candid.
“You know, I recommended your proposal on my television show last week,” said Hickey. “I said it was the best by far. I called Grunin after your presentation and I told him, ‘You need to get out front on this because if you come out afterward you’re going to look bad.’ That’s why he came out for you guys the next day.”
“Now we won’t be able to present you as a neutral moderator,” I joked.
“I don’t even know if I can do it,” said Hickey. “I’ll have to check my schedule.” Then he paused. “You know, I’ve been taking an unbelievable amount of shit on this.”
“From the public?” I asked.
“No,” said Hickey. “From my friends on the City Council and others.”
“The new-stadium people.”
“That’s it,” said Hickey.
“Are we correct in assuming that the opposition to our proposal comes from the guys who still want a new stadium?”
“You got that right,” said Hickey.
Webster’s definition of conspiracy: a secret between two or more people to do something wrong, treacherous, or illegal.
It would seem that “friends on the City Council and others,” secretly supporting a new stadium contrary to the wishes of the people of Pittsfield as expressed in every referendum on the subject over the past four years, certainly qualifies as wrong. The jury’s still out on treacherous and illegal.
It’s the damnedest thing. A conspiracy, in plain view of anyone paying the slightest attention, remains a “secret” because no one is covering the story—no newspaper reporter, no enterprising radio or television journalist. How hard could this be to expose? Evidently, a lot of high-profile people are dishing out “an unbelievable amount of shit.”
I got the information just by asking. A reporter would have to be blind not to see it. Or overly enamored of being employed. I wonder, for example, what the future might hold for an Eagle reporter who would pursue such a story? Meanwhile, we’re stuck with Ever-Scrib knocking, as he did on July 26, “Mr. Elitzer’s stance that any competing idea is a conspiracy to reactivate the defunct downtown stadium project.”
In the final analysis, I agreed with Chip—that risky as it is, we needed to try the phone poll. We have to prove beyond any doubt, in a public hearing—which so far everyone refuses to have—that the overwhelming majority of Pittsfield citizens prefer our plan for Wahconah Park.
As Dan Bianchi said, we “have to make it so embarrassing [the park commissioners] have no choice.”
CHAPTER 9
“The fix is in”
AUGUST 20
MONDAY
By 10:00 a.m. today, Chip had put together the phone poll with 7 West Communications, and had arranged for Joe Guzzo to be the producer. And I had talked Dan Bianchi into being the moderator, because Tom Hickey said he had a scheduling problem. Our press release read as follows:
WAHCONAH PARK PHONE POLL TO BE TAKEN AT PUBLIC MEETING
At Wednesday night’s televised open meeting in the City Council chamber, viewers will be given the opportunity to call a toll-free number to register their preference for one of three proposals for baseball at Wahconah Park.
The 7 p.m. meeting, at which the public is invited to ask questions and make comments, will be broadcast live on Channel 18.
The trio of Bouton, Elitzer, and Margenau, who scheduled the meeting, have invited their “competition,” Jonathan Fleisig of the Northern League and representatives of the Collegiate League, to join them on stage.
The meeting will be moderated by Dan Bianchi and produced by Joe Guzzo as a special edition of Perspectives.
We emailed it to our Wahconah Yes! and Wahconah Media lists, and faxed it to our competitors, the city councilors, and the parks commissioners.
A few hours later, Chip got a call from the Eagle’s Bill Carey.
“I tried to get him to do a story about the newsworthiness of the phone poll,” said Chip, “and the fact that this is the first time the public has been asked to participate. But he said the gist of the story would be whether Fleisig will come.”
The answer to that question came to me in a call from Fleisig.
“I’m not going to be at your meeting,” he said. “You’re just trying to get the public all riled up to influence the commissioners.”
“You’ll have the same chance ‘to get the public all riled up’ in favor of your proposal,” I said.
“It’s a slap in the face of the commissioners,” said Fleisig. “If they want to hear from the public, they should call a meeting.”
“The public has never been asked to be involved,” I said. “That’s one of the problems.”
“I’m all for the public being involved,” said Fleisig. “I’ll answer any questions. All they have to do is call me.”
Just leave a message on his answering machine.
“There’s never going to be a public hearing on this,” I said to Chip. “Especially with us involved. They do not want their flunkies and patsies—the park commissioners and Fleisig—exposed to any kind of scrutiny.”
“The last thing these guys want,” said Chip, “is to have everybody on a stage, wit
h the cameras rolling, and engage in a free and open discussion.”
“Can you imagine Nilan and Fleisig being grilled?” I said.
“We’d have to be careful not to make them look too bad,” said Chip. “They’d get the sympathy vote.”
“I’d like to challenge all the new-stadium guys to a debate,” I said. “Either one of us against any six of them.”
“That seems fair,” said Chip.
AUGUST 21
TUESDAY
I’m nervous about our phone poll tomorrow night. My newest fear is that not many people will watch the program, and that Cain Hibbard and BS&E will find someone with a speed dialer and we’ll lose our own poll 300 to 100—thereby giving the Parks Commission the break they’re looking for.
We’re not getting the publicity I expected, considering this is the first public hearing ever held on the subject. The Eagle buried it in the Community Notes section as if it were a store opening or a Kiwanis meeting. And we have yet to hear anything from WAMC.
So why don’t I pick up the phone and ask my friend Alan Chartock to cover the story as it should be covered? Holler at him as a friend might do. “Hey, Alan, what the hell’s going on? You’re missing the boat here!”
I could talk like that to Alan because we are friends. We joke that he once saved my life. Actually, I was just passing a kidney stone, but it felt like I was dying. It started while I was a guest on his Vox Pop program and I was in so much pain I couldn’t continue. This was in the dead of winter, and Alan drove me to the hospital, slowing down every few miles so I could open the door on the passenger side and throw up. Once you’ve thrown up from a guy’s car, you’re usually friends for life. And Alan knows I would let him throw up from my car.
Then why don’t I call him? For one thing, I don’t want to pressure him. Whatever Alan feels he owes the Eagle or David Scribner is his business. The story goes that the Eagle’s previous owners, the Millers, had hated Alan, but when they sold the paper to MediaNews Group, Scribner befriended Alan and he’s been grateful ever since. Alan probably sees it as loyalty.
But the main reason I don’t call Alan, or any other friends in the media, is that I want to win this without any outside help. Just Chip and Eric and me against the big boys—three against thirty. It’s more fun that way. I don’t want it to look like I sicced the media on them—even though it is legitimate news. So, while it’s partly true that I’m saving that play for after we get Wahconah Park, it also has to do with fighting fair.
The good news is that we’re getting rave reviews on Jamie Akers’s renderings. Here’s what Eric Lincoln had to say in an email:
> The latticed gateway is awesome. Walk through
> the gates, ladies and gentlemen and step back
> in time, to a place where things were simpler
> and a real community existed—where baseball
> had not yet been affected by the dollar bill.
> It was the Old Towne Game and this is what you
> have magically re-created. It’s glorious. I’m
> a cynic, always have been, but I’ve always
> rooted for the good guy in the movie and the
> underdog on the playing field. Under your
> stewardship, Wahconah will indeed be the
> finest place in America to watch our beloved
> game of baseball.
Eric is trying to get his editors at the Record to print the drawings on the front page of the paper.
“So far, they won’t do it,” said Eric. “They said, ‘It’s a Pittsfield story’ and the Record is mainly a South County paper.”
This has not kept Chip and me from putting up a few posters around Great Barrington. Shige Tanabe has one on the wall inside Gon San. Shige thinks he’s going to be taking batting practice at Wahconah Park when the team is on the road. Okay, I might have mentioned it in passing.
Our man Gary Grunin called to say he hasn’t been able to download our color renderings on his computer. I promised to resend them. Then he had this to say:
“We’ve really never had issues as big as this. The last one was the PCBs. Now the stadium thing. A lot of this stuff has been going on behind closed doors. I told them from day one they rolled this thing out wrong. A combination of BS&E and the mayor’s office. I wasn’t involved in any of those meetings. They did one PowerPoint out at the GE site.”
“Why GE?” I asked.
“They wanted a neutral site,” said Grunin.
Taste of the Berkshires Food Court
Not-So-Luxury Boxes
Peter Arlos called today. He thought I might like to know that Fleisig’s attorney, Mike MacDonald, was the same guy who had drafted the language for the Civic Authority—the entity that would have managed the new stadium. This is further evidence that Fleisig is just a place holder for the new-stadium guys.
Arlos also said there was a rumor out of the mayor’s office that I had once demanded $3,000 to speak to the Boy Scouts. And this is further evidence that our opponents are scumbags.
Curiously, the story is based on a true incident. I recently declined to speak to the Boy Scouts, but for a different reason—namely their reprehensible exclusion of gay scouts. It isn’t fair to the boys, of course; it’s the leaders who are imposing their warped sense of morality on others. One day they’ll wise up, but until then you can’t accept it. That’s what I told Cheryl Raifstanger at Kwik Print, who had asked me on behalf of a friend if I would speak to the Scouts.
But I had originally said yes—until I thought about it for a few hours—because that’s my first impulse when anyone asks me to do something for the community. It’s part of giving back, part of the privilege of living in such a wonderful place. Paula thinks people sometimes take advantage of me, but I don’t see it that way. Taking advantage of someone is turning the truth upside down and leaking it anonymously for political purposes.
This has nothing to do with Cheryl, who has a heart of gold. I believe Arlos when he says he got it from the mayor’s office. But where did they get it from? And why didn’t someone like Tom Murphy or Curt Preisser call me first to see if it was true?
As I said, scumbags.
The New England Collegiate Baseball League has officially withdrawn its application for Wahconah Park and will not be at the public hearing tomorrow night. This means it’s just going to be Chip and me versus two empty chairs.
I have to remember to make name plates for those empty chairs.
Paula is getting into the swing of things. When I mentioned that I had to resend the color renderings to Grunin because he hadn’t received the first transmission, she said, “Did you put a piece of cheese on it?”
AUGUST 22
WEDNESDAY
At 3:30 this morning, Chip went on the Internet and downloaded Bill Carey’s story from today’s Eagle. Under the headline BASEBALL RIVALS WILL SIT OUT INFO MEETING, Carey wrote about tonight’s meeting and quoted Chip, among others.
Only one of the three groups proposing new baseball clubs for Wahconah Park will be represented at a public meeting tonight—the group that arranged the meeting.
“We’re ready to put ourselves up on the stage in the City Council chambers, in full public view and on live television, to let the public take its best shot,” Elitzer said yesterday. “We are warmly welcoming our competition to share the podium. We have not tried to make this a pep rally for the Bouton proposal.
“We don’t claim [the phone poll] is a stratified, scientific sample. It is what it is, hopefully a comprehensive way for people to register their preference…. It could go against us.”
At 3:40 this morning, Chip emailed Carey’s story to Jonathan Fleisig, along with the following note:
> Jonathan,
> Here is today’s article which you may have seen
> already. Won’t you reconsider your plans for
> tonight and join us on stage? (Or alternatively,
> designate a representative?) We don’t intend to
> re-present our proposal. Tonight is the public’s
> turn at bat. They’ll make whatever comments
> they want, for or against any proposal, and ask
> whatever pointed questions they have for any
> one of us. Please join us. We’ll treat each other
> with respect, and hopefully the public will too,
> regardless of personal differences.
> Regards, Chip.
At this point, I hope Chip went to bed.
And that he actually slept—for Cindy’s sake. She hasn’t been sleeping well lately and she thinks she knows why.
“If Chip’s awake, I’m awake,” she said recently. “Even if he’s just lying there, I can hear him thinking.”
Paula, on the other hand, has made a beautiful adjustment.
“I’ve learned to incorporate the sound of the fax machine into my dreams,” she said.
Chip and I arrived at City Hall about an hour before our public meeting. We put up a poster with Jamie Akers’s renderings, placed color copies on each chair, went over the phone poll scenario with the TV guys (we held back on the phone numbers until just before show time to avoid any chicanery), and linked up with 7 West Communications. Since Chip never heard from Fleisig today, we figured he’d be a no-show.
As we bustled about, we noticed that the room was not exactly filling up. Fifteen minutes before the meeting was set to begin, there were fewer than twenty people in the room. Where the hell was everybody?
Sandy Herkowitz, who was planning to say a few words on our behalf tonight, had an encouraging theory.