Let the record show, Mark Patinkin says: Larry Lucchino didn't take the PawSox out of RI

Larry Lucchino, the longtime Red Sox president who died of cancer at 78 on Tuesday, was often seen here as the guy who took the PawSox to Worcester.

After all, he became PawSox chair in 2015 and was at the helm when the team moved north three years later.

But that’s a bad rap.

In truth, Lucchino wanted badly to build a new PawSox stadium here. He saw its 50-year history as an important legacy to continue. So he tried.

He tried so hard that by 2018, he was offering Rhode Island the best deal in the history of Triple-A ball – the owners agreeing to pay 54% of the $83-million stadium proposal and cover construction overruns.

It should have been a slam dunk.

But it was controversial because the building bonds had a state guarantee – just like 38 Studios did – so spineless pols who couldn’t take the heat, led by House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello, killed the deal.

So in this week of Larry Lucchino’s passing, let the record show he was not the one who left. It was myopic politicians who pushed him away.

I interviewed Lucchino a few times at McCoy, where, starting in 2015, he began to commute daily from his Chestnut Hill home to run the team after moving on from the Red Sox presidency. The truth is, it was quite a “get” to have someone of his stature here – he helped steer the Red Sox to three World Series titles, and more relevantly, was known as a master ballpark builder.

Admittedly, Lucchino didn’t come off as warm and fuzzy. He was hard-driving and at times could seem sullen. Once, while interviewing him in the McCoy front office, I asked if he could sit in the bleachers for a photo and he almost rolled his eyes – he didn’t want to bother with all that posing nonsense.

But it says everything that the staff loved him, and more important, respected his commitment to the fan experience.

Lucchino adored that aspect of minor league ball. The majors, in the end, are big business – the minors, with all the between-innings goofiness on the field, are more fun.

Some, including pandering politicians, unfairly accused Lucchino and the well-off members of the PawSox ownership group of being greedy. Utter nonsense. The Red Sox in 2018 were worth $2 billion – the PawSox $20 million. You didn’t invest in the team to make big money; you did it to give back to community.

Admittedly, the owners got off to a bad start in 2015 when, led by the late Jim Skeffington, they proposed putting a new PawSox park on the river in downtown Providence, and asked for too much in state subsidies.

Lucchino had warned Skeffington he might be facing a buzz saw.

“Jim,” Lucchino said to his old friend, “ballparks are different. They can provoke strong feelings.”

Remembering Larry Lucchino: Despite his hard edges, late Larry Lucchino helped push the Red Sox to championship level

Indeed, the Providence idea tanked hard.

That left the question of what would happen next? In fall of that year, in the McCoy front office, Lucchino began chatting with Jeff Bradley, a team community relations guy who’d grown up in Pawtucket. Lucchino asked Bradley where else they could put a new ballpark. Bradley made what seemed a perfect suggestion.

“Grab your keys,” said Lucchino. “Let’s go for a ride.”

Off they went in Bradley’s Nissan Altima, pulling into the near-empty Apex parking lot.

Lucchino loved it, largely because it fit with his visionary view of ballparks. After years of soulless new MLB stadiums being built around the country in suburbs, Lucchino had spearheaded Baltimore’s new Camden Yards park in the city center, which is where he felt baseball should be.

Now, here was the perfect PawSox site – in the very heart of Pawtucket, where the team had a half-century of roots.

Lucchino told Bradley he could picture home plate by the old Apex garden center. The nearby Seekonk River, he felt, could bring fans by water taxi from Providence.

As planning begun, Lucchino embraced a Pawtucket park with elements of Fenway, including a version of the Green Monster to get players conditioned to the mothership if they got called up. And Lucchino laid down an edict. He felt “stadiums” were impersonal, so this would be a “ballpark” – intimate and with character.

“We got fined $5 by Larry if we said the ‘S’ word,” Dr. Charles Steinberg, team president, later told me.

By then, Lucchino had sat down with Gov. Gina Raimondo at the Grist Mill Restaurant in Seekonk for lunch – she had a turkey sandwich – to discuss a deal, since the state would own the ballpark.

Stung by the Providence fiasco, the team agreed to conditions so favorable to the state that the national head of minor league baseball stepped in to say that’s as far as he would allow the PawSox owners to go or it would set too generous a precedent for other public ballpark deals.

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But 2018 was an election year, and cynical pols here, sensing public controversy, piled on to pander for votes. Mattiello was the worst of them. He sat on the bill that stripped the state guarantee until the last day of the legislative session, then rammed it through with no time to amend it. It basically meant doubling the cost to the ownership group, a total deal killer.

It was a grave, sad meeting a month or so later when, there at McCoy, the owners, with Lucchino at the helm, agreed they had no choice but to go to Worcester.

Lucchino remained aboard as WooSox leader until he headed to the big ballpark in the sky this week. He guided the building of Polar Park, which now has among the highest attendance in Triple A ball.

It’s a testament to Larry Lucchino, longtime Major League guy, that he remained enthusiastically immersed in the WooSox. Dr. Steinberg talked of how Lucchino would challenge them all the time to improve the fan experience.

Clearly, Larry Lucchino, was a baseball visionary right to the end.

On this time of bidding him goodbye, he should be remembered as a legend of both the majors and minors.

And someone who had tried hard to keep the PawSox in Rhode Island.

mpatinki@providencejournal.com

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Remembering Larry Lucchino as a man who wanted the PawSox to stay in RI