May 13, 1965: Small Massachusetts city gets rare glimpse at pro baseball

In the mid-1960s, noted artist Norman Rockwell lived and painted in the Berkshires region of Western Massachusetts.1 The baseball-related events that took place there on Thursday, May 13, 1965, seem perfectly suited to his brush—wholesome, all-American, small-townish, and, to a twenty-first-century eye, vanishingly obsolete.

Schools in the small city of North Adams let out at noon that day so children could watch a motorcade of convertibles, led by a local high-school band and carrying members of the Pittsfield (Massachusetts) Red Sox of the Double-A Eastern League. The convertibles took the team to Noel Field, a public park south of downtown, where the minor-league Red Sox played what was promoted as North Adams’ first professional game in more than 50 years.2

Just about the only thing missing was a “home-team” win. The Williamsport (Pennsylvania) Mets spoiled the idyllic tableau by taking a 6-3 decision over Pittsfield. By all accounts, though, the crowd of more than 2,000 enjoyed their long-awaited opportunity to see minor-league baseball.3

The Pittsfield team was brand-new to the Berkshires, having transferred from Reading, Pennsylvania, in the offseason. The Red Sox were Pittsfield’s first affiliated minor-league team since the 1951 Pittsfield Phillies of the Class C Canadian-American League. At a public event in January 1965, Pittsfield owner Joe Buzas announced plans to play a game in North Adams to build regional interest—“to give Northern Berkshire fans a good look at what we will have in Pittsfield.”4 The matchup with the Mets was confirmed the following month.

North Adams, roughly 22 miles from Pittsfield, had a population of about 19,500 in the mid-1960s.5 The city was, and is, most notable to baseball fans as the birthplace of Hall of Fame pitcher Jack Chesbro in 1874. No affiliated minor-league team has ever called the city home. In the early twentieth century, North Adams hosted a team in the Tri-State League, a small-time independent circuit whose other outposts included Bennington, Vermont; Hoosick Falls, New York; and nearby Adams, Massachusetts.6 This league had given North Adams its last previous look at pro baseball. Babe Ruth also passed through town in 1938 as part of an exhibition game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the local Sons of Italy team. Ruth played first base and failed to collect a hit.7

Eleven players who played for the 1965 Pittsfield team reached the big leagues at some point in their careers. The crowd at Noel Field got to see seven of them. Manager Eddie Popowski’s starting lineup included right fielder Chris Coletta, second baseman Reggie Smith, third baseman George Scott, shortstop Al Montreuil, and pitcher Gary Waslewski. Two other big leaguers, pitchers Billy MacLeod and Fred Wenz, appeared in relief.8

In his 17-season major-league career, Reggie Smith made most of his appearances as an outfielder, winning a Gold Glove there in 1968. He played only six big-league games at second base. But in 1965 in Pittsfield, he played 37 games at second base in addition to 95 in the outfield. Similarly, Scott played exclusively at third base in 1965 but went on to major-league fame at another position, winning eight Gold Gloves as a first baseman. Scott made 219 major-league appearances at third base over 14 seasons.

MacLeod’s 1965 season is also worth detailing. The soft-tossing, deceptive lefty from the coastal city of Gloucester, Massachusetts, compiled an eye-popping 18-0 record with a 2.73 ERA in 32 games with Pittsfield. He credited his success to a three-quarters delivery and an effective palmball.9 Despite his record, MacLeod spent the entire season in Pittsfield, not receiving a promotion to Triple A, much less the majors—even though the parent Red Sox pitching staff essentially tied with the Kansas City Athletics for the worst ERA in the American League that season, at 4.24.10 MacLeod finally returned to the Triple-A level with Toronto in 1966, where he turned in a 2-9 record and 4.68 ERA. His two appearances with Boston in 1962 as a 20-year-old remained his only big-league experience.11

The visitors from Williamsport sent 16 players to the majors, but the fans in North Adams saw only one. Center fielder Shaun Fitzmaurice, another Massachusetts native,12 hit .263 in his first full pro season in 1965. A strong half-season with Williamsport in 1966 pushed him first to Triple A and then to the big leagues, where he had a nine-game cup of coffee with the New York Mets for his only major-league experience.13

Williamsport manager Kerby Farrell14 gave the start on the mound to lefty Bob Schmidt, a 22-year-old in his third and final minor-league season. Schmidt broke his arm while throwing a pitch with Triple-A Buffalo in 1963 and missed the following season while serving in the military.15 He went 10-10 with a 3.09 ERA in 26 appearances with Williamsport in his comeback season.

A future major-league star scored the game’s first run in the bottom of the second. Scott tripled and came home as catcher Owen Johnson hit into a double play.16 Pittsfield tacked on a second run in the third inning on singles by first baseman Jim Russin and Coletta, an error on Coletta’s hit by Williamsport left fielder Hank McGraw, and a groundball out.17

McGraw, 22-year-old brother of New York Mets rookie pitcher Tug McGraw, led Williamsport with 18 home runs that season. In the top of the fourth, he tied the game with one swing. After Waslewski walked right fielder Dick Martin, McGraw drilled a ball 390 feet to the right of dead center field, over the temporary snow fence set up to delineate the outfield boundaries.18

Pittsfield claimed a 3-2 lead in sloppy fashion in the fourth, as Scott singled and came around to score on errors by center fielder Fitzmaurice, shortstop John Pavlus, and Schmidt. (“The fielders seemed to have a lot of trouble on ground balls,” the North Adams newspaper reported.19)

Williamsport rebounded in the top of the fifth to take a 5-3 lead. Third baseman Wilbur Huckle drew another walk off Waslewski, and Martin singled. McGraw drove another shot over the snow fence, this one slightly to the left of dead center, an estimated 400 feet away. The Pittsfield paper noted that “both of McGraw’s circuit clouts were legitimate” and would easily have cleared the permanent center-field fence at Pittsfield’s Wahconah Park.20

Williamsport chased Waslewski with one out in the sixth when Schmidt’s single drove in catcher Lloyd Flodin for a 6-3 Mets lead. After allowing just two hits in the first three innings, Waslewski gave up seven in the next 2⅓ frames. MacLeod and Wenz combined to pitch shutout ball over the remaining 3⅔ innings, scattering two hits and two walks while striking out three.

Schmidt pitched a complete game, scattering nine hits and two walks while striking out five. After falling behind in the early going, he settled in, facing just three batters over the minimum during the final five innings. Pittsfield went down in order in the seventh and ninth innings, and no Red Sox runner reached third base in the final four frames.21 The game ended in 2 hours and 15 minutes. The loss left first-place Pittsfield with an 11-7 record and a slim half-game lead over Elmira, while fifth-place Williamsport improved to 8-9, 2½ games back.

Pittsfield ended the season in first place, with an 85-55 record and one tie, one game ahead of Elmira. Williamsport closed in fourth place with a 67-73 record and two ties, 18 games out of first place.

Schmidt went on to throw a no-hitter against Springfield on July 19, winning a 4-0 decision.22 In an offseason interview, the newlywed pitcher told a reporter he would quit baseball if he didn’t make the Mets’ rotation.23 It appears that he was true to his word, as Baseball-Reference shows no record of him pitching at Shea Stadium or anywhere else in 1966.24 Home-run hero McGraw played 12 seasons in the minors, including three at Triple A. Despite 132 career minor-league homers, he never reached the majors.

Pittsfield minor-league teams—first the Red Sox, later the Senators and Rangers—played several subsequent regular-season games at Noel Field between 1966 and 1975. The aging ballpark was torn down and rebuilt with lighting in the mid-1980s and renamed Joe Wolfe Field after a prominent supporter and coach of local sports. The park got a team to call its own—albeit an amateur team—in 2002, when the North Adams SteepleCats of the New England Collegiate Baseball League came to town.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Gary Belleville and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the specific sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for general player, team, and season data.

Neither Baseball-Reference nor Retrosheet provides box scores of minor-league games, but the May 14, 1965, edition of the Berkshire Eagle (Pittsfield, Massachusetts) published a box score.

Notes

1 Rockwell moved to the Berkshires in 1953 and lived and worked there until his death in 1978. Norman Rockwell Museum, “Norman Rockwell: A Brief Biography,” accessed online November 18, 2021. https://www.nrm.org/about/about-2/about-norman-rockwell/.

2 Tom McShane, “Schools Out Early, Ceremonies, Motorcade Before Red Sox Game,” North Adams (Massachusetts) Transcript, May 12, 1965: 7.

3 The official paid attendance was 1,771. However, the North Adams newspaper reported that more than 2,000 people were clearly present, and a subhead in the next day’s paper cited the attendance as “about 2,200.” Tom McShane, “Williamsport Mets Beat Pittsfield Red Sox on Noel Field,” North Adams Transcript, May 14, 1965: 12.

4 Tom McShane, “Pittsfield Red Sox to Play One Game in North Adams,” North Adams Transcript, January 19, 1965: 14.

5 North Adams had a population of 19,905 in 1960 and 19,195 in 1970. US Census Bureau, “Massachusetts 1980 Census of Population,” accessed online November 18, 2021. https://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/1980a_maABC-01.pdf.

6 The articles “North Adams Leader of Tri State League” and “Andy Coakley Hangs One on Vermonters,” North Adams Transcript, June 6, 1913: 8, give some sense of the local flavor of the league. As of November 2021, Baseball-Reference had no record of a Tri-State League in New England, or of the individual teams that participated in it. (Leagues in other parts of the country also used the name Tri-State League.)

7 “Babe Ruth and Dodgers Draw Crowd of 3,500; Trim Sons of Italy, 6 to 2,” North Adams Transcript, August 12, 1938: 11. Stan Pasierbiak, who pitched that day for the Sons of Italy, briefly pitched in the St. Louis Cardinals’ minor-league chain.

8 Pittsfield players who reached the majors but did not appear in this game were Dave Gray, Pete Magrini, Jerry Moses, and Pete Smith. Not all of these players may have been on the roster on May 13.

9 Associated Press, “Palm Ball Is Key to MacLeod’s Success,” North Adams Transcript, August 30, 1965: 11.

10 Boston and the Kansas City Athletics each posted staff earned-run averages of 4.24. For comparison’s sake, the Baltimore Orioles led the AL with a 2.98 ERA, and the league average was 3.46.

11 Several Boston sports columnists reported that MacLeod was not called up by the Red Sox or drafted by another team because his fastball was not deemed good enough for the majors. Harold Kaese, “Sox Passing Up Bet in MacLeod,” Boston Globe, April 27, 1966: 40. Also, Herb Ralby, “Ill Luck Still Trailing MacLeod,” Boston Globe, May 25, 1966: 71. Another Globe writer, quoting an unnamed major-league scout, credited MacLeod’s 1965 performance to his use of the spitball. Will McDonough, “Patriots, NFL Set at Fenway,” Boston Globe, August 14, 1965: 5.

12 Fitzmaurice was born in Worcester and attended high school in Wellesley.

13 Williamsport players who reached the majors but did not play on May 13 were Steve Dillon, Bob Farley, Rob Gardner, Jim Hardin, Jerry Hinsley, Bob Johnson, Mike Joyce, Jerry Koosman, Ron Locke, Joe Moock, Bob Moorhead, Les Rohr, Dick Rusteck, Bernie Smith and Al Yates. Not all of these players may have been on the roster for the game in North Adams.

14 Baseball-Reference lists Malcolm Warren as the 1965 Williamsport manager, but news stories from May 1965 identify Farrell as the team’s skipper. Farrell’s SABR biography, written by Andrew Sharp, says he left Williamsport in July to replace Walter “Sheriff” Robinson as manager of the Triple-A Buffalo Bisons after Robinson joined Wes Westrum’s coaching staff with the parent New York Mets.

15 Roger O’Gara, “Mets’ McGraw Sinks Sox with Pair of Homers for 5 RBIs and 6-3 Win,” Berkshire Eagle (Pittsfield, Massachusetts), May 14, 1965: 22. A January 1966 story in the Pocono Record (see Note 23) reported that Schmidt “spent 1964 in the Marine Corps,” which seems like a remarkable physical recovery after breaking his arm in three places. However, his Sporting News contract card also lists him as serving in the military in 1964.

16 This is based on a photo caption in the May 14 North Adams Transcript, which purports to show Scott about to score the game’s first run as Johnson hits a ball to shortstop. Game stories in the Pittsfield and North Adams papers described the first run differently, reporting that Scott tripled and scored on Smith’s double-play ball. But box scores have Smith hitting second in the order and Scott hitting cleanup—which means that six hitters should have come to the plate between Scott and Smith. It seems impossible that six hitters could have batted without Pittsfield either scoring a run or making three outs. Johnson hit two places in the order behind Scott, and it seems much more feasible that Johnson would have been in a position to drive in Scott.

17 O’Gara.

18 McShane, “Williamsport Mets Beat Pittsfield Red Sox on Noel Field.” A photo on page 7 of the May 12, 1965, North Adams Transcript shows that Noel Field had a permanent wooden grandstand. The paper reported that additional bleachers were brought in for the game.

19 McShane.

20 O’Gara.

21 O’Gara.

22 2020 Eastern League media guide, accessed online November 15, 2021: 133. https://img.mlbstatic.com/milb-images/image/upload/milb/mvqfhlhh3sclppty0hpr.pdf.

23 Gil Murray, “Baseball Talk in the Poconos,” Pocono Record (Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania), January 28, 1966: 10.

24 Schmidt’s Sporting News contract card indicates that he was placed on the voluntarily retired list on April 22, 1966.