The real McCoy

Sunday 14 July 2019

How could anyone not fall in love with McCoy Stadium? Tucked into a neighborhood in Pawtucket just north of the Providence city line, it’s cozy (just 7,500 seats), convenient and iconic, dripping with history.

Do you know McCoy Stadium was the scene of the longest professional baseball game ever played (33 innings)? We know now. It’s also festooned with photos of players in Pawtucket baseball caps who went on to become stars with the parent Boston Red Sox.

Jack and Big Papi

We’re among the first 4,000 through the gates, so we get bright red Pawtucket caps, too. They’re keepsakes. After this season, no more Paw Sox. No more Red Sox logo with bear paws sticking through the toes. Next year they’re in Worcester, Mass., and a new 10,000-seat stadium. The Woo Sox.

But will Woo Sox stadium have a grassy area above the outfield wall – the Berm – where fans can sit and picnic? Will its concession area seem like a farmer’s market, open air on one side? Will its fans cheer as loudly for a hit to save the day in the bottom of the ninth inning?  

Like everything else around here, however, we yield to the gravitational pull of Boston. The main inbound expressway from the south is stop-and-go, even on a Sunday. Then there’s Massachusetts Avenue, a war zone after a bombing, trash everywhere, crowds milling around abandoned buildings.

And then we’re surrounded by the glitz of downtown, our home for the next two nights. In the Hilton Back Bay Boston, we’re greeted by another ever-so-helpful clerk – a pleasingly plus-sized, mocha-skinned woman named Samantha whose birthday is July 19, right between mine and Jack’s. We commune as Cancerians and she gives us presents – cold bottles of water and tickets for a free drink at the hotel bar.

Once again we’re on the eighth floor, but this time the room (twice the price of our Providence accommodations) gives us what we want – two queen-sized beds. Office towers dominate our view.

Our view in Boston 

One block up Dalton Street outside our hotel is the Summer Shack. For its restroom door images, the men are crabs and the ladies are lobsters. We pull up to the bar and watch the Red Sox struggle on ESPN against the high-flying Los Angeles Dodgers over town in Fenway Park. That’s where we’ll be when the Toronto Blue Jays arrive Monday night.

Is the Summer Shack crab cake better than the one Jack got in Providence? I order one, Jack samples it and declares, yes, it is. But it’s still not up to Baltimore standards.

Meanwhile, his lobster roll has the perfect halo of mayo. Miraculous! His steamed clams are the stuff of heaven, too, thanks to a little crock of buttery sauce. That sauce also transubstantiates my other appetizer – lobster pot stickers – and I tell the bartender it should be their universal condiment.

As for beverages, I’m true to local brew, in this case Lord Hobo Brewery from Woburn, Mass. An OK IPA called Angelica, followed by a delicious double IPA called Boomsauce.

Now if the Red Sox can make good on their come-from-behind effort in tonight’s game – it’s going way into extra innings – there could be joy in Boston after all.