Baseball is just around the corner, but the season is starting on a down note in Pawtucket on news that a new ownership group plans to move the Triple-A Red Sox affiliate to a waterfront park in Providence in 2017.
The Pawtucket Red Sox have been a fixture at McCoy Stadium for 45 years, and it's a blow to a city that already lost its industrial identity.
The team is best known for playing in the longest baseball game ever – a 33-inning affair in 1981 that’s the subject of Dan Barry’s magnificent book Bottom of the 33rd: Hope and Redemption in Baseball’s Longest Game. We discussed it in a 2011 interview, but with the PawSox back in the news — including an essay from Barry in the New York Times, where he is a columnist — it seemed like a good time to welcome Barry back to the Roundtable.
