Phippsburg board approves 2026 tax commitment, library trustee appointment

[5:52] Chair: As recommended by the board doesn't. [6:00] Speaker B (unidentified): Mind? Okay, I'm sorry, I think so, all set. [6:07] Chair: Good evening everyone, welcome to the town of Pittsburgh Select Board meeting on October the 14th. We do have one adjustment, please, under new business number two, to appoint Jeff Nordland for the unfinished term on the Board of Library Trustees as recommended by the Board of Trustees. That is my motion. I'll second it. Add that adjustment. All those in favor? That is number two. Okay. Starting right out with number one, General Assistance 2026, Model Ordinance and Appendices Adoption. Evan, please, your direction. [6:50] Speaker B (unidentified): This is the annual ordinance update. The actual ordinance has no changes this year. The appendices, which are the amounts of assistance, are updated, and that's the only thing, but we can just update the whole thing is a unit, we'll have a fresh copy. Okay. [7:15] Chair: Any questions gents? Okay, I'll entertain a motion for the signing of the ordinance. Second. All those in favor, thank you. Number two, do approve Jeffrey Nordland with an unfinished term on the Board of Taupman Library Trustees as recommended by the Board itself. That is my motion. Okay. All those in favor of Jeff Nordland to finish that term with a thank you very much Jeff. [8:02] Speaker B (unidentified): You and I'll say it out loud so we don't forget that term which keeps escaping me, I [8:18] Chair: think it's in this blue binder right here, don't you have it right [8:24] Speaker B (unidentified): here, that would end on June 30th 2027, so let's come this coming June. Okay. [8:34] Chair: Moving along number two, unfinished business, seeing none, number three, department and committee reports, property tax commitment preview for us to go to committal on the 21st, you have [8:49] Speaker B (unidentified): several documents in front of you. I asked our assessor Josh Barry at Municipal Consulting Group to prepare the documents this week for approval next week. What he's put in there in the calculation is an overlay of one hundred twenty six thousand four hundred twenty two dollars and ninety seven cents. The maximum overlay is five percent of the total commitment. So the maximum that you could raise an overlay is four hundred thirty thousand two hundred eighty seven dollars and seventeen cents, so this being a bit under a third of that maximum, that hypothetical would make the mill rate $10.20 per 1,000 and would bring the net assessment for commitment to $8,637,784.58. So about a 3.2% increase in spending in people's tax bills. The difference being that the assessors, after you approved it, have raised the evaluations across the board by 25%. That allowed the town to certify at a ratio of 75%. So a standard have homestead exemption of 25,000 will be 18,000 750 fifty at that figure. So the valuation has gone up 25%, the spending has increased 3.2%, which results in a mill rate drop of about 17%, from 1235 down to a 1020, and that's if you stick with that number, about 126,000 422 and 97 overlay way. If that all makes sense, it Does we had a slight rise in the county tax this year? We had a rise of about 400 500 000 in municipal appropriation, and the school went down by a little over 40 000. [11:12] Speaker C (unidentified): They sick there RSU wants it must be huh [11:19] Speaker B (unidentified): You don't ever see that. No, that's why we got no kids over here in the school this year. Yeah, I know. So I can ask Josh to move things around. I just recommended that we have an overlay for the first draft of somewhere around a hundred thousand, and to have the mill rate end in a five or a zero, right, so it's easy for people to remember. And yeah, conclude, yeah, you get down to pennies and [11:44] Chair: It really, yeah, so the valuation is up 25 across the board, the mill rate is down two dollars and fifteen cents over last year if we stay and commit with these numbers, right, and with the new [11:57] Speaker D (unidentified): Evaluation, that was the reason we had asked for the 25. Yep, this is the trying, and people just get more of a homestead exemption. That's right, because it brings us up to what's [12:11] Speaker B (unidentified): That bring us do for, so 75 for a certified ratio. I don't know what they came up with for an assessed ratio, and then looking at our revenue sharing, that would be increasing from two hundred thousand seven hundred seventy three dollars and change to two hundred sixteen thousand two hundred fifteen dollars and change. Last year homestead exemption reimbursement was eighty eight thousand 480, this year we're looking at 92,000 916. No, it would go up, but right, yeah [12:46] Speaker D (unidentified): But four grand for us, a bunch of households, yes, because it won't bring it to a hundred, I mean obviously not to a hundred, so he's not gonna get everything that they get, right, it [13:06] Speaker B (unidentified): Ends up being proportional because that's the whole idea that your value is at 75% and the exemption will be at 75%. So yeah, I can ask him to come up with a couple different numbers beyond that, or if you like that, we can hold on to that for the time being. But I'd say that the way things are going, that a three point two percent general tax bill increases, I think digestible for most. Well, it's going to wipe out the cost of living. He always does. That's part of it. [13:42] Speaker C (unidentified): Our slums have been 3.6. Well [13:52] Chair: I had wanted one lower, but now that I see the numbers in front of me, they're not [13:56] Speaker E (unidentified): terrible in my opinion? No, the thing is if we go to 25 [14:00] Speaker D (unidentified): that'll bring us closer in case this re-evaluation brings us way up. We don't know where it's going to be. That's true. And that way there it's not such a jump. [14:12] Speaker C (unidentified): Well, that's it, and I agree with you. [14:13] Speaker D (unidentified): For, you know, we're looking at two years, two more years, you know, if it jumps up 30%, then we've already gotten to 25%. [14:24] Speaker C (unidentified): Yeah, we already know that it's going to jump. [14:26] Speaker D (unidentified): It is, it is going to go up. [14:27] Speaker B (unidentified): And I don't know if you guys got the full email that I sent from Josh. I did not. What they're looking at. Next year, to plan for a bit more comprehensive review and sales study to make the necessary adjustments, He would not charge the town any extra for this as it would in turn help with the revaluation coming on the books for the next year that we can talk about that in springtime and Just to note that they are still finalizing a few values on partial complete construction a couple of deeds splits some solar exemptions but none of that will move the needle much on this just wanted to Say because the it'll change by a couple of pennies on the end of it a couple dollars [15:05] Chair: While we're discussing them are they having many feet on the ground, going house to house to house to house, are they getting this done? [15:14] Speaker D (unidentified): Every day. I've heard people that have said they've been visiting, I think it was more they were going down [15:19] Speaker B (unidentified): Battlebrook side. They've had one to three vehicles most days [15:25] Speaker D (unidentified): throughout. That's the side that I heard from people there. [15:29] Speaker B (unidentified): They caught a lot of people in the last couple weeks that were starting to winterize their places Absolutely. And they wanted to get interior inspections done before people left town, so. [15:39] Speaker F (unidentified): Yeah. Yeah. Good. Can I ask a question? Sure. [15:43] Speaker E (unidentified): So would it be beneficial if they gave a summary, say, every couple of months of how they're [15:48] Speaker F (unidentified): doing to the public? Yeah. That'd be nice. Yeah. Yeah. Like in a public forum? [15:52] Speaker D (unidentified): Well, I mean like here. Yeah. [15:54] Chair: They bring it to us like right now. [15:56] Speaker B (unidentified): I can ask Josh next week when he comes to finalize the commitment to have a summary. [16:01] Speaker F (unidentified): Some type of summary that he can read out loud. [16:03] Speaker D (unidentified): Or you can have him come into one of our meetings. Yeah, next week would be fine if he can swing that, if he's going to come in with the paperwork anyway, and then that way there we can just, you know, kind of have a chat with him and see where we're at, insurance type thing like absolutely get the familiar face out there so we'll know. Yep. Yeah, it's mostly one gentleman named Michael and [16:25] Speaker B (unidentified): his grandson is an assistant that are the primary two, and then there's a couple other guys that are [16:29] Speaker E (unidentified): in infrequently. Right. Good. Perfect. But they really believe they're going to hit every single parcel. They're getting after it. Well, in two years it took the other group, you know, you've got more [16:42] Speaker D (unidentified): people if you need to get more in the springtime they can. Yeah, they are pretty between here and [16:49] Speaker B (unidentified): they were finishing up Fort Ken and then they've been doing a lot of stuff on the ground in Jefferson when they're not here, so okay, that's where they've been on the ground lately. Yeah. [16:59] Chair: Just making sure that, you know, they don't get too complacent with fill out my survey and never see it, you know. Yeah, you know how many sheds do you have? One [17:10] Speaker D (unidentified): well they've asked people they does a couple of nasty oh they didn't have that [17:16] Speaker B (unidentified): I don't know they stopped buying. Yeah, the questionnaire online is just for an interior description, so the only other thing, if people wonder they might have found a different hanger this summer, but they were also same group was doing all the construction updates, so anybody that might have a different flyer might be because you had a permit out to build something or to change something, so a couple people had different questions and I said that. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. And then I realized that they were construction updates. All right. [17:54] Chair: Okay. Makes good sense to me. Any more questions, Fred? No. Gary? [17:59] Speaker B (unidentified): Would you like me to get any other options? [18:03] Chair: I think I'm comfortable with the 25. As you know, I was not, and that's why we discussed that. But I am now that I see the numbers. [18:12] Speaker D (unidentified): And that's what we talked about before, so there's not such a great jump. [18:16] Speaker C (unidentified): Oh, yeah. Yeah. You've got to think of the people. [18:20] Speaker B (unidentified): And this year, doing it across the board, everybody's changed the same percentage. So a couple people will pay $0.50 more here than whatever. [18:30] Speaker D (unidentified): And sometimes that means a lot, though. And there's still the makeup window. [18:33] Chair: There's still the request for... [18:36] Speaker D (unidentified): And the thing is, it might not be about that much for their property. It might go down. [18:41] Speaker B (unidentified): You don't know. I had a gentleman in last week who wanted to see the... different assessments on his property, and without being able to find it on TRIO, we went back into ten years of commitment books, and the only thing that had changed on the value of his property was the value of the exemption. And I think that he thought he was going to see a very upward trend, and it was flat across. You know, there hasn't, you know, for him in particular, there hasn't been a single change in ten years. So, can't speak to everybody but... No, but that's pretty good. [19:17] Chair: okay moving on to number four correspondence there is none is there none okay five courses meetings and seminars we know that Evan give an [19:32] Speaker B (unidentified): update on went to something with Josh myself and Josh went to the MMA convention at the Augusta Civic Center last week sat through quite a few different courses a couple myself and Josh attended one in particular they've took a lot of the different functions of the state that have to do with municipalities and they put it under the main office of community affairs which they call MOCA yep so they've been moving a lot of grant programs and a lot of different functions like they used to have all the code enforcement training under the fire marshal's office oh so they've taken it out of there and anything that is municipal wise they've moved in this office so we met some of the folks there and they talked about how to look for different grants that they've got offered and once they get it up and running it's gonna be pretty nice they've been at it for I think close to two years now but that's just really getting everything organized and moving departments around so pretty interesting [20:29] Speaker D (unidentified): this might be a good time for him to mention Josh and what he's got sure yeah [20:33] Speaker B (unidentified): yeah sure so no courses Josh person our code enforcement officer has been on the job for just over a month now and so far he has 10 different of the certifications required so far he needs two more to fill out the typical move back qualifications but I'll read go ahead and read them commercial building commercial energy, commercial ventilation, internal plumbing, legal issues, residential building, residential energy, residential radon, residential ventilation, and subsurface wastewater disposal. And for reference, they give new code enforcement officers a grace period of one year to do all these, and he's flushed all this out in just a little over a month. So things are going great that way. We're happy to have him on board. It's been good. Do you understand [21:29] Chair: that people out there, your code enforcement officer that was just hired in the past month, has done ten certifications that he had a year to accomplish them all. He's only got a few left. Very proud of it. He's doing great [21:44] Speaker E (unidentified): work for y'all. Very happy to have Josh. Okay, that's all I have on that one. Okay, [21:52] Chair: moving on to administrator, select board comments and announcements. The home [21:58] Speaker B (unidentified): Home Energy Assistance Program applications, also known as HEEP or LIHEAP or Open Ed Midcoast Maine Community Action, that's over on Wing Farm in Bath. You can apply online, over the phone, or in person, and there's also the Saginaw County Community Navigator who can assist in filling out those applications. Absentee voting is currently ongoing. You may request your ballot online, over the phone, or in person at the town hall until October 29th, that's a Thursday, at 5 p.m. Online ballot requests will be mailed to the voter. We've had a steady stream of 22 or more a day folks coming in, so it's been quite busy, and the election day is on Tuesday, November the 3rd, 2026. The polls will be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the town hall, 1042 Main Road. Sample ballots are available on the town website, on maine.gov, and they're posted here. We've got the trucker trunk coming up on Halloween, October 31st, 530 to 7 in the town hall parking lot. Vehicles will be decorated in their Halloween spookiest. Participating vehicles must be in place by 5 p.m. and provide their own candy or treats. Wear your costumes, and please also bring non-perishable food pantry items to drop off at the rec Commission's table. This is rain or shine, and you can reserve your spot by contacting Amy Burden or Kathy Thomas. Amy Burden is 751-6742. Kathy Thomas is 522-3105. Or you can stop in at the town hall or send me an email and I'll get you guys connected. And I've also got an announcement from the library this afternoon. Noon on Saturday, October 24th, they will be having a legislative candidate forum at the library. So there's two folks running for the House of Representatives to represent Phippsburg and surrounding towns. One is Trent Vilela and the other is Suzanne Andresen. And there is one candidate running for State Senate, which is Denise Tepler. And they'll be having a forum at 11 a.m. to noon at the library on October 24th, that's a Saturday. Okay, and I believe that's what I've got for [24:12] Speaker E (unidentified): This afternoon, what you got Fred? I got nothing. Yeah, what you got? [24:20] Speaker D (unidentified): Saturday the 17th is the 12th annual Ocean Commotion 5K run or walk. It's at Hermit Island, this is hosted by Marine Mammals of Maine. It's at Hermit Island, registration is at 8 o'clock, the run starts at 9, they get a kids one mile fun run at 9.10, and the cost is $25 per person, pre-registration $30 a [24:49] Speaker E (unidentified): day off. And that is Saturday the 17th. [24:53] Chair: And that weather does not look wonderful, and they better dress warm. It's going to be cold. [24:58] Speaker D (unidentified): And they know this every year, it's usually cool down there. Well, we're [25:03] Speaker B (unidentified): gonna have snow and Caribou side. Yeah, they get already snowed yesterday. [25:08] Speaker D (unidentified): Yeah, so okay, I just wanted to mention the Ocean of Emotion with the cold weather starting, just make sure we're getting those chimneys cleaned out and check before we start fires. Also keep an eye on the roads, the rice and deer and [25:27] Speaker C (unidentified): people. On that note. Yes, because coming home today I see two bicyclists, neither one of them had any fluorescent orange or anything, they had black. Yep, and [25:40] Speaker D (unidentified): it's hard to see on the road. Yep. So make sure we're wearing light clothing and reflective clothing when riding or walking. [25:50] Chair: Parents and grandparents with children, please provide them warm clothing. They don't want to wear it until they're cold, please make sure they have it with them. Thank you. Also today I experienced for the first time the wood bank, which is like a food bank but it's for wood, for wood stoves, for those that need the aid. And I went for a person here in town, it was very easy, it was, they were very helpful. It is a wonderfully run organization. If you know of anyone that needs help in the wood area, you do have to pick it up and you should help them load your truck, but they help You as well. It's not a loader dump in your truck, it is a hand pickup up put in your truck, very easy procedure at that wood bank also at the library. I believe it's November 4th, it's right after the select board meeting at the library. They have a speaker on pop them erosion and it's their last speaker of the season in that group of sessions, but it's about Popham erosion. I'm sorry, I don't know the name of the person that is speaking, but that is on November 4th coming up. Fred won't be here on the fourth. I don't know either, just saying it's at the library. It is a lot of information, very interesting. I went to the one about the winter moths, learned a lot, thought I already knew it all, I did not. Know there's a lot of stuff to learn. Okay, anything else? [27:44] Speaker B (unidentified): Peter Slavinsky is who's given the talk, Peter Slavinsky. Thank you. That's what the main geological survey. Thank [27:53] Chair: you very much. What else? Anything? That was it. All right, moving on to review and sign payroll and accounts payable warrants. Payroll warrant number 33, fifteen thousand six hundred sixty $169.54, and accounts payable warrant 34 for $375,853.18, and the select board meeting minutes October 7th, 2026. [28:27] Speaker D (unidentified): Amen. Motion? Make a motion to be signed. Payable warrants, accounts payable warrant, and select board meeting minutes as presented. All those available. How much changed from last year? [30:16] Speaker B (unidentified): One person maximum went from 1141 to 1216, so not 100 there. And I'm sure that most things have slid up about the same percentage-wise. Yeah. Food's gone from 298 to 306. Electricity, 850 remains the same, which is a shock. I'll get you one for next week to sign. Okay, yep, okay, all set with [30:50] Chair: signatures moving on to public forum. Thank you for the job I did. You're [30:57] Speaker E (unidentified): welcome. Very nice, very nice, glad to see you here. Yes, very much so. How was it, a [31:04] Speaker G (unidentified): I had a nice time. Good. Excellent. Good. How long was you over there? A month. A month? Yeah. Wonderful. [31:12] Speaker D (unidentified): That's awesome. I have a lot of relatives. So I was visiting all my cousins there. Oh, nice. Yeah. It was a good trip then. Mm-hmm. [31:19] Speaker C (unidentified): Very nice. Well, 17 days I'll be on my way over there. Oh, yeah? Where? Well, we're going to Garmisch. Okay. And then we're going to Switzerland. We're going to Italy. Nice. Seven day trips. Okay, from Garmisch. Where are you going in Switzerland? I don't know exactly. We just know all of the... The big heads. Well, yeah. They gave us a list of the ones that we could select from. It's a good time of season to go, because we only have one day of meetings and that's the last day before we fly back. [32:02] Chair: That's the kind of trip I like. Yep. Okay. Anything else? I don't think so. Motion to adjourn? Second. All those in favor? 530 on the dot, Ev. Wow, look at that. Thank you very much, everybody. Good night. [32:16] Speaker C (unidentified): That's good. I can go home now and have my pepper soup. What are you having? Soup? I have pepper soup. See you. Have a good one. Pepper soup. Good night. [2:32:17] Speaker F (unidentified): You know, there's something about a ball field that stimulates all the senses. Fresh cut grass, the crack of the bat against that old horse hide, the smell of an old leather glove. Like this one. This is a beauty. It's a 1940 vintage Rawlings, Mort Cooper autograph. Mort Cooper played for the Cardinals. I think he won like 125 games in about 11 years. And it's John McNamara's glove. He lives up in Millville. We're going to talk to him a little later. He's a great guy. Let me borrow his glove. This is indeed a prized possession. And the reason why we're here today is to talk about baseball in the Valley. And we're at McCoy Stadium, home of the Pawtucket Paw Sox. Now they have a great season going for them. They're leading the league in all kinds of attendance statistics, and there's a couple of reasons for that. One, they have a great marketing department. Two, they've got a wonderful baseball team. They're so far ahead of all their competitors it's not even funny. Third, they've got an owner, Ben Mondor, who really cares about the game of baseball and really wants to make it affordable for the whole family. And finally, they're located right here in the Blackstone Valley. You got it right. The Blackstone Valley, home of mill baseball, rival town leagues, semi-pro organizations. A lot of baseball players who had their dreams in the major found their way to the Blackstone Valley to play in one of those leagues just so they could capture their dream. Remember, working in the mills was no fun, and very often any kind of diversion would be great. Plus a lot of the workers actually were ballplayers and pretty good ones too. So we're going to talk about baseball here in the Valley. So we're going to hook up with a historian, Doug Reynolds, who's going to show us a little bit about mill life and baseball and how they kind of work together. We're going to hook up with a couple of old-time ballplayers from Millville who'll tell us how it was like to play in the mill leagues and a little bit about some of their friends who played with them. And finally, we're going to hook up with a gentleman who's going to tell us all about Walter Schuster, great baseball fan and the motivating influence behind the establishment of the Blackstone Valley League. So folks, grab a glove, you're in right field, it's gonna be a good game, so pay attention. Athletics competition in Mill Life have a long tradition here in the valley. Social events, a way of releasing pent-up energy, those natural competitive instincts between rival companies, and also a way of Americanizing and controlling a diverse workforce force. Baseball in the Valley had an important role to play. We're going to talk with historian Doug Reynolds, who was formerly with the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor and today is with the Museums and Preservation of the State of Pennsylvania. And he's going to tell us a little bit more about the relationship between baseball and workers here in the Valley. Hi, Doug. Awful nice of you to stop by here from Pennsylvania. Nice to see you, Chuck. One of the things that has caught my interest here is you're a historian. You're looking at mills. How did you come up [2:35:42] Speaker H (unidentified): with a baseball connection? Well, I tell you, I was looking at some aerial surveys of the Blackstone Valley, and we all know that the rivers generally are the defining feature of the culture here. All our mills are next to the rivers, all our towns are next to the rivers, and many of our best landscapes are next to the rivers. But I also noticed that a lot of our baseball fields were also next to the rivers, and in fact next to mills. I got to wondering why so many of the mills had baseball fields next to them. So I started looking into it and discovered that there's a really nice baseball history here. It's got national significance, just like the mills, and it's got a national significant baseball story to it too. So that's kind of why I got interested in [2:36:21] Speaker F (unidentified): It now mill life and baseball, how did it work together here? Well, it's interesting, you know. [2:36:27] Speaker H (unidentified): Baseball mills have a long history to go way back into the 19th century, you know. Providence had a World Series championship team in 1880, and the industrialists everywhere in fact caught up with the baseball leagues by 1900. Here in the Blackstone Valley, it was really particular because the whole industrial system here was based on villages, not on big factories or big cities, but on absolute villages, and that was a decision made, and it brought a lot of the luggage that small town life brings, so mill owners, I think, found in baseball a way of both expressing the values of American culture, but also in kind of bringing harmony and content to village life, which, you know, sometimes could be contentious. Now we're here at the Berkeley Oval, and the Berkeley [2:37:13] Speaker F (unidentified): Mill is right over in front of us right now, and this is exactly the way it was laid out back [2:37:19] Speaker H (unidentified): in the 1900s, from my understanding. Yeah, this is one of the best loved places in the Rhode Island portion of the Blackstone Valley for many of the old-timers here, and the reason is they remember so well the nature of the ball games, the real cultural institution in this part of the valley. Thousands upon thousands of people came here for games on weekends and during the week after mill work. [2:37:42] Speaker F (unidentified): People probably don't realize that a typical ball game may have 4,500 people standing around. Is that correct? [2:37:48] Speaker H (unidentified): Yeah. In fact, a lot of times the deliverymen would refuse to make a delivery to a place like Berkeley when they knew a ball game was being played. The reason for that, of course, is they knew nobody would be home to accept a parcel. Moreover, if the entire population of one village was absent, so was the other village that they were playing, so between two villages like Berkeley and Ashton, you may get actually, you know, forty five hundred, six thousand, seven thousand people in the stands on a [2:38:14] Speaker F (unidentified): Saturday afternoon. Some of the old photographs show the field like this, [2:38:18] Speaker H (unidentified): just ringed with throngs of people. Yeah, Berkeley Oval had, I think, about ten high bleachers all the way down the sidelines, and people in the outfield would watch too, so it was really a popular, it's hard to convey how popular it is really, but it was a substantial social event for the village. Now the level of baseball play here was [2:38:38] Speaker F (unidentified): also significant because the quality was quite good. That's right, one of the interesting things [2:38:44] Speaker H (unidentified): About middle league baseball in the Blackstone Valley is that it was so widely accepted by both mill owners and by village residents that they expected and demanded a higher and higher level of play, to the point where that often professional players were recruited, or people on their way to the majors, or major league players who are coming down, a lot of college kids played, and it's very [2:39:06] Speaker F (unidentified): very good baseball here now, Doug. The nature of baseball here was very democratic. If you're good, [2:39:12] Speaker H (unidentified): you got a chance to play. Right? That's very important in these villages that are full of ethnic conflict, place like Whitensville, for example, where both Armenians and Turks live, or in other places, as in Pawtucket, where you had both Irish and French Canadians and, of course, different Catholic churches to go with those groups. And baseball, in fact, was a way of showing all the ethnic groups that it was pretty much your skill level alone that made you acceptable, your commitment to good play and to teamwork and to actual production that made you a part of the team, no matter where you were from or what language you spoke. So it's very important in mill village life where ethnicity can be both a dividing factor and baseball, of course, to bring people together. [2:39:56] Speaker F (unidentified): The other aspect was you had a number of ballplayers here from the colored leagues, the black leagues. [2:40:01] Speaker H (unidentified): That's right. And even though a lot of African-Americans didn't move to the Blackstone Valley until after World War II, they were regularly brought into play, and it was almost integrationist at that level because they were seen as good examples of good hard workers and capable men who could actually produce on the field and generally run a good business life too, because they were smart enough to get into the system and to be paid for their work and to move on to the next contract when they were able to, so a lot of [2:40:30] Speaker F (unidentified): values came out of this relationship between mill life and baseball, didn't [2:40:33] Speaker H (unidentified): that's right. Baseball, we all know, is one of the great American institutions, but the question what makes it a great institution is a separate issue, and I, and I think it's an acceptable pastime. It's clean, it's natural. As opposed to regular mill life, it's got open fields and grass. So it almost in a lot of ways calls up these democratic pastoral ideals of American history [2:40:59] Speaker F (unidentified): And American life. Well, Doug, this has been great sitting here talking a little bit about mill life and baseball. And this is just the beginning of our show this month because we're going to travel to some more towns here in the Valley and learn a little bit more about some of the personalities who made baseball so exciting here in the Blackstone Valley. We'll catch you later. What's the connection between Pawtucket's colorful political past and baseball? Let's catch up with Ranger Jack Whitaker for a Blackstone moment and learn a little bit more about Thomas P. McCoy. Hi, [2:41:39] Jack Whitaker: I'm Jack Whitaker, National Park Service Ranger with the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor. I'm standing in front of Pawtucket City Hall, which may seem a strange place to talk about baseball. We must remember that during the first half of this century the two most popular pastimes here in the Blackstone Valley were baseball and politics. No one personified that more than the five-time mayor of Pawtucket, Thomas P. McCoy. Now, Mayor McCoy was mayor during the late 30s and early 40s, and during that period of time he was responsible for building this city hall as well as Hammond Pond Stadium, later to be called McCoy Stadium for the mayor after he had died. When the stadium was built, it was built on a swamp, Hammond Pond, and his critics were very quick to say that it was a poor salt choice, that the equipment that was being used was sinking into the mud, that it was an unstable base for the field. But be that as may, the stadium was built. It's still there today, although in recent addition was turned down because of the instability of the ground on right field, and they have a lightweight aluminum bleacher out there rather than the heavy concrete of the main ballpark. Remember that the Works Progress Administration, the WPA, has at a main function the employment of labor. That here in the Blackstone Valley over half of the labor force was unemployed, and the WPA from the Roosevelt administration New Deal was an attempt to build necessary structures, schools, libraries, city halls, town halls, post offices, and even baseball stadiums, because it brought to the locale where these structures were built the necessary funds to get the economy rolling again. This is Ranger Jack Whitaker bringing you another Blackstone moment. [2:43:51] Speaker F (unidentified): You know, while it's true that the Miller owners did recruit baseball players to come in here to the Blackstone Valley and play, there was a lot of good homegrown talent that made an impression in the major leagues. Take Gabby Hartnett, for example. The first baseball game he ever saw, he played in. He was a catcher for the Chicago Cubs. After 20 years, he found himself in Cooperstown in the Hall of Fame. His best friend, Tim McNamara, a pitcher, played for the Boston Braves for five or six years. Good ball player, grew up right here in the Valley. Well, today we're going to go up to Millville and meet with some of the guys who played in the old Mill Leagues, who knew Gabby Hartnett and Tim McNamara, and can tell us a little bit more about what it was like to play baseball. Hey, I got it! It's mine! We're here in the Millville Library to talk a little bit more about baseball in the Valley. And we're fortunate enough to have with us Charlie Malahi. And Charlie is, besides being a state rep for 18 years here in the Millville area, he was a really fine second baseman, and I rumor has it around here, Charlie, you had really soft hands. You could let put the tags on the runners before they knew. [2:44:52] Speaker G (unidentified): It is that true? No, I think they're confusing me with my father, who was one of the best baseball players in his day in the town of Millville, when John McNamara's uncle, who was a former pitcher for the Boston Braves, told me there were two fellows, in his opinion, that could have made the big leagues from Millville, Mike Tyne and my father, Charlie Mullally. [2:45:18] Speaker F (unidentified): Well, how come he didn't go on and try it in the big leagues? [2:45:20] Speaker G (unidentified): Well, back in those days, he had a family and he was a bootmaker, and he worked steady, whereas he couldn't afford to just work in the summertime. Good point. The salaries back in those days didn't warrant that. That. Back in those days, Chuck, all the local town teams had a baseball team. And baseball was, particularly during the Depression years, it kept the kids occupied and the townspeople. It was someplace for them to go to. We would pass the hat to someone for the team, and that was the admission, and that helped us to buy baseballs and the bats and so forth. And back in those years that the United States rubber shop, because of the economy, the depression, they all came here to watch the games. Prior to that, when the rubber shop was running, prior to the depression of 1929 and 30, on a Sunday we'd get two or three hundred people, which for a little town, many times larger, and there was a great rivalry between the various communities, and each one of them in their village had a baseball team. And I can recall we would go and they had settees in the back of the truck and we all sat there and we were very contented. And sometimes after you beat a local team, you get rocked by them as you were leaving by some of the younger people, the kids. However, it was a great deal of fun, and it kept us all [2:47:37] Speaker F (unidentified): busy. Noville, for being a very small town, had some outstanding baseball players, you know, Gabby Hartnett and Tim McNamara. That's correct. [2:47:47] Speaker G (unidentified): Gabby Hartnett, I lived on [street], which is, I can look out the window here now and see it. I lived at the top of the hill, and he lived near the top of the hill, his family. And he was, of course, he's in the Hall of Fame, the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, and that speaks for itself. But he was a great credit to the town because he brought a recognition where a small town such as Millville you don't get that much recognition and he had an outstanding career he was a big strong a follower of 6-3 or to wait about 250 pounds and I'm gonna tell you about an incident that happened to me in one of the trips that I took with Milford Travel. We were down in Quincy in one of the restaurants where they were putting on a travel show and a former member of the Boston Braves was there working, and I made his acquaintance, L. B. Fletcher. Now, some people, particularly baseball fans, would recognize him right away. And he came from Milton, and he was the first baseman for the Boston Braves and also for the Pittsburgh Pirates. And he told me an incident they were playing at Braves field and Hartnett was the catcher for the Chicago Cubs and he was on second base and the batter hit a long hit to right field and the right feel I had to go out and get the ball and retrieve it and get it to home base and he said it was so far he said and I could run pretty good and I was a big fellow. So he said I thought sure I'd score from second base. He said I ran around second base all the way to home base and he said I just I looked up and I was traveling as fast as I could and he said there was hotnet with the ball and he said my only chance was to knock him over. Well he said I hit him as hard as I could and he knocked me he said about five or six feet away and he said oh boy he said I didn't play for a couple of days I got bruised so badly he said it was like hitting a stone where a brick wall and I can recall right over in the back of this present building that were sitting in. There was a billboard here on the other side where we parked our cars and it was a picture of Gabby Hartnett endorsing Chesterfield cigarettes with his father pointing. This particular day when someone took a picture of the father was saying, there's my boy. We're going to head over to the [2:51:15] Speaker F (unidentified): Rubber Shop Oval and meet with John McNamara, who's the nephew of Tim McNamara, a pitcher for the Boston Braves, and find out a little bit more about baseball in the Valley. We're here with John McNamara at the old Rubber Shop Oval here in Millville, a historic baseball field because it seems, how many generations of aspiring Major League ballplayers have played here, John? [2:51:40] Speaker G (unidentified): 300. 300. No, but everybody that's ever played here had aspirations, you know, because of Gabby [2:51:46] Speaker F (unidentified): and tim they really set the trend for absolutely yeah absolutely now you happen to be the nephew for tim mcnamara uncle tim grew up with my hero your hero yeah and he was a [2:51:58] Speaker G (unidentified): great pitcher too oh he absolutely was michael tim never played in the minor leagues he went until after his major league career was over he played for fordham actually tim left here and went to work in the mills in connecticut and played in some leagues down there,, middle leagues. And,, he got a full scholarship to Fordham university and he had some great years at Fordham. he was a teammate of Frankie Thresh's who was in the hall of fame and Tim went directly from Fordham to the Boston Braves. And he held a record for years. His first two games were shutouts two to nothing and three to nothing. And he held that for 20 some odd years he had some great years then he got on trouble and he did go to the mighty he went he was he went to the New York Giants from the Braves because he had beaten the Giants so many times McGraw bought him and then Tim got on trouble and he was sent down to Toledo and his manager at Toledo was Casey Stengel okay and they became famous friends yeah if you ever saw Tim 's scrapbooks and the letters he has from Casey Stengel. They became very fast friends, and Tim has some great stories about Casey. Yeah. So, sure, Tim McNamara and Gabby Hart, they're both like God to all the kids in Millville [2:53:20] Speaker F (unidentified): and to all of us at the time. Yeah. Well, it's interesting you come from such a baseball-oriented family. Can you account for any of that, why baseball was so big here in Millville? [2:53:29] Speaker G (unidentified): Well, there was not much else to do in Millville. I mean, you know, the kids in those days, if they weren't sports-minded, they went and picked blueberries or something, you know, but I don't know many kids that weren't interested in sports, boys and girls, you know, and we'd come down here. I lived right up there. They called it Banigan City. It was named after Joe Banigan, who built the old rubber shop that has burned down, and we'd come across the old red bridge right there and come down here and play ball practically every day that you could, you know, even if there were only three or four of you, 'd play a game of scrub or something. But everybody loved baseball, and of course we had heroes of our own like Charlie Mullally and the, and the fellas on the old Rovers, who were absolutely terrific to me, and they encouraged me to play, that let me sit on the bench, be their bat boy, and sometimes they hit a ball in the river and I have to go shack it. I thought that was an honor too. [2:54:25] Speaker F (unidentified): Worcester, Massachusetts, has a long tradition of mill baseball, but for a brief shining moment, the second largest city in New England had a major league franchise. February 3rd, 1880, Worcester's dream was realized as it joined the National League. It wasn't until June 12th when Worcester's rookie entry into the National League made baseball history. The pitching sensation J. Lee Richmond, awaiting his graduation four days later from Brown University, faced Cleveland's ace pitcher, Big Jim McCormick. Worcester was allowed only three hits all day, but an era gave Worcester its only run. As for Cleveland, well, not a single runner reached first base. 27 men went up and 27 of the men went down. The senior from Brown had pitched the first perfect game in the history of professional baseball. Of the 12 regular season perfect games ever pitched, where the starting pitcher was also the winning pitcher, the very first perfect game was played in the fair city of Worcester, Massachusetts. We've looked at baseball here in the Blackstone Valley from the standpoint of some of the old players. We've looked at a standpoint of why the mills and the towns got so involved with baseball. The one element to our story that's missing, however, is the owners. We're over here in East Douglas, very small town in the right along the Massachusetts Rhode Island line and we're going to learn more about the owners relationship with baseball from Clarence Gagne who happens to be one of the local historians on the Blackstone Valley Baseball League and who was actually the secretary and treasurer for a long time. Now Clarence why don't you tell us a little bit about Walter Schuster and just how he became such a mover and shaker in the world of Major League Baseball from such a small town like Douglas? Well, [2:56:07] Speaker J (unidentified): there's no question that Walter Schuster devoted practically all of his life, probably not from birth, but from age 15 until the time of his death in 1932. He was a, he was dominant in the baseball world of the Blackstone Valley. Valley. Everyone wanted to beat him, which was likely because competition was high. [2:56:38] Speaker F (unidentified): Now that Mr. Schuster couldn't use Major League Baseball players on the league team, he still took advantage of all his connections and brought a lot of those fine players up here in the Blackstone Valley anyhow, didn't he? [2:56:48] Speaker J (unidentified): I think we have to look at another side of Walter Schuster. He was a very generous person. He and a couple partners gave the town of Douglas a new high school in 1925. He brought his team for exhibition games to the New England Fairgrounds in Worcester, Tech Field. He went to Milford, a competitor in the league, and brought Nick Altrock, the great baseball comedian, in order to enhance the show, which was for the benefit of the Milford YMCA. There was constant generosity on the part of the gentleman, which I think led to the fact that the so-called love-hate relationship was probably more love, envy. He had the money to provide these things, but he was always putting on a good show. He was constantly doing things of that kind, and people, I feel, after reading volumes of clippings and scorebooks from 91 on, that people respected him. Major League players would play for Walter Schuster in Douglas uniform, but not in a league game. They would play in exhibition games. He had reached a reputation of having such a fine team that players from all over the countryside would write to him and reach him somehow asking for a tryout with a Douglas team. This led to many of the players coming from the colleges and they were eligible to play, and as a result got their starts here in the in the town of Douglas. A total of about 55 major league players played in Douglas uniform at some [2:59:27] Speaker F (unidentified): time or another. We sometimes lose sight of the fact just how hard and tedious working in the mills really was, and that's why any type of diversion that would bring family, friends, and fellow workers together was welcomed by all, and baseball was a great way to accomplish that. The intense rivalry between the different towns, the mills, was something to behold. Legendary, matter of fact. Unfortunately, that same sense of rivalry that everybody thought was great on the baseball field worked against these towns and communities later on after they suffered some significant economic downturns. That sense of rivalry prevented them from working together. And that's one of the reasons why the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor is here, to kind of help facilitate coming together so we could all meet a common purpose and grow. Now, we had a great time learning a little bit about the history of baseball here in the Blackstone Valley. It really has a tremendous history. But one thing I do want to caution you about, don't let mom throw away any of your baseball cards. They could be really valuable. Anyhow, we'll catch you in the Valley.