The City That Forgot Baseball
An anonymous local sports fan rails against the town’s apathy toward the diamond, fearing that Everett’s civic pride is being paved over.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
What is the matter with the sports in this old town? Are they cheap or are they so busy making money that they haven't got time to think about anything but a dollar bill? Every little berg in the state can find public-spirited citizens enough to finance a good ball team but Everett. Aberdeen, with half our population and half our wealth, can put a team in the Northwestern League. Have our people forgotten that the baseball teams of former years that wore Everett uniforms put this town on the map? Now somebody is going to plow up the diamond at the fairgrounds, the only place in town where we can see the game. This city is growing fast and in a little while a location for an athletic field centrally located will be prohibitive in price. If they don't secure a piece of ground, they will regret it. I've been called a kicker, but if somebody didn't kick good and strong sometimes, we would all die of stagnation.
“If somebody didn't kick good and strong sometimes, we would all die of stagnation.”
Everett’s struggle to maintain public green spaces and athletic fields against rapid urban growth remains a central tension in city planning today. Just as the writer feared the loss of the fairgrounds diamond, residents continue to grapple with the privatization of space in a booming city.
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