WORCESTER – Veteran sportswriter Bill Ballou has spent so much time in press boxes, they feel like a second home to him.
On Thursday, the WooSox named the press box at Polar Park after him so their press box will feel more like home than any other.
“It’s funny,” Ballou said. “Of all the things involved with being a sportswriter, what I always found the most enjoyable was the press box. The press box is full of fascinating people, interesting people. It was like being on the Johnny Carson Show seven nights a week. Even now after being in press boxes a thousand different times, I still get energized going into a press box. I love the atmosphere.”
Ballou, 73, covered the Boston Red Sox for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette from 1987 through 2018. The Red Sox won four World Series championships during that time and none since. Maybe that’s a coincidence, maybe it’s not.
He has also written about the WooSox before and after they moved to Worcester in 2021 for the T&G, the Worcester Guardian and the WooSox website.
After Larry Lucchino bought the Pawtucket Red Sox, Boston’s Triple A farm club, he planned to move the team to Providence, but that fell through. Ballou left a voice message for Lucchino to recommend he move the team to Worcester. Lucchino called him back early the next morning and admitted he was interested. Ballou had a scoop and Worcester’s pursuit soon began.
Ballou’s articles about the possibility of the team moving to Worcester and building Polar Park helped drum up support in the community.
“No one believed it was possible,” Ballou said of the team moving to Worcester. “I always thought it was possible and that’s what I wrote about. People ran with that which is good.”
On Thursday, the WooSox unveiled on the wall outside the press box door a plaque titled “The Bill Ballou Press Box.” It contained a photo of Ballou at Polar Park.
WooSox president Charles Steinberg read aloud the printed summary on the plaque of Ballou’s career and his role in helping lure the team to Worcester.
Steinberg and Ballou both said a few words to the gathering of team officials and media, including some of Ballou’s former co-workers at the T&G. Ballou’s wife Deborah and their daughter Abby Brinkman were also on hand.
“It is the highlight of my career,” Ballou said.
When Ballou began covering the Red Sox, he traveled to the road games. So he asked his family if they wanted him to get a different job at the newspaper so he could be home more often. The family urged him to keep covering the Red Sox.
“I’m not sure if that’s because they were glad I was away,” Ballou said, “or if they liked the idea that I could get them tickets and stuff like that.”
Sometimes he took his wife and children with him on road trips.
“He’s very energetic,” Deborah said of her husband. “He loves sports, he loves hockey, he loves baseball. He’s always going to libraries and looking up old stuff to fortify his stories or just because he’s interested.”
The Ballous will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary on Oct. 11. They got married on the day of Game 1 of the 1975 World Series when the Red Sox beat the Cincinnati Reds, 6-0, at Fenway Park. Ballou didn’t cover the Red Sox back then, but he was an avid fan. Many people at the wedding reception slipped away to the bar to watch the game on television.
“He was a trooper,” Deborah recalled about her husband. “He did not go down to the TV.”
When Steinberg worked for the San Diego Padres, the team named their press box after San Diego sports writer Phil Collier. When he was with the Boston Red Sox, the team named its press box after longtime public relations director Dick Bresciani. He felt if the WooSox press box was to be named after anyone, it had to be Ballou.
“I think it’s important to recognize people, preferably while they can still enjoy it,” Steinberg said.
Steinberg said he feels it’s important for future sportswriters to read the plaque and learn Ballou’s “history” and “his story.” Steinberg said he always appreciated Ballou’s cheerful spirit which other sportswriters don’t always possess.
WooSox staffers were happy for Ballou to be honored.
“Bill is an absolute treat in here,” WooSox manager Chad Tracy said. “Eighty-five percent of the time he comes in here, he teaches me something about the history of the game, which I think is really cool.”
“He is a legend,” said Bill Wanless, WooSox senior vice president of communications. “He’s synonymous with baseball in the area and WooSox baseball so we thought it was appropriate to do it now.”
Wanless said potentially Ballou could be admitted into the WooSox Hall of Fame one day as well.
Ballou wrote about Worcester native Rich Gedman when Gedman played for the Boston Red Sox and when he served as WooSox hitting coach and now player development hitting advisor.
“I think it’s wonderful,” Gedman said. “What an incredible honor for somebody who’s been involved in baseball and been an historian of the city. He’s been a constant here for a long time. He’s good at what he does so it’s nice he gets the credit he deserves.”
The lifelong resident of Whitinsville also covered all three of Worcester’s professional hockey teams, the IceCats, Sharks and Railers. He currently writes for the Railers website.
Ballou earned the ECHL Outstanding Media Award for his coverage of the Railers during the 2017-18 season and he twice won the American Hockey League’s Ellery Award for print journalism. He said he’s still waiting for the IceCats to actually present him one of those AHL awards.
Ballou wrote for the UMass Daily Collegian, the campus newspaper, while attending UMass-Amherst. After graduating from UMass in 1974, he became sports editor of the Amherst Record.
Ballou is an honorary member of the Boston Chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America and has been a Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 1998. He has also belonged to the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR) since 1982.
Ballou plans to be on hand when the WooSox open their season at 3:05 p.m. Friday at Polar Park against Syracuse. He said he has no plans to stop writing any time soon.
Bill Doyle has been a professional journalist for 47 years, most of them as a sports writer for the Telegram & Gazette. He covered the Boston Celtics for 25 years and has written extensively about golf, boxing and local high school and college sports. He also worked for the campus newspaper when he attended UMass-Amherst. He can be reached at billdoyle1515@gmail.com
