WORCESTER—If this doesn’t say something about this city, then nothing does.
Rich Gedman was inducted into the WooSox Hall of Fame Sunday at Polar Park, one of three members of the inaugural class, and he had to leave the ceremony early to go back to work as the team’s batting coach.
Priorities, priorities.
That kind of thinking is probably one reason Gedman is both a Red Sox and WooSox Hall of Famer, and probably one reason the city was able to convince the Pawtucket Red Sox to move here and get Polar Park built.
Gedman, the late Larry Lucchino, and former City Manager Ed Augustus are the first members of the WooSox Hall. They were recognized in a pre-game ceremony before Sunday’s 4-3 WooSox victory over Syracuse. The trio are honored with three monuments along the park boundaries behind the visitors bullpen.
The selections were made earlier this year, about a month before Lucchino’s death, so he knew of the honor. He was represented Sunday by his nephew David Lucchino.
This is the second Hall of Fame recognition for Gedman. He is also a member of the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame and with game time approaching was the first honoree to speak.
“As a young boy who grew up in Worcester less than a mile from here,” he said, “I got a chance to live out a childhood dream and play for the Boston Red Sox. Baseball has taken me from Crompton Park to Polar Park and many places in between. I’ve come full circle back to where it started, the city of Worcester and now Polar Park.”
The event was hosted by WooSox president Dr. Charles Steinberg, who worked with Lucchino throughout a professional baseball journey that included Baltimore, San Diego, Boston and finally Worcester where he was the Chairman and Principal Owner.
When the Pawtucket Red Sox’ efforts to build a new ballpark in Rhode Island faltered, Steinberg said, 18 different cities reached out to suggest they might make a good new home for the franchise.
“He was proud of his own and singular decision to make Worcester the forever home of the Triple-A affliate of his beloved Boston Red Sox,” Steinberg said of Lucchino, “and he was proud of this handsome little ballpark, and he was proud of the people of the city of Worcester for understanding the powerful impact baseball and a ballpark could have on the economy, the psychology and the sociology of American cities including, and especially, this one.”
The Lucchinos are from Pittsburgh and Larry Lucchino often mentioned the similarities between his hometown and Worcester.
His nephew reflected on that.
“It’s wonderful today to be in the Heart of the Commonwealth, otherwise known as the Woo, Wootown or the City of the Seven Hills,” David Lucchino said. “However, in my family, the Lucchino Family, the city is known as the city that stole Larry Lucchino’s heart.”
“There was no sense of entitlement in the family,” he continued. “I’m sure there are similar stories with families throughout Worcester. When he said he wanted to build a ballpark that tastes and smells and embodies Worcester, he truly meant that.”
Augustus, now the state’s secretary of Housing and Livable Communities, led the city’s bid to attract the team even though was not an athlete and not much of a sports fan.
As city manager, he was given a mandate by the city council to do everything he could to bring the PawSox to Worcester. Augustus focused on “the idea that Worcester’s brand would be associated with the Red Sox brand, that players who either went up to the Red Sox or came back down for rehab, that national exposure would have Worester on NECN, and in newspapers all across the country, giving Worcester’s brand a reboot if you will, and I see it today,
“I travel around, almost without exception, people say what a great place Worcester is and talk about having visited Polar Park, and it is music to my ears because that’s what we always envisioned.
“More than anything else we created a new kind of sense of pride in the city and people are wearing their sense of civic pride on their sleeve. We are the second largest city in New england and we should act like it, an we are acting like it.”
When the Hall of Fame Committee met early this year, the list of names it considered was well into double figures. Plans are for there to be annual inductions, but there will be only one inaugural class.
Gedman, Lucchino and Augustus are it.
Bill Ballou covered the Red Sox for the Worcester Telegram from 1997 through 2018. He has covered pro hockey in Worcester since 1994 and currently does a weekly column for the Worcester Red Sox. Ballou can be reached at vetgoalie@aol.com
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