Pittsfield Council Gives Baseball a BirthdayBy Brittany Polito, iBerkshires Staff
06:20AM / Saturday, October 28, 2023 | |
 The site across from Park Square is now the First Church of Christ and is marked with a sign. |
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Baseball now has a birthday in the city of Pittsfield.
On Tuesday, the City Council unanimously voted to recognize Sept. 5 as the official birthday of baseball. The effort was led by Ward 5 Councilor Patrick Kavey and baseball enthusiast Phil Massery.
Kavey thanked Mayor Linda Tyer for supporting the effort. She submitted a resolution for the council's approval at the meeting.
"We look forward to working with you over the next couple of months and the incoming mayor to really make the next fifth of September something something really awesome and something we can all be proud of with with our history of baseball," he said.
Massery, who has for years championed Pittsfield's role in baseball, approached Kavey to give the game of baseball a local holiday. The date is in reference to the over 230-year-old broken window bylaw and always falls around Labor Day weekend, which is a good time to celebrate baseball.
Kavey has suggested that the local holiday be recognized with a street fair on Wahconah Street or a charity baseball game at the historic Wahconah Park, which is currently the focus of a multi-million dollar overhaul.
The bylaw prohibits the playing of "wicket, cricket, base ball, bat ball, foot ball, cat, fives, or any other game or games with a ball" within eighty yards to protect the city's new meeting house and is the first written reference to baseball in America.
The site across from Park Square is now the First Church of Christ and is marked with a sign.
Kavey explained that Massery, who was watching the meeting from home, was ecstatic about the new holiday.
Ward 2 Councilor Charles Kronick joked that the city needs to update its fees for playing baseball too close to a municipal building, as the bylaw was written in 1791.
Thanks to the efforts of the late U.S. Rep. John Olver, Congress recognized the Sept. 5, 1791, broken window bylaw of Pittsfield as the first written mention of the game of baseball in North America. Then Gov. Patrick Deval proclaimed Sept. 5 as "Pittsfield Baseball Day" in 2007.
Congress also officially recognized Pittsfield Massachusetts as the birthplace of college baseball because of the first college game in 1859 that was played in Pittsfield on the corner of North Street and Maplewood Avenue between Williams College and Amherst College.
On June 23, 2008, Congress officially recognized these findings as accurate and they were made unimpeachable facts.
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