The Find that Never Was....

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Posted By: Tom Hufford

I grew up in Pulaski, VA, and when the Phillies placed a minor league team there (Appalachian League) in 1969, I was in college and jumped at the chance to "work" for the team for four seasons 1969-72. I say "work" since there was no pay for selling tickets, being the sometimes official scorer, and doing whatever else there was to do around the park - but I WAS paid $5 a game for being the ballpark organist. I could be wrong, but I think I was the last organist in that league, and that was 36 years ago.

Anyway, when the Phillies left Connie Mack Stadium for Veteran's Stadium after the 1970 season, they sent several truckloads of seats from Connie Mack Stadium to Pulaski, to be used at Calfee Park. (I assume some were sent to their other minor league affiliates, also). A lot of Connie Mack Stadium was pretty well torn up after the final game in 1970, and it took quite a bit of work to put enough seat parts together to make about 700-800 seats, replacing some of the old wooden bleacher seats in Pulaski.

When I went back home to visit, during the off-season of 1976 or 1977, I went by to take a look at the ballpark. I was shocked to see that all of the old Connie Mack Stadium seats were gone. I hunted up the team's general manager, and asked what had happened to them. He responded "they just became too much of a maintenance problem so we took them all out and hauled them to the dump." I asked him when that was done, and he said "we hauled them out yesterday. If you had come two days ago, you could have had them all." So, I drove straight to the county landfill, only to find that the seats had been buried that morning.

I still think about what I would have done had I gone home two days earlier - hauled 700 or so Connie Mack Stadium seats to my parents' backyard, I guess, and then figured out what to do with them!