#Buffalo getting well-deserved call up to majors this year

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“#Buffalo getting well-deserved call up to majors this year”

Call me an old sentimentalist, or call me an old softy because I’ve always had a soft spot for the city of Buffalo. That actually goes back beyond my stay as an undergraduate in college (I may have pointed out here a time or 30 that I went to St. Bonaventure, which sits about 90 minutes south of there), because Bob McAdoo graced the cover of the first issue of Sports Illustrated I ever received (as a Brave). And that’s all it takes when you’re 9.

But I am delighted that Buffalo will get a few innings in the big leagues this year. I am not delighted by the reason: because the Canadian government wouldn’t approve the Blue Jays playing home games in Toronto because of COVID-19 concerns. I am not delighted by the fact it seemed like the Jays tried to figure out how to play, quite literally, anywhere other than Sahlen Field, due to concerns about the quality of the stadium lights and the size of its clubhouses.

And, of course, Buffalo baseball fans — a devoted, underrecognized lot — will almost certainly not be allowed to watch any of the games that will be played there this summer and fall.

So, no, not ideal.

Still, for the first time since 1915, Buffalo will host major league baseball games. The Buffalo Blues (nee Buffalo Buffeds) were two-year members of the renegade Federal League whose most prominent alumnus was probably Russ Ford, who’d twice won 20 games for the New York Highlanders then went 21-6 with a 1.82 ERA in 1914.

Buffalo's Sahler Field — Buffalo’s Sahler FieldAP

Two earlier franchises, both called the Bisons, had spent stints in the National League (1879-85) and one in the Players League (1890), never finishing closer than 10 games out of first (and, in ’90, going 36-96, 46 ½ games behind the pennant-winning Boston Reds). And other than that, it’s been an NFL Bills and NHL Sabres town (and, for a brief glorious time, home of the NBA Braves, too).

And for the first time since 1957, New York can boast of three major league clubs to call home, too, even if there aren’t likely to be any metro folks who make the road trip up the Thruway this year.

What I find cool, though, is that a lot of people I know from Buffalo really are embracing it, even as flawed as the whole thing may be. Buffalo is generally a Yankees stronghold (though its proximity to Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Toronto means there are pockets of support for those teams, too). The Mets called Buffalo a Triple-A home early in their existence (Ed Kranepool and Cleon Jones played there) and also from 2009-12 (Justin Turner hit and Matt Harvey pitched there).

Joe McCarthy, the great Yankees skipper, called Buffalo home. Sal Maglie is from Niagara Falls. Terry Collins won 246 games in three years in Buffalo, earning him enshrinement in 1992 into the Buffalo Baseball Hall of Fame. Buffalo made a huge push for inclusion in baseball’s 1993 expansion, drawing 1 million fans in its first six seasons at 16,600-seat Sahler Field, which, when it opened in 1988, was a standard in new-era ballparks and set a model for the Camden Yards and Jacobs Fields and Coors Field to follow.

Baseball chose Miami and Denver, alas, and it is unlikely Buffalo will ever again be on the radar. Which is fine, because no matter how the Jays finish this year, Buffalo will always have 1939, when the New York Knights led by Roy Hobbs roared from out of nowhere to beat the Pirates in a playoff for the National League title when Hobbs won the pennant with a walk-off, three-run blast into the light towers.

Sure, we are supposed to believe the Knights represented New York City, but we also know Buffalo was the stand-in, that in the summer of 1983 “The Natural” filmed all its home-team baseball scenes at old War Memorial Stadium, affectionately dubbed “The Rockpile” by locals.

“It lived up to its name,” Barry Levinson, who so beautifully directed that movie, once told me, “but you sure didn’t have to use your imagination much to believe it was 1939.”

Welcome back, Buffalo, old friend. Enjoy the view from The Show as long as it lasts.

Vac’s Whacks

Forget the dizzying heights he reached, and whatever you might have thought of his denouement. Mike Francesa’s career is a testament to just how much you can accomplish if you work hard enough (and few ever got after it harder than he did when he was on the make) and believe in yourself enough (even when others may think you have a voice better suited for an auto-body shop). It is a wonderful example to leave behind.

There was a story this week about prospective Mets owner Alex Rodriguez, extolling as a virtue that “he knows what he doesn’t know.” I so wish he brought that trait with him to the broadcast booth, too.

As with many things during this pandemic, I’m a little late to the party, but my newest Netflix binge-watch obsession is “Absentia,” featuring the delightful Stana Katic.

Normally I would not be a proponent of the expanded playoffs. But in a 60-game season they make sense. Now one bad week won’t doom a team, and with all higher seeds getting all first-round home games, it decreases the likelihood of short-series flukes. Unfortunately, I am fully opposed to this returning for a 162-game season, and I fear the toothpaste is out of the tube.

Whack Back at Vac

Alan Swartz: Should I surmise that James Dolan thinks he knows more about basketball than hockey? It seems that he leaves the Rangers alone and they succeed. Whereas the Knicks, with whom he intercedes regularly, are a mess.

Vac: What’s amazing is, you talk to Rangers fans and Knicks fans about their owner and it is impossible to believe they are talking about the same person. And what’s REALLY surreal is that a lot of Rangers fans ARE Knicks fans.

Howie Siegel: Several weeks ago, when I wrote saying I think I’m through with baseball, you asked me to keep in touch to see how that was going. After Cespedes’ home run yesterday, all I can say is what George Costanza once famously said: “I’m back, baby!”

Vac: I don’t expect everyone’s switch to flip like that, but it is good to see you back in the baseball fold, Howie.

@nerflagger: This line is stolen but … Dr. Fauci is serious about us not catching anything! (TY, Doctor) #Respect

@MikeVacc: I once had the honor of throwing out a first pitch before a Jersey Jackals game at Yogi Berra Stadium in Montclair, N.J., and I can assure you it was the single most terrifying thing I ever did. (Because you asked: Threw it low and outside. But no bounce.)

Mike Reilly: What a shame we are going to lose the Oklahoma-Army football game. Late September, Michie Stadium, start of the fall foliage … a day to enjoy so much that is good gets virus-ed out.

Vac: Of all the things we’re losing in the sporting tapestry, the likelihood of that disappearing is a subtle but significant one. We just don’t get that kind of a game around here very often, and the Cadets are always good for scaring the daylights out of a team like the Sooners once a year.