January 14, 2004
Bouton blasts Brooklyn builder
Best-selling author and former big-league pitcher Jim Bouton visited the Brooklyn bar Freddy's this morning, to support residents threatened with eviction to make way for developer Bruce Ratner's proposed Nets arena, and help expose what he called "America's most costly hostage crisis."
Bouton's latest book, Foul Ball, is the diary of a grassroots coalition's attempts to block a city-subsidized minor-league stadium in Pittsfield, Massachusetts (successful) and gain a privately financed restoration of historic Wahconah Park for a Bouton-owned independent team (not so successful). "This is a national problem that needs to be solved by people like you who are willing to march in the streets," he told the assembled Brooklynites, noting that sports owners and their backers "do respond to embarrassment." (Bouton also repeatedly referred to Field of Schemes as "the bible" - and you know who that makes us.)
Community activist Patti Hagan of the Prospect Heights Action Coalition also announced the results of a census of the three blocks targeted for eminent domain demolition, which Ratner had previously claimed were home to "about a hundred" people. The real number, according to PHAC's door-to-door survey: 864 residents, with 243 additional jobs and 71 buildings slated for the wrecking ball. Asked by a reporter about the discrepancy, Hagan snapped: "[Ratner] never bothered to walk around this community. Obviously, he doesn't give a damn."
