The Walker Grandstand scoreboard inside Forest Park is now named after legendary sportswriter Garry Brown after the field itself experienced $4 million worth of renovations.
Reminder Publishing submitted photo
SPRINGFIELD — The city of Springfield has installed a new scoreboard at Walker Memorial Grandstand that honors the late legendary sportswriter, Garry Brown.
In an announcement to the public, Mayor Domenic Sarno’s office said final touches to the new scoreboard were completed as of Aug. 4, and it was renamed the “Garry Brown Scoreboard.”
“Thank you to PBRM Director [Tom] Ashe and team for following through to get this very meaningful piece of the Walker Grandstand renovations complete,” Sarno said in a statement.
A Springfield native, Brown was a well-known sportswriter/columnist for The Republican, and writer of the weekly column “Hitting to All Fields.” He covered local and high school sports for many years and was the Boston Red Sox beat writer during the 1967 Impossible Dream team, as well as the 1975 and 1986 World Series teams.
Brown also covered the 2004 and 2007 championship Red Sox teams before becoming a football writer on the New England Patriots beat. Brown officially retired from the paper in 2009, but continued working as a contributing writer after that. His final assignment was covering the Springfield Thunderbirds.
Among many other accolades, Brown was inducted into the Western Massachusetts Baseball Hall of Fame and the Athletics Hall of Fame at American International College, where he wrote for the school paper after graduating from Springfield Tech High.
He passed away in early 2022, according to his obituary.
“We are thrilled to be able to honor the memory and continued legacy of our own Garry Brown,” Sarno said. “From the sandlots to the Major Leagues, baseball was his passion.”
The official unveiling of this scoreboard comes several weeks after the city announced a $4 million renovation project at the legendary Forest Park field was finished.
In an interview with the media, Ashe said the renovations — which began last October — included a “total gut” of the stadium, including repointing of the bricks, refurbishments on the grandstand’s roof and restoration of the dugouts to make them more accessible.
“Before, they had drainage in [the dugouts] which didn’t work,” Ashe said. “But now it’s got drainage, and they are accessible to everybody.”
Maybe the most popular addition to the field — especially for power hitting baseball players — is the insertion of a major-league level fence featuring dimensions of 400 feet in dead center field and 330 feet in right and left fields.
“I thought the fence was an important component [of the renovations],” Ashe said.
The improvements to the stadium were made possible because of $1 million from the city and $3 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, according to Sarno.
Springfield’s Director of Capital Asset Construction Peter Garvey said the place “really needed the work that was done,” especially after years of patchwork. The field almost came down in 1993 and was condemned in 1999, he said.
But thanks to new masonry and ADA-compliant renovations, the stadium is now ready for countless baseball games in the coming years.
“The mayor used the word ‘iconic’ twice, and while I tend to think that the word ‘iconic’ is overused in the political vocabulary today, he’s right; this is iconic,” said U.S. Rep. Richard Neal (D-Springfield). “On occasions like this, I think we have a chance to celebrate the future, but also to embrace some very pleasant memories.”
