I posted a few days ago that I hoped the old Nat Bailey scoreboard would be restored and maintained in the new outfield wall as stadium upgrades take place… Alas, that ain’t to be.

Today, Bob Mackin of the Vancouver free daily rag, 24 Hours, found a gap in their usual wall-to-wall Nicole Ritchie coverage to announce the end of an era:

The most famous "face" in Vancouver baseball is retiring.

Nat Bailey Stadium’s hand-operated scoreboard will be gone
before Vancouver Canadians’ June 19 season opener. A new ground level,
hand-operated unit is being embedded in the fence as part of
stadium-wide renovations.

The 12-foot by 45-foot scoreboard was born in Sick’s Seattle
Stadium. It was used during Seattle Pilots’ only American League season
in 1969. It moved to Nat Bailey in 1978.

Canadians’ vice-president Delany Dunn hopes to sell it as a charity fundraiser.

"It’s going to benefit Little League to some degree and we’re going to honour the heritage of that scoreboard," Dunn said.

Society of American Baseball Research member Dave Eskenazi of
Seattle said the ideal home would be Safeco Field’s new museum. A
Lowe’s home improvement store is on the site of Sick’s Seattle Stadium,
which opened in 1938 but was demolished in 1979.

I know that, pragmatically, it makes perfect sense to lose the old scoreboard because it’s old and rickety and less than functional, but emotionally… this sucks.

I watched a game from the old scoreboard in 2004, as Tomo and Tomo Jr ran back and forth dropping numbers in the windows, and it’s an experience that I wish every fan had been able to share at least once. It was the best seat in the house.

Granted, in order to get up there, you had to climb a shaky ladder stretched out to its maximum length and tilted at a near-horizontal 25-degree angle, since the ground under the scoreboard was too muddy to provide safe footing.

And the warning sign (seen left), hanging on the last of four rusted screws, that told you that the scoreboard may well kill you… that was a nice bit of rustic heritage that I’m sure dissuaded many a passer-by from attempting the climb.

And yeah, the ground was littered with the corpses of old numbers past, as well as the occasional broken bottle and weeds aplenty. 

And once up there, it was all nails and wood and rusty pig-iron and sharp corners and coathangers unfurled and turned into number-holders… But I’ll tell you, it was also baseball paradise. 

First, because it’s the best view in Vancouver – soaring panoramic
mountain views, a red-soaked sunset, and a ball game happening right in
front of you? You can’t beat that.

And it didn’t hurt any to be able to see, up-close, the look on Javier Herrera’s face as he tracked down a deep fly or three, either. In fact, whenever he did so, he and the Tomo’s would share loud exclamations in Spanish, as Herrera had taught them earlier in the season how to cheer him on in his native language.

Alas, the old dear is a goner. Another slice of our past makes way for a very much needed future.

Thanks for the memories, old girl.