Tombstone
Born: 1984 – Affiliation change from Waterbury Reds
Affiliation Change: 1985 (Waterbury Indians)
First Game: April 13/17, 1984 (W 3-2 vs. Glens Falls White Sox – played over two days)
Last Game: September 11, 1984 (L 5-4 vs. Vermont Reds)
Eastern League Championships: None
Stadium
Ownership & Affiliation
Owners: Anthony DiVito Sr., Michael DiVito, et al.
Major League Affiliation: California Angels
Attendance
Background
The city of Waterbury, Connecticut had a Class AA Eastern League minor league baseball team for 21 years from 1966 to 1986. The ball club changed affiliations with Major League Baseball with extraordinary frequency – no parent club ever stayed more than four seasons. The California Angels had one of the briefest flings in Waterbury. They replaced the departing Cincinnati Reds in 1984 and sponsored Waterbury’s club for just one year before leaving town.
Notable Names
The 1984 Waterbury Angels finished 70-70 and produced six players who would eventually play Major League Baseball. The best was 22-year old first baseman Wally Joyner, who led the club in homers (12) and RBIs (72) while batting .317. Joyner debuted with California two years later and was voted the starting first baseman in the 1986 MLB All-Star Game as a rookie.
The Waterbury Angels advanced to the Eastern League championship series in 1984. They lost the finals 3 games to 2 to a Vermont Reds team that featured a bunch of holdovers from the 1983 Waterbury Reds squad.
The End
Empty stands were a chronic condition of the Brass City’s various ball clubs under the management of the DiVito family. The DiVito’s were a local blue collar clan that (barely) kept the club on life support from 1979 through 1984. Eastern League president Charlie Eschbach offered a blunt assessment of the DiVito era to The Hartford Courant in June 1983:
“They try hard in Waterbury, but they’ll be the first ones to admit they know nothing about running a ball club.”1Karmel, Terese. “Promotional Expert Hired”. The Courant (Hartford, CT). June 19, 1983
The Angels pulled out at the end of the 1984 season. The DiVito family sold Waterbury’s Eastern League franchise to Northeastern Baseball, Inc., investors from Pennsylvania, for $350,000 in January 1985. It was a part of a convoluted series of deals to bring Class AAA baseball to the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton region of Pennsylvania that, perhaps inevitably, ended up in litigation for several years afterward. That’s a story for another time and place, but the upshot was the Waterbury got another two years of Eastern League ball in 1985 and 1986, with a Cleveland Indians farm club run by the Pennsylvania group.
The Waterbury Indians left town at the end of the 1986 season. Affiliated minor league baseball has never returned to the Brass City.
Trivia
Waterbury 1984 opening day game against the Glens Falls White Sox on April 13, 1984 was postponed in the third inning when Municipal Stadium’s lighting system failed. The game was supposed to be completed the following day, but the next three games were rained out. Waterbury finally squeezed in a season-opening doubleheader on April 17, 1984.
Voices
“I don’t think Waterbury is a good baseball town. People are into other things. Softball, betting.”
– Winston Llenas, Manager, to Terese Karmel of The Hartford Courant. June 19842Karmel, Terese. “Angels Aren’t On Cloud Nine”. The Courant (Hartford, CT). June 17, 1984
Waterbury Angels Shop
In Memoriam
Waterbury Angels shortstop Gus Polidor, who went on to play parts of seven seasons in the Majors between 1985 and 1993, was murdered during an attempted carjacking in his native Venezuela on April 28th, 1995. He was 33 years old. Chicago Tribune coverage.
Links
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One Response
I have great memories from that field. Back in 1984 I was part of a delegation from Puerto Rico that played there as part of the Mickey Mantle World Series. That summer will be engraved on my memory for the rest of my days…Great time indeed…!!!