Lost Boston Beacons Memories

Hey dickmac,

I followed the Cleveland Stokers in '68, so I recall the Beacons. Think they were on the CBS game-of-the-week at least once. Coached by Jack Mansell, and included Red Auerbach of Celtics (NBA) fame.

Seems as if UMass-Boston later lifted the nickname for themselves and modified the original logo which they now use as their own.

I'll do some digging & find that Baltimore or Oakland game program versus the Beacons which contains a feature on the team. It includes a photo of the boys in front of their team bus, donated by a Boston area VW dealership. Holroyd or kenntomasch could jump in here with attendance figures. The official numbers weren't that great in Fenway. The best home draws, KC & Washington, averaged around 8,000, if memory serves.

Now, what about those Boston Shamrock Rovers at Manning Bowl in '67? Now, there was a great team name.

 

Average attendance for the Beacons was only 4,004. The highest-drawing team in the 1968 season, the Kansas City Spurs, averaged 8,510.

 

To carry the conversation a tad further, dickmac, how were the sightlines for soccer at Fenway? Some of the old guides I've come across show diagrams of how the pitch was drawn in league stadiums. A lot of the old baseball parks were used. Fenway looked like an awful place to watch a match, given lay of the pitch (I recall the NFL Pats playing there as well, but remember seeing portable bleachers added in the baseball outfield on those occasions).

As good or bad as Fenway might've been for soccer, the all-time worst, from the looks of diagrams, must've been Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Tiger Stadium, among the old baseball parks, looked to be about the best of the lot for soccer-viewing. Maybe someone my senior could comment on NY Polo Grounds (pre-NASL). My only related experience was with Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Room enough for a regulation pitch, since it was built with the 1932 or '36 Olympics in mind. But filling those 80,000 seats was another matter. Great upper deck box seat sightlines.

I know Rochester and Syracuse fans gripe about playing in baseball parks, and they're right. But compared to Fenway or Forbes, they have it pretty good.

 

Not any more, primarily because they don't exist, in spite of the wacky obsessions of Cosmos "fans." But in the 70s and early 80s I went to see the Sting play at Wrigley Field and Comiskey park. Got a dirty look from Cosmos defender Bobby Smith when I heckled him once, and a big grin from him when I heckled Chinaglia at half-time of the same match.

Getting to Joe's point... If you were in the left-field bleachers ar Wrigley, you were pretty far off the field but up high enough that you could see. If you sat in the box seats behind the dugouts, you were faced with the problem of being far away and too low. Same with Comiskey. I don't recall ever sitting in the upper deck, though.

 

We used to sit in the Center Field bleachers at Wrigley and get a good view of the Honey Bees

At Comisky we at first sat right behind one goal in the RF bleachers and heckled the crappe out of the opposition (especially the keeper). When we started chanted 'kill that fat pig' to Gerd Mueller, some soccer mom took offense and told us to be nice. We chanted even louder. We then took to sitting in the first row of the upper deck along the first base line. Any further back and the field would disappear.

Good times!

 

Do you remember any cheerleaders at the games? When I as in highschool I was a cheerleader for the Boston Beacons. We probably attended 5 games. I still have my press pass to get into the games, somewhere in the attic. My biggest thrill was sitting in the Boston Red Sox dug out. I wish I had a picture of us back then.

 

If and when I get in the attic again, I'll look for it.

 

Does anyone by any chance have the opportunity to scan those old diagrams with the configurations of the soccer field? That'd be interesting to see sometime.