Baseball is probably one of the more followed sports
in Paterson itself. I noticed over the past few years,
the recreational leagues and stuff have been growing a lot more
and there’s been a lot of people that have been more attracted to that.
But there, you know, there are some negative parts of the city,
like in every. Having these recreational leagues,
and having these coaches who are willing to put in their time
and effort, you know, to help keep those kids out of that situation
is just a great thing overall for the city.
As I got older I started playing at fields like Larry Doby,
and hearing about stadiums like Hinchliffe.
Within the last few years, has been when I really started to pay attention
to the actual history of it.
I haven’t been able to experience it first-hand yet,
but with the renovations that are being made and stuff
hopefully I will one day, and so will the rest of the kids who
aspire to play a game there, or play baseball in general.
Not enough about the history behind it,
and not enough people know that it’s there.
For the last, maybe, three of four years I didn’t know
Hinchliffe Stadium existed. I mean, it would be brought up
vaguely once or twice but, you know,
there’s nothing that’s blatantly giving us information about
the stadium, or the recognition that it should be getting.
Growing up, it was just a building, you know? it was a broken down building
that looks like the same as any other failed project. And that’s not
what it should be, you know, it should have been memorialized,
and it should have been taken seriously as, you know,
that was something that was special.
A lot of people know Paterson for the wrong reasons.
If people were to know what Hinchliffe brought to the city of Paterson itself,
and the meaning behind it, it would help change the meaning a lot.
The older generations knew about it before all this rebuilding started,
but now that it’s being reconstructed and things like that, I feel
as though the younger generations are going to get as much joy out of it,
if not even more than, you know, all of the older generations have.
