Days numbered for Greenway’s ‘concrete side’

Mike Burke

For better or for worse, Greenway Avenue Stadium’s going to be a different edifice when we enter it for next year’s Homecoming Game than it will be Saturday when we enter it for this year’s Homecoming Game.

The Board of Education, as you know, found $2.5 million of unused money in their books last May and has decided to use $2 million of it to “jump start” the renovation of the stadium. Once football season is over the renovation is scheduled to begin, with the concrete stands said to be the first to meet up with the wrecking ball so they can be replaced by next fall with a brick, steel and glass structure fronted by concrete pillars. Well, good luck wrecking ball. I think you’re in for a bigger battle than you might believe, because I don’t think the concrete stands, known since 1937 as the concrete side, are going to be in any hurry to leave.

That concrete has set for over 70 years, and as most over-70 types are apt to be, the concrete side has gotten mighty comfortable, mighty settled and mighty stubborn since she was put there by the Public Works Administration as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.

It’ll be a sad day the day the concrete side goes, so remind me not to be around when they attempt to tear it down. Oh, and I have no doubt they’ll get it torn down, I just don’t believe it’s going to be as easy as a lot of people believe it’s going to be. It’ll let go about as easily as our eagerness to be overprotective of it will. Everybody here has a personal wish, or a personal preference for the outcome of this renovation, but though we likely differ in these respects, it’s safe to say we all agree it’s great the process is close to getting under way.

Keep in mind, of course, we’re not closing Greenway the way Beall Stadium was closed in 2004 so a school could be built on it, but it’s always quite the pull on the heartstrings when something we love is removed so it can be replaced or refurbished by something we’re so uncertain of. So this is likely to be pretty emotional, which is why my personal wish for the stadium has always been for the home side to remain concrete, and to remain the same kind of structure it is and has been since 1936 when it was built.

I understand that’s not a sexy wish. I also understand it’s not possible. I just hope what’s put up in place of what’s torn down will be able to cultivate the same feel of there being a real stadium smack dab in the heart of the city the way the concrete side of Greenway Avenue Stadium has for over 70 years.

Designers like for stadiums to fit into neighborhoods these days. Going back to my childhood days, I prefer for the stadiums to tower over neighborhoods, because it gives you the feel of being somewhere magic, somewhere important, somewhere larger than life where larger than life things take place. Hey, when Dorothy and her posse approached, did Emerald City get lost in the landscape? Nu-uh.

Granted, I was just a little kid, but I’ll never forget the feeling that rushed through me the first time I walked up Brookfield Avenue and saw what to me was an enormous concrete structure with light standards as high as Jack’s beanstalk, crawling into the sky and shooting the brightest lights I had ever seen down into the bowl of the stadium as though the people on the inside were about to be beamed up by a higher force.

Talk about Mr. First Nighter, Jack. I knew I was somewhere that night, and we’ve all been blessed pretty much each time we’ve entered Greenway to be able to understand that we are indeed somewhere. Somewhere wonderful, somewhere so very personal.

Walking up those steps on the side of the stadium by Gate A, making that left and simply allowing the smells of Greenway to come to you is something that still provides a feeling of genuine affection for this wonderful old stadium: the pizza, oh, my God, the stadium pizza; the hot chocolate, the coffee; the mustard on the hot dogs, the salt on the fries; and in the day, the occasional cigar smoke that, I’m sorry, should be present in every stadium. If you have cigar smoke, you’re in a stadium, brother. And a grand one at that.

Then there are the sounds of the concrete side. The thumping of the marching bands’ percussion, particulary the drums you can feel in your chest serving as a pacemaker. Vendors hawking programs, 50-50 tickets, souvenirs, you name it. To experience the taste of our stadium, you must experience its sounds and smells, walking the line beneath the concrete, beginning at Gate A, going past the main gates, B and C, walking up the steps and coming out at Gate D to see the banks begin to fill with blue and red-clad fans.

As kids, after the game it was back downstairs to pat the backs of the players as they filed off the field, into their locker room, or on to their bus. Particularly if it was a warm night, you could really absorb the smells of Greenway from the players’ dirty uniforms, and if you got there in time, you could probably score Jim Daum’s chin strap, because Daumie, even after a tough game, never liked to see a kid go home empty handed. He was such an easy mark for all of us. But even if the best No. 51 could manage was a broken chin snap, the kid who got it, in his mind, walked home that night with treasure.

But then all these years later, even when we’ve walked away from a game in the stadium that didn’t go our team’s way, we’ve walked away with treasure. And for over 70 years it’s been that big, leaky, patched-up concrete edifice settling in on Greenway Avenue, although not for much longer, that has welcomed us and embraced us to that treasure.

Mike Burke is sports editor of the Cumberland Times-News. Contact Mike Burke at mburke@times-news.com.