PROVIDENCE – The Worcester Red Sox are up for sale.
Larry Lucchino, who led the group who bought the Pawtucket Red Sox in 2015 and moved them up Route 146 to Polar Park in 2021, said on the UnAnchored Boston podcast Nov. 10 that he was ready for retirement.
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“I’m now 78 and have been at this for 40 years, so it’s time to sell the team and move on and move on to a blissful retirement,” Lucchino told hosts Bob Lobel and Mike Lynch, two former Boston sports media personalities. “It’s been a good run in Worcester. We have winning records and made some money. Been a very successful run.”
Lucchino was president and CEO of the Boston Red Sox when he purchased the Pawtucket Red Sox. The Pawtucket Red Sox signed a letter of intent to move the team to Worcester in August of 2018. The PawSox played at McCoy stadium the next two years until Polar Park in Worcester was completed for the 2021 season.
The relocation to Massachusetts followed a drawn-out process in Rhode Island that saw multiple expressions of a deal that ultimately became more expensive after an R.I. House bill removed liability from the state and placed it on the city of Pawtucket, increasing the cost of bonds that would be issued to the team.
“We did everything we could to keep the PawSox here. It just did not happen, and now we need to move on,” Pawtucket Mayor Donald R. Grebien told Providence Business News in 2021. “We knew that McCoy was too costly to renovate and reutilize as a baseball stadium.”
Pawtucket city officials now plan to demolish the 81-year-old stadium for a new combined 482,500-square-foot high to replace the aging Charles E. Shea and William E. Tolman high schools. Voters approved a $330 million bond for construction in Nov. 2022.
An auction is planned to sell off the historic stadium’s seats, signage, player murals and scoreboards though a date has not been set.
In July billionaire Stefan Soloviev, chairman of Soloviev Group – the parent company of Crossroads Agriculture, the Colorado Pacific Railroad, the Soloviev Building Corp. and other entities, expressed interest with city officials to save McCoy. However, the city at the time said the high school plan was “moving quickly.”
