Thirty Tons a Day: The Rough-Riding Education of a Neophyte Racetrack Operator (Bill Veeck and Ed Linn)
Chapter 14: Save Our Dump
Veeck opens this chapter with a summary of the Boston Patriots football team's struggles to find a permanent stadium after utilizing Fenway Park and Boston College's Alumni Field as temporary solutions.
He then summarizes the rivalry between Harvard and himself, generated when Suffolk Downs hired Harvard's football coach John Yovicsin as a part-time events coordinator. The tit-for-tat included Veeck taking potshots at Harvard, the Harvard band pranking the track owner when they surprisingly accepted an invitation to perform at the track, and Veeck flying taunting messages over Harvard Stadium on opening day of the football season.
Veeck ties together the Boston Patriots's struggles to find a permanent home with his own rivalry with Harvard before writing more seriously in great detail about the plan his management team put together to work with the Boston Patriots to develop a stadium that complemented Suffolk Downs. And according to Veeck the Patriots's owner Billy Sullivan thanked him for the proposal because it allowed him to stave off NFL officials pressuring the team for a stadium proposal, while also giving the owner of the racetrack in Foxborough the idea of combining a track with a football stadium.
And the rest of the story is, as they say, history.
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