Baseball's rebirthplace? Mass. town hopes to capitalize.(The Hartford Courant)

Byline: Alan Greenberg

PITTSFIELD, Mass. _ As soon as an exuberant Pittsfield Mayor James Ruberto called a press conference last week to make the announcement, reporters from Time and Newsweek were hot on the story, and even the BBC aired a report heard 'round the world.

"We had a Miami radio station and an Arizona radio station calling," said Lisa Wiehl, the mayor's assistant. "I've never seen anything like it in my life."

Who would have guessed that this aging dowager of a city, this blight in the bucolic Berkshires that last creased the nation's news consciousness when its General Electric facilities closed, might actually be the birthplace of baseball?

Certainly not Jim Bouton, author of the groundbreaking bestseller "Ball Four." Bouton, who built a mountaintop home on the outskirts of town 12 years ago, heads a group of investors who were already in the process of raising money to renovate the Wahconah Park baseball field, built in 1892, and bring pro baseball back to Pittsfield.

Now, evidence surfaces from the town's archives_in the form of a 1791 town ordinance_suggesting that Pittsfield may be baseball's birthplace. Or at least, the first place it is known to have been played in North America.

"It's clear that not only was baseball played here in 1791, but it was rampant," baseball historian John Thorn said at last week's press conference. "It was rampant enough to have an ordinance against it."