John Gangloff never gave up hope, not even when the Buffalo Bisons made their ill-fated move in 1961 from Offermann Stadium to the Rockpile, or – hardest of all – when the International League Bisons of 1970 left Buffalo entirely to play in Winnipeg.
Gangloff, now 79, believed someday, somehow, Major League Baseball would return for the first time since 1915 to his hometown. He remembers the communal joy at the 1988 April opening of the downtown ballpark known then as Pilot Field, and the thrilled reaction of the crowd to a mystical sense that something even bigger was finally within reach.
“Tommy Prince,” Gangloff said, a name that to any Buffalo baseball devotee conjures an immediate association: Prince was the then-Bisons catcher whose home run toward Oak Street at that first game gave Buffalo a 1-0 win over Denver.
Wrap it all together, and Gangloff – a Bisons season-ticket holder for 35 years – is still contemplating the lifetime anticipation wrapped up in a decision by the Toronto Blue Jays, stopped by the pandemic from traveling beyond the Niagara River, to again play home games at what is now Sahlen Field.
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This time, unlike last year, there will be spectators.
Gangloff, a retired diemaker, intends to be there. He was an eyewitness to many of Buffalo's unforgettable sporting moments, including a Bills championship win at the old Rockpile-formally-known-as-War Memorial Stadium, the skate-in-the-crease overtime loss by the Sabres in the Stanley Cup finals in 1999 and the first and last home games – among many others – for basketball's much-lamented Buffalo Braves.
John Gangloff, Buffalo Bisons fan and usher, at his North Tonawanda home.
As a child on West Ferry Street, Gangloff - now a longtime member of the Bisons Boosters Club - used to walk to games at Offermann with his buddies from P.S. 45. They were there when Luke Easter rocketed one of his impossible shots over the scoreboard. Gangloff recalls seeing the 50-something Satchel Paige take the mound for the old Miami Marlins while in a rubber shirt, followed by Paige's disbelief at an umpire who made him take it off.
I shouted out loud when Gangloff told me he was on hand for two events that together form one of the most wistful weekends in Buffalo sports history, because I always hoped to meet someone who was in the house for what you might call the ultimate-lost-Buffalo-doubleheader:
For Lum Smith, a historian with deep knowledge of the African-American experience in Buffalo, the meaning of those feats of hitting the ball over the scoreboard will always transcend
On Sept. 17, 1960, the Bisons played their final game at doomed and beloved Offermann, losing to Toronto, then a minor league club, in the International League playoffs. On the following day, Sept. 18, the Buffalo Bills played their first official home game at the Rockpile in the old American Football League, losing to the Denver Broncos. It was the one and only time those two Buffalo teams played on the same weekend in two legendary stadiums within walking distance of each other.
Gangloff, then an 18-year-old Bisons beer vendor and an original Bills season-ticket holder, was at both games, which is kind of like riding the Comet and getting a doughnut at Freddie’s on the way home.
For Gangloff, that passion led to part-time work. For a couple of seasons, he hawked beer at Offermann, earning 3 cents for every Iroquois, Simon Pure or Genny that he sold. He still serves as an usher for Sabres games and big concerts at KeyBank Center, and he does similar work when needed at Sahlen Field – though he retains his Bisons season tickets for all the times when he is not on the job.
Now, to his astonishment, he has a chance to be in the stands next month when the New York Yankees arrive to play the Jays for a series in which coming up with a seat will probably be even tougher than getting a ticket to "Hamilton" at Shea's.
Memorabilia at John Gangloff's North Tonawanda home: Some old Buffalo Bisons tickets and a piece of his chair where he sat for years at War Memorial Stadium, better known as the Rockpile.
How excited is he about the probability of seeing big league ball at Washington and Swan? Maybe, he said, he can say it best this way: He became a childhood fan of Cleveland's American League club because that city had the major league team closest to Buffalo.
On days that remain crystalline in memory, his dad would take him on $11 round-trip train rides from the Central Terminal to Cleveland's old Municipal Stadium. Gangloff can recite every starter on the 1954 Cleveland squad that won the American League title with a then-AL record 111 wins.
Their presence in Buffalo through this weekend's Toronto-Tampa Bay series is a kind of ultimate tribute to what is happening at Sahlen Field.
I barely had the heart to reveal to him that Thursday was the 90th birthday of Willie Mays, whose running catch for the New York Giants that year of a deep World Series drive was the pivotal play in a Giants sweep of Cleveland – and remains one of the most revered feats in baseball history.
This says everything about Gangloff, as a baseball guy: Though his team went down, he loves that kind of lore. He can tell you how Buffalo, without a decent ballpark, lost out in a late 1960s quest for a big league expansion franchise that eventually became the Montreal Expos, and how the city was in the running again in the late 1980s when the Bisons were setting minor league attendance records.
It did not happen. Life went on, and Gangloff and his wife Sandy raised their kids and became grandparents, and it seemed unlikely that any of them would ever see a regulation big league game in this city.
Yet a season ago, as both an usher and a longtime fan, he pondered a strange twist of the pandemic: The Jays were here, achingly close, but the threat of the same virus that caused them to play in Buffalo also meant no spectators were allowed inside.
A year later, the team is back and thousands of fans will be there to watch. Gangloff is double vaccinated and comfortable about going in, and he has only one concern: As far as he knows, you must sign up for tickets by computer or "smart phone." He uses neither, which to him is no casual barrier.
"I’ve never needed them,” Gangloff said of iPhones or laptops. If he is standing at Sahlen Field on a warm spring night, he would much rather look at the green field or the skyline than stare at a tiny screen, and he never liked the idea of carrying around something that allows someone to call him anyplace, at any time.
Still, it left him worried that his lack of technological savvy means he will miss his chance to claim his tickets.
Bisons officials, on Thursday, were reassuring. While the Blue Jays are handling ticket sales, Bisons assistant general manager Brad Bisbing said the team will reach out to Buffalo season ticket holders who earned an early crack at seats – and Bisbing said veteran ushers can also expect to be called to work.
In other words, diehard supporters like John Gangloff – on hand for just about every big moment in the modern history of Buffalo baseball – will soon be there for what could be the biggest moments of all.
Elated at the news, he spoke for thousands in this town who love the game.
"Really," he said, "for me it's going to be like a dream come true.”
