Oh, how we wish Buffalo's baseball saints could be here to see the Blue Jays

In the glory days of the late 1980s and early '90s, the momentum kept building. The ownership team headed by Bob and Mindy Rich was in place. The pitch video narrated by Larry King had a wonderful title – "The Natural for Expansion" – based on the mostly-made-in-Buffalo Robert Redford classic.

Alas, there was no Hollywood finish and we know how the story ended. Roy Hobbs couldn't help. Buffalo didn't have enough population or a large enough TV market. One day in 1991, Denver and Miami got the teams and our chase was over.

You wistfully think back to all those summer days and nights when almost every seat was full. It feels like that maybe 6-7 times a season now rather than every game. But then 2020 struck and in the oddest confluence of circumstance, Buffalo is getting a seven-week chance at the big leagues.

"Let's just put it this way," former Bisons broadcaster Pete Weber said by phone last week from Nashville. "Once that announcement became official and it was certain the Blue Jays were coming to Buffalo, I just sat down and broke down and cried. I really did. That's how much it affected me. And I know it affected so many other people. It had always been the dream."

Weber said his mind raced with thoughts of the people who have made the ballpark what it is the last 35 years, at War Memorial Stadium and through the downtown park's five names.

"So many people," he said, "All among a litany of what I think of as 'Buffalo baseball saints.' "

Amen. No fans can be in Sahlen Field for these games because of the pandemic, and I know many who'd love to be there. But just like Weber, I'll be thinking of those who no longer are with us. They would have done anything to be in the ballpark these next seven weeks.

Please indulge my roll call as I tip my cap to them in the hours leading to the MLB opener downtown:

Joe Overfield, the greatest historian any team could wish for. His 1985 book, "The 100 Years of Buffalo Baseball" was the bible for the Bisons for many years and an updated version engineered by his son, Jim, should be out in a few months.

A quick aside on Overfield: On the night Jeff Manto erupted for the Bisons' first three-homer game at the ballpark in 1997, the press box phone rang in the seventh inning. It was Overfield, wanting to let me know that no Bison had hit four in a game since Billy Bottenus did it in 1895 against Wilkes-Barre. Yes, 1895. Just in case it happened. That's how he rolled.

Dan Carnevale, the longtime Cleveland scout and the only man to be a player, manager and general manager for the Bisons. How we'd love to hear his voice bellow again to nobody in particular in the press box about a bedraggled pitcher: "I'll give you this guy and 10 cents for your birthday."

Cy Williams, the eagle-eyed Detroit Tigers scout from South Buffalo who attended the first 836 games in the ballpark's history before finally missing one in 1999. He kept coming all the way until he was 92 and died in 2006, just a few months after Carnevale.

Mayor Jimmy Griffin, whose statue throwing a first pitch at the corner of Washington and Swan is appropriate because there's no ballpark without him. Hizzoner had no use for the media, and this newspaper in particular. Our first meeting in the late 1980s ended with him chirping me with, "Well, it's nice to meet you anyway." Later in life, I could dog him about flubbing foul balls from his front-row perch on the first-base side of the club level. Put down your beer, Mayor!

Donald Palmer, the rotund batboy of War Memorial Stadium known as "The Butcher." When Pilot Field opened, not as many balls rolled off the screen, so his act of catching them was ruined. And although maybe he was too much of a sideshow with the city thinking of the majors, people still ask about him. He was just 49 when he died in 2016.

Ralph Hubbell and George Daddario, masters of the radio and public relations world who could revel you in stories about the Luke Easter days at Offermann Stadium in the 1950s. And the Buffalo Braves, too.

Umpire Peter Calieri, whose search for an Eastern League W-2 form in the late 1970s from his league president got the chatter going that Buffalo could be a good city to get back into baseball after 8 1/2 years out of the game. And Don Colpoys, the baseball lifer who took the reins as GM to get the game back to War Memorial Stadium in 1979.

Robert E. Rich Sr. and his wife Janet, denizens of a suite next to the press box that bears his initials on the facade. Said a laughing Bisons owner Bob Rich Jr., referring to the Blue Jays' drawn-out decision to come: "What would he have thought? My dad was a pragmatist. He just would have said, 'Finally they realized the err of their ways.' "

Legendary former New York-Penn League maven Vince McNamara, who chaired the initial meetings of the Buffalo Baseball Hall of Fame committee in the mid-'80s. And former major leaguers Sibby Sisti and Babe Birrer, who often came to the ballpark through the 1990s. 

Frank "Fremo" Vallone, the official ballpark ambassador. He died in 1993 at 43, far too young. Still remember him on the stadium plaza, helping to fill ticket orders the morning of the infamous 18-inning tiebreaker game against Nashville in 1990.

Longtime Williamsville South football coach Mike Kelly, a master of the press box microphone on his nights as the official scorer. Nobody intoned "Two and two-thirds innings pitched" so crisply.

Larry the Peanut Man, whose space in the concourse by the Washington Street gate is taken up for the summer by the Blue Jays' batting cages.

And there's Darrian Chapman, Weber's radio sidekick in 1994 and 1995. Gone nearly 18 years now after a heart attack in Chicago took him in 2002 when he was just 37. We had too much hurricane-laced fun during the Bisons' opening series in New Orleans in 1994. And how fun it would be to hear him on the air say, "We need a new baseballllllll" one more time as a home run headed to Oak Street.