By AL PIKE

Staff Sports Writer

SANFORD, Maine — As the Sanford High School baseball team prepared for the Western Maine Class A championship game, few of the so-called experts gave the Redskins much of a chance to knock off heavily favored Portland.

And who could blame them? After all, the Bulldogs were loaded with college and pro prospects who hammered Sanford, 21-1, only a week earlier in a lopsided affair that had then-coach John Cochin sacrificing outfielders on the mound because he had run out of legitimate pitching.

The rematch was played one afternoon at Goodall Park, and few fans were in the stands that day, partly because they believed Sanford would lose and partly because the game was being broadcast on a local radio station.

"There wasn’t much interest," Cochin recalled. "Everyone figured we were going to get beat."

A funny thing happened on the way to certain defeat, however, and by the end of the game the stands were full as Sanford managed to stay with its vaunted opponent. Thanks to pitcher Andy Adams and a gritty bunch of teammates, the Redskins engineered a major upset, 3-2.

Three days later Sanford defeated Oxford Hills to capture the state championship. The year was 1978, and the Redskins went almost a quarter of a century before winning another title, which didn’t come until last year.

"I had a feeling with Andy Adams pitching, he was the great equalizer," Cochin said. "We had a bunch of guys who had been playing together since they were kids, and baseball was their favorite sport. They just weren’t going to quit."

Understandably, that game remains one of Cochin’s favorite memories of historic Goodall, which was burned to the ground by arson nearly two decades later to the dismay of local baseball enthusiasts who grew up playing and watching the sport that had become so much a fabric of the mill town.

Although the playing field remained pretty much intact, the fire destroyed the wooden grandstand more than six years ago, driving grown men to tears and taking irreplaceable trophies, plaques and records in its wake.

After moving several of its games to different venues, the high school team was able to finish out the 1997 season, which ended with a loss to Bangor in the state championship game. But the Redskins had to play all of their games on the road the following year while the park, where Babe Ruth once played, was being rebuilt.

"I played there when I was a kid right through high school," Cochin said. "And I coached there for years. It was like a second home to me. When I went to see the park that day it was like losing an old friend. It brought tears to me eyes, and I wasn’t the only one."

"The amazing part of the whole thing, the day my athletic director called me down to Goodall, by the time I got down there it was 7:15 in the morning and people were lined up on Roberts Road," said Ed Boyce, Sanford High School’s head coach at the time and now an assistant at the University of Southern Maine. "They were from ages 80 to 100 who played in that park, and there were some unbelievable stories being told that day. That’s the biggest thing I remember."

It cost more than $1 million to build the new park and the town had to kick in money to help pay for construction beyond what insurance covered. But Goodall is alive and thriving today as the home of the Sanford Mainers, a second-year franchise in the New England Collegiate Baseball League.

Support in Sanford for the new stadium was overwhelming, and local businessman Jack Allen helped spearhead a successful fund-raising effort after some debate whether to rebuild the park. Goodall was rededicated four years ago this month when Julia Ruth Stevens, Babe Ruth’s daughter, addressed those in attendance and officially threw out the first ball.

When he was still with the Boston Red Sox, Babe Ruth played in an exhibition game at Goodall in 1919, hitting a home run to provide the winning margin in a 4-3 win over the Sanford Professionals. It was the last time Ruth appeared in a Sox uniform. Sanford’s Paul Demers, soon to be 91 years old and a member of the Maine Baseball Hall of Fame, witnessed the historic game.

"I had just come into the States from Canada one year before and I couldn’t speak English but I knew of Babe Ruth," Demers said. "That day the schools were all closed and the mill was shut down. At that time the kids stood out by the gate, and when the players walked in we’d walk in with them."

The Babe’s appearance at Goodall came four years after the park originally opened and was supposedly arranged by Sanford’s Fred Parent, Sox captain and shortstop. In tribute, the Mainers are scheduled to hold a Fred Parent Day on Saturday, July 26.

Originally built by the Goodall brothers for several thousand dollars, the park officially opened May 29, 1915, with a semi-pro game between Sanford and the Lewiston Pilgrims, won by the home team reportedly in front of 1,300 fans on a warm, cloudless day.

Employees of the Goodall Worsted Company built the fencing and grandstand in 1924. Goodall Park has hosted more than just sporting events. Eight years later boxer Jack Dempsey made an appearance on behalf of Louis Brann, who was running for governor of Maine at the time.

But the park was always best known for its baseball, particularly the semi-pro level in the 1940s and ’50s where visiting teams would bring their own portable lights for night games and kids were paid a quarter per game to bring a flashlight and retrieve foul balls.

The addition of the Mainers, Sanford’s first real town team in many years, harkens back to that era. In 1954, when Goodall-Sanford closed, the corporation donated the park to the town with the stipulation it be used for recreation and public purposes.

"The fence was awesome," said Rick Stanley of the Sanford Chamber of Commerce who played and coached in the old facility. "It was deep. I think it was 420 feet to center field. It was bigger than (Boston’s) Fenway (Park), that’s the way we always used to approach it. That’s the comparison we made. We had real dugouts, that was kind of awesome, and we had water in the dugouts. The little things back then meant a lot. The idea that the fans were behind us and around us was also intriguing, and that made the game more exciting."

"I can remember whenever the town team played it used to bring in hordes of people when I started going there in the ’40s," Cochin said. "When I go there now it’s so reminiscent of those days. It’s served adults and kids in so many ways. It was the place to go to see some pretty good baseball."

And now they see it in a more modern park, made mostly of brick to give it a nostalgic look as contractors successfully attempted to retain some of the old-time characteristics and charm like the dark green canopy roof covering the grandstand and the iron grating. Only two columns support the cantilever roof, providing unobstructed views of the action.

"They really picked the charm up," Stanley said. "They did an excellent job recreating the old-style ball stadium. The town is so proud of that park it’s unbelievable."

The hunter green seats, sold for $125 apiece to help repay the town for the money it put up, were manufactured by the Hussey Seating Co. of North Berwick, which makes seats for stadiums such as Coors Field in Denver, home of the Colorado Rockies.

"A lot people have gone down there after the new park was built," Boyce said, "but the image in my mind I’ll always have is of the old park. And I think that image will stay there."

"It’s like going back in time," Cochin said of Goodall and the Mainers. "That’s what I think whenever I go there now. It’s just like the ’40s all over again. It’s great for the town. It’s one of the best things that’s ever happened to Sanford. Right now it’s just as bustling as it was in the ’40s. I see people who haven’t gone to a game in years. Now they don’t miss one.