Northwest Herald reporter Regan Foster got this quote from million scholarship pledger Geraldine Cowlin:

“That baseball idea is absurd. It has nothing to do with education, and this is a college that really needs money for education.”

Despite her quite forthright statement, MCC fund raiser Joseph Like “said it still was too early to tell whether the proposal would have an impact on donations to the college,” according to the article.

I guess fund raising executives are always optimistic, but losing $1 million seems to mean that the baseball stadium brouhaha had a negative affect on donations.

Monday night, as McHenry County Blog reported, former MCC trustee Erv LeCoque, who lives across the street from Cowlin, told the board that a $1 million donor had withdrawn a pledge.

But, in predicting that the project would not succeed as long as the baseball stadium was on the table, LeCoque was not as detailed as he was to Foster. Here’s what he told her:

“I can’t tell you how many calls I got. People would ride their bikes right up to the front door … and say ‘What are you doing in the baseball business?’”