Rick Medeiros arrived at McCoy Stadium early this past Tuesday, a day he knew would break his heart. The longtime director of fan services was working at the quiet stadium on what would have been the PawSox’s final game in Pawtucket, before the coronavirus scuttled the minor league season.

Rick Medeiros arrived at McCoy Stadium early this past Tuesday, a day he knew would break his heart.

Again.

Rick, 63, is longtime director of fan services, and to many, he’s the face of the PawSox — the guy in the stands making sure all goes perfectly.

But now it was ending.

Tuesday was to have been the last PawSox game after a 50-year Rhode Island run.

Instead, because the minor leagues were shut by the pandemic, things were quiet. Rick was on outside security, patrolling the near-empty parking lot.

Had the scheduled game against the Syracuse Mets gone forward, Rick was sure the stands would have been full, a sellout of more than 10,000, everyone wanting to get that historic ticket stub marking the end of the long PawSox story.

The regulars would all have been there, like the K-Lady. That was C. Kelly Smith, always in the front row along the third-base line, glove in hand, posting K’s to mark her beloved team’s strikeout count.

As he patrolled, Rick pictured Sections 9 and 10, above the home dugout, a favorite of season-ticket holders. They were like family, the folks there sometimes having dinners together at Davenport’s in East Providence on non-game nights.

It’s why Rick loved this job — seeing the minor league magic of a community knitted around a night at the ballpark.

Rick Medeiros grew up in Tiverton, son of a highway inspector dad and a mom who worked at a Fall River knitting mill.

He began his career as a town police officer, then moved to a training role at the Rhode Island Municipal Police Academy.

He was also with the D.A.R.E. anti-drug program, at times taking kids to McCoy. It plugged him into team management, which led to a side job there in security and ushering.

Feeling he’d found a new family, Rick began there full-time in 2000, and since then, he has never taken for granted that he gets to come to work at a ballpark.

As Rick patrolled, the Red Sox “taxi squad” of a few dozen were on the field practicing. Most likely would have been on the roster of a PawSox team had there been one. Instead, they were the feeder crew, called back and forth to Fenway.

That was another thing Rick had loved, watching Red Sox greats play at McCoy — Dustin Pedroia, Coco Crisp, Jonathan Papelbon, Jackie Bradley Jr. Rick was sure a few famous alumni would have been at the last game on Tuesday — that was always the tradition at season’s end.

But something has stayed with him even more than their play — seeing up close what good guys most were.

Once, after a game, a crowd gathered behind a McCoy fence to see David Ortiz leave. Rick, posted there, heard a woman in a wheelchair say she didn’t have long to live and her dream was to meet Big Papi. As Ortiz headed out, Rick went up to him and mentioned the woman.

Ortiz stopped, was escorted over and spent a full 15 minutes with her. In turn, she gave him a pendant she said was blessed. He told her he’d wear it at his next Red Sox game, and Rick was touched to see that he actually did.

He recalled a similar moment between right-field great Trot Nixon and a boy with autism who idolized him. Trot stopped to talk, the boy calling him by his little-known first name, “Christopher,” and the two had a lively back and forth. It ended with Trot giving his batting gloves as a gift. Afterward, Rick heard the mom say she’d seldom seen her son so outgoing.

For Rick, such human moments were as much a part of McCoy’s legacy as the games.

After a few hours, the taxi squad finished practice and the place was quiet. But in his mind, Rick pictured a noisy McCoy on big game days, filled with the aroma of popcorn and doughboys, and kids with ice cream in plastic cups shaped like PawSox caps.

To Rick, even more than at places like Fenway, the atmosphere at McCoy always breathed fun, with hijinks between most innings, like a fan brought on the field to catch a launched soft squeeze ball.

An easy catch got his row Chick-fil-A sandwich coupons, a harder catch got coupons for the whole section, and a catch from an air cannon won sandwiches for the stadium. The place always roared when that happened.

Rick pictured other McCoy traditions, like forming up dozens of kids in a “high-five tunnel” that players ran through on their way to pregame warm-ups.

And after Sunday games, young fans got to run the bases.

The team took a special interest in Pawtucket’s Little Sisters of the Poor, bringing the nuns there to games, and onto the field, where once, in white habit, one tossed out the first pitch.

If you look on the Sisters’ website today, there, in a slideshow on their home page, is a moving adieu: “We bid our beloved team farewell.”

Looking back, Rick was proudest of how hard his staff worked to give fans that perfect experience. That came from a culture set first by Ben Mondor and more recently by Lou Schwechheimer, Mike Tamburro and Larry Lucchino.

Some say Lucchino has a hard edge, but Rick had only seen his supportive, fan-centered side. Like the time a woman at a local Chamber of Commerce lunch told Larry she was heading the next day to Fenway for her birthday. Larry made a call and when she was there, the Fenway Jumbotron wished her a happy day.

“How cool is that,” Rick would later say.

Rick strived, in small ways, to deliver the same service at each McCoy game. If someone had a tough time sitting in the sun, his ushers moved them. If someone said their hot dog wasn’t warm enough, they got a new one.

Once, a fan came dressed in a suit because of an after-game formal event, but spilled wine on his white shirt. Rick and his crew gave the guy a PawSox T-shirt to wear and took his dress shirt to the clubhouse, where it was washed, dried and returned before game’s end.

Rick got to know fans so well, some would come up and chat with him at the Stop & Shop near his Riverside home.

He liked the way most were just regular folks. That’s what Triple-A ball is about, accessible to all, PawSox seats costing eight bucks general admission and $13 for a field box.

Normally at summer’s end, Rick would already be looking forward to next April, when McCoy’s fans would bring the renewal of a fresh season.

But now, on this quiet Tuesday, because the state’s politicians failed to get a deal done, all of that was ending. Next season, the team moves to Worcester.

At least, Rick told himself, it wasn’t quite over yet. There will still be a few more weeks of “Dining under the Lights” on McCoy’s field — for those lucky enough to get the scarce reservations.

Rick will always look back with fondness on such touches and traditions.

Traditions like kids lowering baseballs in cut-out cartons into the dugout to fish for autographs.

Or the left-field grass berm where families on blankets watched games.

And the unique field-level luxury boxes, so close that if you grunted disapproval of an umpire’s call, they’d hear you.

A new stadium at the Apex site, Rick thought, would have had new traditions just as rich.

Traditions for generations of parents and kids to connect over.

If only.

By 3 p.m., Rick’s shift was over.

He parked the PawSox van, got into his own car, and drove home to Riverside, thinking about what might have been.