Springfield, Massachusetts is one of the toughest cities in the United States, but it was not always that way. Basketball was invented in a gym in Springfield in 1891. The first gasoline-powered engine was built there, as were Indian Motorcycles.
As manufacturing died, so did Springfield, which devolved into a sadly familiar kind of American landscape — drugs, violence, waves of impoverished immigrants. On Wednesday, a man was shot to death on Main Street.
