Boston Red Sox: Young Fan Gets Fantasy Fenway in Connecticut
Eight-year-old Thomas Hastings loves the Boston Red Sox.
Thomas also suffers from muscular dystrophy and has since he was just a year old. That’s almost as long as he has loved the game of baseball and his team the Boston Red Sox.
"“He just loves the Red Sox more than anything else,” his mother, Mary Hastings, said. “Anything to do with baseball, I think, just takes him to an escape – something that he can just forget about everything else that’s going on because he understands the game of baseball.”"
So it was his first wish, when the Make-A-Wish Foundation asked what he would like most in the world, to have his own backyard baseball field.
Young Thomas not only got his own baseball field but it is an (almost) exact replica of the home of the Boston Red Sox, the legendary Fenway Park.
He didn’t get a full-sized Fenway Park in his Connecticut backyard but a 25-percent scale model of the real thing.
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Thomas’ backyard baseball field is as complete as can be. It has, of course, the famed Green Monster including the Citgo sign that hangs over the enormous wall in left field at the real Fenway Park.
Help was first enlisted from an expert on Fenway Park, the Boston Red Sox head groundskeeper, David Mellor.
It took Mellor and over 100 volunteers from the Hastings’ community just 37 days to make Thomas’ dream come true.
Now, Thomas can escape his worries and issues everyday right at home without having to travel to Boston to see his favorite team. He can play baseball every day, play with his friends, practice alone or just sit and stare at the beautiful field that sits right outside his back door.
Of course, the eight-year-old boy in Thomas was most impressed with his own performance on the field than with the field itself or the crowd of people that surrounded it.
"“I thought it was good and I thought I did a good job when I was pitching and I was hitting. I thought that my inside-the-park home runs were cool. And a lot of people were here, so it kind of felt like a Major League Baseball game.”"
He was able to feel like a real Major League Baseball player, something not possible in his future. Still, the feeling will be with him, now and everyday, until he gets too old for his mini-version of Fenway Park.
However, it’s seriously doubtful that will ever happen.
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