Fenway Park is Still a Grand Old Place

On a wall inside Fenway Park the Boston Red Sox display historical logos under the grandstands to honor past generations of the team. Credit: Greg M. Cooper-USA TODAY Sports

BOSTON–Fenway Park is into its 101st season of operation as home of the Boston American League team and I have been a visitor going back 53 years. I made my latest pilgrimage Saturday night and the Red Sox and the weather gods combined to make it as pleasurable an experience as ever.

The temperature was around 70 degrees on a balmy night 24 hours after a brutal rainstorm struck the Boston area and the Red Sox defeated the Los Angeles Angels, 7-2. Pitcher Clay Buchholz kept up his magical 2013 performance, upping his record to 9-0.

When I was a kid growing up in the Boston area the Red Sox did not always provide so much to cheer about. Until the 1967 Impossible Dream season the words Boston and pennant contender never overlapped in the same paragraph. However, the bleacher tickets were $1 when I first attended. Saturday, my old friend Paul, who has been a Sox fan as long as I have, and I, sat in right-field seats near the Pesky Pole. They cost $47 apiece.

The walls are still green, the entrance ways are old, and there is no mistaking that you are at any ball yard not named Fenway Park. It is one of the shrines of the sport and what is sacrificed in certain modern atmosphere is more than compensated for in nostalgic, traditional, historic atmosphere.

Boston management has worked hard to improve and modernize the park built in 1912. The concessions menu definitely has modern prices. There are huge videoboards in the outfield that provide an abundance of information. I have been in a lot of Major League parks over the years, but the most recent upgrading of the Fenway videoboard is the only one that I have ever seen that gives the fans the information of what pitch was thrown. I always look for the velocity number in a park, but in Boston the number of mph the last pitch traveled not only is easier to spot than in most places the word “fastball,” “curveball,” or “cutter” show up next to the mph.

I am not one of those fans who covets a foul ball and think that the scrum that often follows a foul swat is dangerous to health and sanity. However, one foul blast to right probably put me in the picture on TV for a few seconds, desiring it or not. A David Ortiz foul shot came down from the sky like a chunk of a busted-up meteor homing in on us. The ball landed about two feet to my right where a stout fellow in the row in front of us stuck out his cap trying to spear it. The ball hit his hand, bounced back a row away from us, ricocheting off a guy trying to catch it while balancing his beer, and then bounded back another two rows.

The good news is that the ball ended up in the hands of a youngster, about five years old. The usher closest to us came hustling over to see if anyone was injured. The guy in front of us sloughed it off. The guy with the beer said he was fine. I informed the Fenway employee that the second guy didn’t get hit, only his beer. The Fenway guy clutched his chest and said, “He was injured.” Suitable reverence for spilled beer.

Ortiz smacked a two-run homer over our heads and out of play, Boston managed 13 hits, and everyone sang Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” to remind ourselves how lucky we were to be within Fenway’s confines.

I’m not sure if my seat was 47 times better than the old bleacher spot, but the current Red Sox may be 47 times better than the say, the 1963 Red Sox. A half century ago Fenway was a place they played baseball. Now it’s a location, a destination, as well as a baseball team’s home field. As aging adults in an aging stadium Paul and I were more conscious of it being a privilege to be among the 36,518 fans at the game. But being there was just as much fun.