ASNN

boston

So after my excitement in New York, I was all geared up to have a relaxing day at the HMS Putnam and enjoy the evening at Mecca, that is, Fenway Park. The oldest park in the majors (hi Ron!), Fenway has been a dream of mine for years. Even before I became a Red Sox fan in 1986 (all hail Buckner!), Fenway was one of those places like Wrigley that is a must-see in baseball.

It didn't hurt that the Sox were in contention, though I suspect the fans would have been just as good. The place was absolutely electric, even in the walk from the "T" (Boston's subway) station to the park. Like Wrigley in Chicago, everything around the park revolves around baseball and the park itself; the smell of the sausage, the call of vendors, and the bits of conversation floating to the surface about the love of the Sox or hatred for the Yankees.

We approached Fenway toward left field and the all-famous Green Monster. Even though our seats were in the right field box (just behind Pesky's Pole), we decided to enter behind the Monster and walk all the way around the stadium. This would allow us to survey the beer situation first-hand.

Entering the Holy Land, we were immediately greeted by the familiar green-and-brown view of the grass and infield dirt through one of the tunnels. The view was about enough to bring me to tears. (Okay, I'm a loser. But it was really a beautiful moment.)

So Steve and I walked and walked and walked. The stadium was quite crowded, but it felt like a big party. (Crowded games elsewhere felt more like we were cattle being herded; this felt like we were all pushing to get into Studio 54 in 1979.) Everywhere we looked, we saw Bud Light, Coors Light, and the occasional (and somewhat acceptable) Amstel Light. We reached our row and walked to our seats, and I resigned to bash Fenway for its gross misunderstanding of the beer needs of its fans. Our seats turned out to be fairly good, with a fairly good view of home.

Unfortunately (and I don't have any pictures of this, so use your imagination), we were right near the tunnel from the concession area, where people would come out holding their food and beer. They would proceed to stand directly between our seats and home plate/the pitching mound and block our view while they blearily tried to figure out where their seats were. It's like these people had no clue about the Arabic numeral system and those bizarre squiggly lines. They would proceed to stand there like idiots, usually when Jeff Suppan was tossing a 1-2 pitch to one of the Orioles. The gal next to us even yelled at a couple of folks who appeared to have started drinking at about 9a that morning and weren't even bothering with tickets, just standing these like drunken, smelly zombies.

So Steve and I decided to move. There just happened to be two seats on the other side of Pesky's Pole with an even better view of the action. What's even better: there was no traffic between us and the action! Now, if I were rating the groundskeeping crew (or *stands*keeping crew), the Fenway bunch would get fairly low marks. (Keep in mind that no one had sat at these seats for this game... this was all from previous games at some point.) Luckily, I'm not rating the crew, I don't care about a couple of peanut shells, and we had incredible seats.

Oh yeah, there was a game going on as well. Normally, I'm a big fan of pitching duels, of low-scoring games. But I don't go to Fenway to see the Red Sox' .290 team batting average (or whatever; mlb.com is hosed) to see a pitcher's duel. And I wasn't disappointed; the Sox jumped out with three runs in the bottom of the first with a combination of hard and scrappy, patient hitting. As the game progressed, we saw a bomb by Manny Ramirez to the right-center bullpen, a hooking homer by Trot Nixon that landed about eight seats from us, and a bullet by some Orioles hitter that nearly decapitated a guy about nine seats from us and a couple of rows back. Best of all, my Sox won 7-5. :-)

Back to the beer situation. After the first inning or so, I felt the tug of the beer and sausage temptations. Instead of walking back around the field toward home plate, I continued along our original counterclockwise path, now toward centerfield. And lo! do mine eyes deceive me? Do I see Heineken ON TAP? Right alongside the sausage vendor that dost tempt my tastebuds with so many carmelized onions and peppers on top a spicy link? Yea, verily I saw correctly. And at $5.50 (a full 63% of a draft BUD LIGHT at Shea), I had a beautiful night filled with of lots of beer, lots of spicy sausage, and lots of sunflower seeds.

The crowd at Fenway blew away any other crowd I had seen, with Wrigley coming in a strong, but distant second. (Part of this could have been my love affair with the Sox, of course. The fans at Wrigley were wonderful, and were still the best looking, but Fenway was absolutely on fire compared to a tame environment like Dodger Stadium, and even more alive than Wrigley.) It only occurred to me by about the 4th inning that there were no "Let's Go Red Sox" or "MAKE SOME NOISE" cheers coming over the loudspeaker. In fact, other than the announcements germane to the game itself, NOTHING came over the loudspeaker. And yet, Fenway was one of the noisiest parks, with regular chants and cheers, and even the only park to feature The Wave. (Dodger Stadium is the only other place among the dozen or so parks I've visited that did The Wave. They still do it better than the fans at Fenway.) Point being that minus the modern-day perks of a technologically-superior stadium, surround-sound to every seat, etc. Fenway was the most spirited place I had been, led by the fans and only the fans.

But I'm rambling now. Fenway was everything I wanted it to be, everything I dreamed about for years. Even the rumored shortage of drinkable beer was overblown. I've said, and will continue to say:

Fenway was the best baseball experience I've ever had in the twenty-plus years I've been involved in baseball.

Period, no question. I loved Wrigley, Shea's fans had a lot of character, but Fenway was the entire package, a complete dream-come-true. Fenway is the kind of place that, if I am within 500 miles of Boston between the months of April and September, I will visit at nearly any cost.

Posted by pcg at October 3, 2003 6:56 PM