Happy 100th, Fenway Park

Dad, sis and me

I've been to Fenway Park several times over the years (seeing the Yankees twice, once more than I've seen the Red Sox in the Bronx), but the first trip wasn't for a game.

My family stopped to visit my mom's cousin in Arlington, Mass., on our way up to Maine (our annual August migration). I knew the Red Sox were out of town -- probably by picking up a newspaper, because I'm not sure even cordless phones were in wide use yet -- but I still wanted to see Fenway Park, then 77 years old. (In '89, the year SkyDome opened, two years before New Comiskey and three before Camden Yards changed everything, Fenway was one of five pre-Depression ballparks; now it's one of two. And Camden Yards is the 10th oldest ballpark in baseball! I find that remarkable.) So on a day trip into the city, we made our way to Yawkey Way. It was a hot and humid day, a detail I recalled when looking at the hazy skyline in the photo of right field below.

As we walked along Van Ness St., we saw an open gate, through which we could see into the darkness of the narrow concourse beneath the first-base stands. Light shone through a ramp out to the seats, and I may have caught a glimpse of the Green Monster. As we stood there looking -- feeling the cool, damp air emanating from the concourse -- an employee walked by and recognized us as tourists. It may have been the mesh-backed Mets cap on my head.
He said hello and chatted with us for a moment before inviting us inside, waving us up the ramp for a look at the field. "Just take off that Mets cap first," he said to me with a smile. (He was joking. I think.) "And please stay at the top of the ramp." I did doff my cap, either out of fear of a stranger or respect for the Fens, resulting in the wonderful example of pre-teen hat head in the photo above.

We probably spent no more than two minutes gazing out at all that green of the grass and the wall and the red of the seats. The tarp was stretched out in right field, drying off (I think it may have rained the night before). I seem to have a memory of this visit being the day after the end of a homestand, which would put the date as Monday, Aug. 7, 1989. A couple of groundskeepers tended to the field. I took a couple of photos (seen below) and my mom snapped the pic of my dad, sister and me above. Then we headed back down the ramp, across the concourse and out onto the street. And I knew we had just received a treat.

I made it back for a game two years later, my dad and me getting seats in the second row behind the Yankees' bullpen in right field. I saw the ballpark come to life then -- and again in 1993 (vs. the Rangers), 1994 (Yankees) and 2009 (Mets). The fans were always there, even without seats atop the Monster or a right-field roof deck. No matter how you feel about those additions, the best thing about them and all the other enhancements made in the last decade is that they will ensure that Fenway lives on, so that those of us who made our first visit in the '80s -- or before -- can relate to those who made -- or will make -- theirs in the 21st Century.





And a couple of a cap cart on the street outside:

Looking good for 99

Monteleone takes in the game

Happy Birthday, Fenway!

This photo was taken in 1991 and remains one of my favorite photos I've taken, particularly from those early years.

Photo Friday: Rangers vs. Red Sox, 1993

Juan Gonzalez

Tonight I'm posting what I hope will be the first in a weekly -- or at least bi-weekly -- feature wherein I go back to my film negatives and scan in photos I've taken since I got my first SLR camera in high school. This is the first batch of those images.

I got the camera as an early birthday present in August 1993 because my friend Matt and I were about to go up to Boston for a couple of nights to see a game at Fenway Park and take a visit to Boston College as we prepared to enter our senior year in high school. I was much more stoked about the ballgame.

Nolan Ryan was one of my favorite players, so he was my focus during batting practice, but unfortunately, he kept to the outfield and didn't venture near us along the left-field line. So then I kept my eye on the young stars at the time -- Rafael Palmeiro, Juan Gonzalez and Ivan Rodriguez. Ah, so innocent then ...

I don't remember where we stayed, but I think we drove up on Monday, the day of the game, and went home the next day, after touring campus in the morning. We paid to park in a gas station close to Fenway Park. I don't know what it cost, but I'm sure it's double that now. I hear the gas stations and other lots near the park get $50 or more. When we went back in May, we walked from my college roommate's place about a mile away.

In my mind, I can think of several games I've shot as a fan -- a Padres-Phillies game at the Vet that included a brawl started by a hard slide to the plate, the first Devil Rays-Mets game that doubled as Hideo Nomo's Mets debut during interleague play in 1998, and my one and only visit to Tiger Stadium for a three-game series vs. the Red Sox in 1999. And even though the prints are scattered about the house in albums and frames, I can't wait to go through the negatives and see the pictures again for the first time in a long time.

I even went an extra step and put together a video slideshow. Not sure I'll take the time to do this every week, but I was inspired with the first try.

Tiger Stadium's scoreboard placed in a Fenway replica

In the interest of continuing to chronicle the demise of Tiger Stadium, I found this short piece interesting: The scoreboard from the old ballpark has been installed at Wayne State University's baseball field. The last sentence of the story/press release explains, interestingly, that the field was modeled after Boston's Fenway Park:

The facility underwent a substantial renovation in the summer of 2003 to create a replica of Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox, around the perimeter of the outfield. Fenway, ironically, officially opened the same day as Tiger Stadium.

An overdue trip to Fenway

Sky lights

May 22, 2009

Fenway Park always makes me think of Iowa.

W.P. Kinsella set "Field of Dreams" in Iowa, yet one of the pivotal scenes takes place in Boston, when Ray Kinsella takes Terrence Mann to a baseball game at Fenway Park. Why Fenway? Why have the protagonist drive nearly 1,200 miles to track down a recluse writer, when Wrigley Field -- a ballpark just as old, with just as much history -- sits just a few hours east of that Iowa cornfield? Because in the book, Terrence Mann is actually J.D. Salinger, who lives in New Hampshire.

Yet it's those scenes at Fenway, particularly when Ray and Terrence are walking in the cramped, crowded concourse -- this in the late 80s, during the Red Sox's Roger Clemens era of competitive baseball, but before this decade's two championships and Fenway upgrades -- and buying hot dogs and beer (Ray: "So what do you want?" Terrence: "I want them to stop looking to me for answers, begging me to speak again, write again, be a leader. I want them to start thinking for themselves. I want my privacy." Ray: "No, I mean, what do you WANT?" Terrence: "Oh. Dog and a beer."), that make me think of the movie.

The ballpark is cramped, cozy and quirky. Our seats were in right field, near the Pesky Pole, and if we sat back and let the shape and angle of the seats tell us where to look, we sat staring at the Green Monster in left field. But all that added to the charm. We had a good view of Johan Santana warming up in the outfield before he went to the bullpen during his pregame routine. I thought about making my way over there for some amazing photos, but decided it just wasn't worth navigating the narrow, crowded aisles. Instead, I watched the other people watch Johan warm up.

This was my fourth game at the Fens, but my fifth visit. The first experience came on a stopover trip during our annual summer trip to Maine. We stayed with my mom's cousin and family and visited the ballpark one warm morning even though the Red Sox were out of town. It was 1987 or 1988 and I wore a Mets cap as we walked Yawkey Way and Landsdowne St. When we passed an open gate and gazed upon the green sun-splashed seats and walls of the ballpark, a grounds crew member or some other employee noticed our touristy interest and invited us in to see the field. We walked out of a tunnel on the first-base side and stood behind the dugout, halfway up the grandstand. I can still see in my mind the photo the employee took of our family that day, but there's little chance I'll ever find it. It may have been taken with my first camera, a cheap Kodak disk thing that was pretty much manufactured to be the first camera of young children.

That trip also ignited in me my love of baseball jerseys. We walked into a souvenir shop on Landsdowne where uniforms of many MLB teams -- but mostly the one in Boston -- hung from the ceiling. I wanted them all, to be able to put one on and button it up. I think I tried to find that store again on a subsequent visit, but it either changed its layout and/or display, or it wasn't the same as I recalled, because it just didn't have the same effect on me.

The first game was with my dad a few years later; we had tickets in the second row behind the visitors' bullpen in right field. We stayed with that same cousin in the suburb of Arlington, where they dropped us off at the T station and were there to pick us up when we got back.

The second game came at the end of August 1993, when my best friend Matt and I went up with our fathers on a college visit to Boston College. We paid to park in a Howard Johnson's lot or some similar nearby business and walked through the back of the parking lot to get to the ballpark. We stopped for an early dinner at the Cask'n Flagon -- a visit that may have instilled in me my love of a cozy sports bar. I had my brand new SLR camera with me and loved the zoom lens that brought the players so much closer during batting practice. I focused on Nolan Ryan, Juan Gonzalez and Rafael Palmeiro because we were there during the Rangers' batting practice. That's what stands out, because I can't remember where we sat.

The third game was nine months later, just a night after we graduated from high school. I'm not sure how the trip came up, but three of us -- my friends Walker and Brian joined me -- bought three individual seats behind the plate. Because the Yankees were in town, we couldn't get three together, but we still found three close enough that when we sat down, we managed to switch with other fans to have the three of us sitting near one another -- two beside one another, the other in front. The fact that three fresh high school graduates could afford tickets behind the plate at Fenway for a game against the Yankees, identify ourselves as being from New Jersey and have a pleasant conversation with the fans around us tells you how the game has changed in the last 15 years.

I don't know how it came to be the trio of Brian, Walker and me. Walker never was (and still isn't) much of a baseball fan, and Brian was always a football guy to me, though he does root for the Yankees. My dad drove us up, we checked into a hotel in Kenmore Square within walking distance of the ballpark over the Mass Pike, and dad headed down to Cape Cod to visit a family friend. He returned the next day to pick us up and take us back to New Jersey.

And so my fourth trip was with my wife, my dad not playing a part in my presence at Fenway for the first time. (The next day, we'd drive down to the Cape to meet up with the family, but that's not quite the same connection.) The Mets won this one for us, 5-3, and we walked back to Tremont St. on a cooling Boston night. It had been a warm, humid afternoon, but after perusing the cool concourse beneath the bleachers and downing a couple of beers, we adjusted.

There aren't too many ways to better spend a night to kick off the summer than in Boston, at Fenway.

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