GaryMrMets
06-28-2004, 02:54 PM
http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/sports/9029285.htm
Posted on Mon, Jun. 28, 2004
Fanatical over Fenway
Baseball lovers flock to Red Sox's ancient ballpark
By TOM DiNARDO
For the Daily News
BOSTON - The Boston papers didn't report the first game played at Fenway Park on Page 1 on April 20, 1912, amid all the news of the sinking of the Titanic the previous week. Who knew it was an omen?
Fenway, more a shrine than an arena, is New England's major tourist attraction and the sylvan crucible of Shakespearean fall tragedies. It's also baseball's oldest park, 2 years older than Chicago's Wrigley Field and 11 years older than Yankee Stadium. That, no doubt, helped lure a vociferous crowd of Phillies fans to the weekend series against the Red Sox. Appropriately, they brought their support to a park in which all of its games were sold out before the first pitch this season. Now that's fanaticism.
With only 35,095 seats, Fenway's single-game ducats - when they are available - go for $12 to $75 (Citizens Bank Park singles are $15 to $40). Scalper online sites are offering a pair of tickets for a game vs. the Yankees on Saturday, July 24, from between $360 to $1,950. No doubt they will get it. I'm reluctant to admit what I paid on eBay for two Friday night grandstand tickets, but it might have been cheaper to watch the game on a TV in a limo on the way to Boston. I was outbid on one pair sold by a guy who rubs it in deep for Cubs fans - his eBay handle is "poorbartman."
And, to think that Fenway now holds more fans than ever, a reflection of new ownership that officially received the blessing of Major League Baseball in January 2002. Principal owner John W. Henry, chairman Tom Werner and president/CEO Larry Lucchino (who had headed the Baltimore Orioles during the Camden Yards construction and was president/CEO of the San Diego Padres from 1995-2001) came up with the winning offer of $660 million. It also included 80 percent of the New England Sports Network and $40 million in assumed debt.
This purchase effectively ended discussion of a new ballpark. But the new owners soon began figuring how to increase the seating capacity of this ancient edifice. No one cared that, in the 1980s, renowned MIT professor Paul Lagace had done wind-tunnel experiments, published in a Boston paper, proving that alteration of the wind currents in the park by seating additions would decrease home-run production - which it has.
The new owners have installed 270 seats on terraced ledges atop leftfield's famed Green Monster, with its still-manually operated scoreboard, and added more than 500 seats in front of the box seats along the foul lines closer to the field. They're also trying to get more use out of the 500 seats in the dark green centerfield bleacher "triangle," located about 420 feet from home plate in an area that serves as a backdrop for batters. For years those seats only would be occupied during night games. This year they're experimenting with allowing fans to sit there during day games, but making them wear dark green T-shirts. Says longtime Sox fan and Boston resident Norm Hinsey, "It's policed, but fans always leave them on anyway, because it's the right thing to do."
Even with these recent additions, there's still talk of two new decks and 10,000 more seats, at a cost of more than $180 million.
Management also punched through a wall in an adjacent building, allowing more space under the rightfield stands and the centerfield bleachers to add upscale Ashburn Alley-like concession stands, then added many needed restroom facilities. But nothing can come into the park except one plastic bottle of water and a small bag, and then only through the security point at Van Ness and Ipswich streets: in New England terminology, preventing Grinders of Mass Destruction.
You can't help but be touched by the park's fabled mystique. The dented, hard plastic, 37-foot-high Green Monster looms precisely 304.779 feet down the foul line, though the sign says 310, and remains an optical illusion that has caused generations of banjo hitters to pop up. Down the side of the manually operated scoreboard are the initials of Thomas A. and Jean R. Yawkey, the former owners, in Morse code.
Red Sox icon Ted Williams used to have to nail one more than 380 feet to the deepest part of the park for a homer. The Sox eventually built bullpens - known as Williamsburg - to reduce the distance by 23 feet. His last at-bat was his 521st homer, and most fans can recite John Updike's classic 1960 New Yorker magazine paean to his legacy, "Hub fans bid Kid adieu." They tell you that Sox fans must think in terms of decades, to pace themselves, a dictum supported by the large "Keep The Faith" sign in centerfield.
No one has ever hit one over the rightfield roof, but get to Fenway early and you can find the one red-painted seat in the rightfield bleachers. Williams smacked a 502-foot shot off Detroit's Fred Hutchinson on June 9, 1946, prevented from traveling further by the straw hat of Joseph A. Boucher, who was seated in Section 42, Row 37, Seat 21. The next day's Boston Globe featured a Page 1 photo of Boucher holding his hat, his finger stuck through the hole. The caption read, "BULLSEYE!"
Boucher, who said the sun got in his eyes, was a Yankees supporter who morphed into a Sox fan after being given a season ticket.
The park has survived greed, politics, graft, power, influence and decades of heartbreaking defeat. It hasn't seen a World Series championship since 1918. Babe Ruth played here, and Shoeless Joe, DiMaggio, Lefty Grove, Yaz, the giants. And Williams. And, through it all, Fenway is still here.
Posted on Mon, Jun. 28, 2004
Fanatical over Fenway
Baseball lovers flock to Red Sox's ancient ballpark
By TOM DiNARDO
For the Daily News
BOSTON - The Boston papers didn't report the first game played at Fenway Park on Page 1 on April 20, 1912, amid all the news of the sinking of the Titanic the previous week. Who knew it was an omen?
Fenway, more a shrine than an arena, is New England's major tourist attraction and the sylvan crucible of Shakespearean fall tragedies. It's also baseball's oldest park, 2 years older than Chicago's Wrigley Field and 11 years older than Yankee Stadium. That, no doubt, helped lure a vociferous crowd of Phillies fans to the weekend series against the Red Sox. Appropriately, they brought their support to a park in which all of its games were sold out before the first pitch this season. Now that's fanaticism.
With only 35,095 seats, Fenway's single-game ducats - when they are available - go for $12 to $75 (Citizens Bank Park singles are $15 to $40). Scalper online sites are offering a pair of tickets for a game vs. the Yankees on Saturday, July 24, from between $360 to $1,950. No doubt they will get it. I'm reluctant to admit what I paid on eBay for two Friday night grandstand tickets, but it might have been cheaper to watch the game on a TV in a limo on the way to Boston. I was outbid on one pair sold by a guy who rubs it in deep for Cubs fans - his eBay handle is "poorbartman."
And, to think that Fenway now holds more fans than ever, a reflection of new ownership that officially received the blessing of Major League Baseball in January 2002. Principal owner John W. Henry, chairman Tom Werner and president/CEO Larry Lucchino (who had headed the Baltimore Orioles during the Camden Yards construction and was president/CEO of the San Diego Padres from 1995-2001) came up with the winning offer of $660 million. It also included 80 percent of the New England Sports Network and $40 million in assumed debt.
This purchase effectively ended discussion of a new ballpark. But the new owners soon began figuring how to increase the seating capacity of this ancient edifice. No one cared that, in the 1980s, renowned MIT professor Paul Lagace had done wind-tunnel experiments, published in a Boston paper, proving that alteration of the wind currents in the park by seating additions would decrease home-run production - which it has.
The new owners have installed 270 seats on terraced ledges atop leftfield's famed Green Monster, with its still-manually operated scoreboard, and added more than 500 seats in front of the box seats along the foul lines closer to the field. They're also trying to get more use out of the 500 seats in the dark green centerfield bleacher "triangle," located about 420 feet from home plate in an area that serves as a backdrop for batters. For years those seats only would be occupied during night games. This year they're experimenting with allowing fans to sit there during day games, but making them wear dark green T-shirts. Says longtime Sox fan and Boston resident Norm Hinsey, "It's policed, but fans always leave them on anyway, because it's the right thing to do."
Even with these recent additions, there's still talk of two new decks and 10,000 more seats, at a cost of more than $180 million.
Management also punched through a wall in an adjacent building, allowing more space under the rightfield stands and the centerfield bleachers to add upscale Ashburn Alley-like concession stands, then added many needed restroom facilities. But nothing can come into the park except one plastic bottle of water and a small bag, and then only through the security point at Van Ness and Ipswich streets: in New England terminology, preventing Grinders of Mass Destruction.
You can't help but be touched by the park's fabled mystique. The dented, hard plastic, 37-foot-high Green Monster looms precisely 304.779 feet down the foul line, though the sign says 310, and remains an optical illusion that has caused generations of banjo hitters to pop up. Down the side of the manually operated scoreboard are the initials of Thomas A. and Jean R. Yawkey, the former owners, in Morse code.
Red Sox icon Ted Williams used to have to nail one more than 380 feet to the deepest part of the park for a homer. The Sox eventually built bullpens - known as Williamsburg - to reduce the distance by 23 feet. His last at-bat was his 521st homer, and most fans can recite John Updike's classic 1960 New Yorker magazine paean to his legacy, "Hub fans bid Kid adieu." They tell you that Sox fans must think in terms of decades, to pace themselves, a dictum supported by the large "Keep The Faith" sign in centerfield.
No one has ever hit one over the rightfield roof, but get to Fenway early and you can find the one red-painted seat in the rightfield bleachers. Williams smacked a 502-foot shot off Detroit's Fred Hutchinson on June 9, 1946, prevented from traveling further by the straw hat of Joseph A. Boucher, who was seated in Section 42, Row 37, Seat 21. The next day's Boston Globe featured a Page 1 photo of Boucher holding his hat, his finger stuck through the hole. The caption read, "BULLSEYE!"
Boucher, who said the sun got in his eyes, was a Yankees supporter who morphed into a Sox fan after being given a season ticket.
The park has survived greed, politics, graft, power, influence and decades of heartbreaking defeat. It hasn't seen a World Series championship since 1918. Babe Ruth played here, and Shoeless Joe, DiMaggio, Lefty Grove, Yaz, the giants. And Williams. And, through it all, Fenway is still here.