Fenway Park

views updated

Fenway Park

Together with Chicago's Wrigley Field and New York's Yankee Stadium, Boston's Fenway Park is one of the archetypal American baseball facilities. Called "a lyric little bandbox" by no less an eminence than John Updike, the park's idiosyncratic design is as legendary among baseball aficionados as is the futility endured by its home team, the Boston Red Sox. Together, team and park have suffered all manner of near-miss and could-have-been finishes since the stadium's triumphal opening in 1912.

The ballpark derived its name from the Fenway Realty Company, the business that owned the plot of marshland on which the ballpark was constructed. The Osborne Engineering Company of Cleveland designed the concrete and steel structure, which was modeled in part on Philadelphia's Shibe Park. The famous wall in left field, known popularly as the "Green Monster," was not part of the original ballpark. Fenway's asymmetrical configuration was largely a function of location, nestled as it was just across the Massachusetts Turnpike from bustling Kenmore Square.

Fenway Park opened on April 20, 1912. The sinking of the Titanic was still front-page news in the Boston Globe that morning as the Red Sox prepared to play the New York Highlanders before a crowd of twenty-four thousand. Boston Mayor John F. "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald threw out the ceremonial first pitch, and the hometown club went on to win 7-6 on an extra-inning single by Tris Speaker. The Highlanders, later rechristened the Yankees, were to remain integrally intertwined with the ballpark's history over the ensuing decades.

At first, the new park seemed to be a good-luck charm for the Red Sox. The team won the American League pennant in 1912, as Fenway played host to its first World Series in October. Fred Snodgrass's error in the tenth inning of the deciding game gave the series to the Sox, four games to three, over the New York Giants. But what seemed like an auspicious beginning to the Fenway Era was actually the start of one of the longest championship droughts in baseball history.

Fenway Park took a major step forward in its evolution in 1934, when the original wall in left field was leveled and a thirty-seven-foot-high metal fence was installed. Initially covered with advertising signs, in 1947 the wall was painted green. The Green Monster would go on to become one of the most distinctive features of any American ballpark. Officially listed as 315 feet from home plate (though some aerial photographs have indicated that 300 feet is more likely), the Green Monster continues to bedevil American League left fielders while providing an all-too-tempting target for right-handed power hitters looking to pull a ball out of the park.

One such power hitter was New York Yankee Bucky Dent, a diminutive shortstop who clouted one of the signature home runs in Fenway Park's history on October 2, 1978. The towering pop fly off Red Sox pitcher Mike Torrez landed on the screen above the Green Monster and helped the Yankees capture the American League East Division championship in a one-game playoff. Dent's blast was just one in a long line of tragic moments for the Red Sox's long-suffering fans, who have watched their beloved team fail time and time again in their quest to capture the franchise's first World Series title since 1918.

The Red Sox returned to the World Series in 1946 and again in 1967 but were turned away in seven games on both occasions. They took the Cincinnati Reds to seven thrilling games in 1975 in one of the greatest championship sets ever played. That series saw Fenway play host to one of the most dramatic games in baseball history, the sixth game in which Boston catcher Carlton Fisk clouted a twelfth-inning, game-winning home run just inside the left field foul pole. True to form, the Red Sox proceeded to lose the decisive game in heartbreaking fashion.

As the twentieth century draws to a close, Fenway Park remains one of Major League Baseball's oldest, smallest, and most revered ballparks. Besides the Green Monster, its distinctive features include one of the last remaining hand-operated scoreboards (the initials of the club's late owner, Thomas A. Yawkey, and his wife, Jean R. Yawkey, are inscribed vertically in Morse code on the face of the scoreboard) in the majors. In typically eccentric Fenway fashion, only the American League scores are recorded.

Despite its aesthetic and historic value, the park faces an uncertain future. Its seating capacity (about thirty-five thousand) is woefully small by modern ballpark standards, and there are few provisions for such revenue-generating gewgaws as luxury boxes and interactive entertainment centers. The club was said to be actively seeking a new home for the next millennium. Red Sox fans could only hope that a new facility retained the charming architectural features and rich sense of place that marked the original.

—Robert E. Schnakenberg