Number of games: 3
First game: July 19, 1999 (Marlins 10, Red Sox 7)
Most recent game: June 30, 2025 (Red Sox 13, Reds 6)
You don't need me to tell you the historic nature of this place, or its importance, or the sad, sick personality disorders of lifelong Red Sox fans. I attest to and love all of those things, but I don't feel they need to be repeated here. If you're looking for writing about that, pop in a tape of Ken Burns' Baseball and put the continuous loop on Doris Kearns Goodwin's speeches.
What I will attest to, and try to describe in the next couple of paragraphs, are the place's physical beauty and ambience. I don't know what I was expecting when I walked in that July night--quirkiness? charm?--but I know I wasn't expecting the place to be so beautiful. Clearly, they take care of Fenway the way some families take care of antiques. The image I most remember is the fresh red paint on the turnstiles, for goodness' sake. I loved the green of the facades, the pillars, the Monster--it's not the darker green of the new retro parks, but has faded just enough to make it look venerable, loved, well-used. I loved the angles of the seats, even though they made me torque my body from my seat (just to the foul side of Pesky's pole and six rows back) to see the batter--otherwise, I would have spent all night looking at right fielders Trot Nixon and Mark Kotsay. I kept on wondering--am I just carried away? But the more I looked at the place, the more I realized: nope, I'm not carried away...this place really is that beautiful. Even a baseball-illiterate dropped in from Borneo would find the colors and shapes fascinating.
As gorgeous as the place is, its ambience trumps its beauty. Starting with the walk from the T station...you're not more than ten yards from the exit when you see the guy hawking hats in that inimitable Boston accent. He mutters every word except the "Red" in "Red Sox," which he shouts out at five times the volume and an octave and a half higher: "RED sawx caps heah...lower than stadium prices...we're gonna beat the Orioles today...get your RED sawx caps heah..." This gets me psyched for the walk across the bridge, across Landsdowne Street, past the Citgo sign, even to the sports bar where my friend Larry and I waited out a rain delay (and where we accidentally left our tickets...thanks to the waitress for fishing them out of the wastebasket when we desperately ran back...her tip suddenly tripled!) Then in the park, no tapes of rhythmic clapping telling fans when to get excited. Just a game. When the seventh inning stretch comes, nobody shouts out "All right, up on your feet!" The organ plays "Take Me Out To The Ballgame," and everybody knows what to do. Unlike Wrigley Field, they have installed a scoreboard with stats and pictures, and I'm just young enough to view that as close to mandatory when it's used to add to the game (and not, for instance, to tell fans when to cheer). The neighborhood, the park, the rabidness of the fans (maybe some year I'll make it in for a Yankee series)--it's all perfect. Fenway was so wonderful that it overcame two cold nights, an interleague opponent, a rain delay, and lackluster play by the Sox.
Kerry, my favorite Kingdome baseball date, was kind enough to get me tickets and go to the games with me. Clearly, I should have anticipated disappointment. Three years and a few relationships later, I set my sights on having as much fun as we did in Seattle in '96, but she was into trumpeting her independence that summer. She was no longer in need of outside esteem-boosters like me, and made it a point to show me that at every opportunity. She even made certain to rip on me repeatedly--it seems, during my three-day outing in New York, that I had gotten her a low-quality Yankee hat. "I would have paid for the nice wool one. You should have just spent the money." Four apologies and two "knock-it-offs" later, she was still needling me for that one. Well, if you're going to be catty and snide, I guess baseball cap quality is as good a place as any to do it. The deal-breaker was when she didn't show up to the Oriole game until the fifth inning. ("I was busy at work, and I don't have a clock in my office, and I got carried away.") I mean, I'm fine and all--I'm at a baseball park--Fenway Park. But I wanted to be there with her, and it upsets me that she didn't put in a little more effort to be there. It's sad, really. I told her I felt far closer to her while writing emails from opposite coasts than I did while sleeping in the same bed as her in Boston. And maybe I'm to blame for trying to recreate moments from an obsolete time and place (hey, we all do it). But nevertheless, I'm sad at the results. We were very close before the trip, but we haven't been the same since I was there, buying her the wrong hat, feeling far away from her, and, perhaps most telling, watching five innings of a ballgame next to her empty seat. We don't talk much anymore. And in whatever proportion the blame for that should be dealt out, that end result is a shame.
JULY 2025: I return! I have wanted to head back here for a quarter century, and the last real shot at a family vacation meant the family loaded itself onto an airplane and headed east.
The place maintains my love and justifies its #1 spot. It’s obviously changed a lot in a quarter century, and the changes show me how much Boston understands its jewel here. I can’t think of a place that combines the best of old and new as much as this. The new scoreboard in leftish-center is a great example: it’s gorgeous, but it is set up like the Monster with fake metal number plates. The center-field scoreboard was noticeably hi-def as well. I noticed a lot of historical exhibits in the concourse that might not have meant as much to me in my last visit last century, and still found the place as beautiful as ever.
The culture has changed, too. Four World Series titles have come and gone since I was here in 1999, and the feel of the place has shifted accordingly. While 2025 was not a great moment for the Sox—I arrived a couple of weeks after Rafael Devers was shipped off in a rather ignominious trade—the place was packed in a way it wasn’t last time. The fans were, on the whole, happier. But the feel is different from Fenway’s most obvious analogue, Wrigley Field. At Wrigley, the fans are there to party, and the baseball is secondary. At Fenway, the fans are there for baseball, and the party—while certainly present—is secondary. So much knowledge and fun.
And Kerry joined my family for a game (alas, a rainout). Time eases everything—that’s one of the best things about getting older.
Shout out to the Red Sox for refunding my money for those nice seats (above). Three innings were played on Tuesday before several hours of rain. The game was finished off the next day, but by then we were in Rhode Island to see a game in Newport. They would have been well within their rights to keep our money, but because we traveled so far, they refunded it—which was a ton of money to a pair of educators! In a world where so many people prefer to make the shitty-but-profitable choice, Boston’s management impressed me. So, while it pains this Mariner fan to say it…Go Sox.
BASEBALL STUFF I'VE SEEN HERE:
No homers over the Monster. In fact, the only homer in the two games was to the deepest part of the ballpark, straightaway center, by Preston Wilson.
Tomokazu Ohka makes his first major league start, and gets roughed up pretty severely by the Marlins, lasting only one inning.
A good pitchers' duel between Bret Saberhagen and Mike Mussina that the Red Sox bullpen (most notably Derek Lowe) blows late, giving up 6 runs in the seventh and eighth innings.
In 2025, the Sox pummel the Reds’ Chase Burns in his second start. Burns lasts only 1/3 of an inning and gives up 7 runs, 5 earned.
The most notable occurrence that night is from the Sox’s Wilyer Abreu. He hits two home runs: the first an inside-the parker (my first major league inside-the-park home run) and the second a grand slam. From my location 21 rows behind the bullpens, I couldn’t see what happened in the triangle notch in right center. I saw Reds’ right fielder Rece Hinds head back into that void out of my sight, and I heard a big roar, and I assumed the ball was gone. What had actually happened was that the ball bonked off the TOP of the wall and ricocheted high into center field, parallel to the tall center field wall. TJ Friedl, the Reds’ center fielder, fell down. As I saw umpires reposition and Abreu hauling his body around the bases, and as I felt the crowd amp up in places that could see, I realized, wait, this ball is in play! It stayed there. By the time Hinds corralled it and chucked it to shortstop Elly De La Cruz, it was all over. There wasn’t even a throw to the plate.
Abreu also hit a grand slam later on.
Written August 2001. Revised July 2025.