Friday, April 20, 2012

Fenway Turns 100



All Things Considered:

Fenway has been called the 10th player of the Boston Red Sox — its single most enduring star. Players and owners come and go, but Fenway remains, familiar and timeless. The right foul line is still marked by Pesky's Pole, the old Citgo sign still shines over the park, and the iconic Green Monster still keeps score in left field.
"Today, when I walk in the park, I don't feel no different at all," says 94-year-old Lou Lucier, a former Red Sox pitcher, and now the oldest living Red Sox player. He can still remember taking the mound for his first Fenway game in 1943.
"Oh, Jesus," he says. "To tell you the truth, it didn't feel too good."
To a pitcher especially, Lucier says, that Green Monster in left field loomed large.
"That fence is so damn close, you get on the mound, you turn around, and seems like it's at second base," he says.
Even worse, all the nooks and crevices in the Green Monster, and that funky triangle deep in center field, made Fenway feel like a pinball machine.
"I thought, 'What the heck kind of a baseball park is this?' " Lucier says. "The way the ball bounces off that wall ... Sheeeez."
Today that wall has become one of the most visited tourist attractions in the city of Boston, and new "Monster seats" installed on top of it are so popular you can only get them through an online lottery.
Every baseball fan has to watch at least one game at Fenway.  In the same 100 years, the Reds played in three different ballparks.  The first game at Fenway , just like the game 100 years later, was against the Yankees.

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