America's Park: Fenway

Coming to Fenway Park as a visiting player was awesome, but there was nothing like being at Fenway Park playing for the Red Sox! The passion you feel from the Boston faithful in such a storied landmark as Fenway was second to none. I'm forever grateful for getting to experience playing for the Boston Red Sox. You could feel the history in that park every single night.

— Sean Casey, 2008 Red Sox first baseman/designated hitter

On April 6, 1992, the Baltimore Orioles hosted the Cleveland Indians in their brand-new ballpark, Orioles Park at Camden Yards. Camden was a new, supersized stadium but with a retro feel. The move from Memorial Stadium to the shiny happier place along the Inner Harbor in Baltimore made other owners follow suit. Among the ballparks that took after Camden's model were Coors Field in Colorado, Busch Stadium in St. Louis, and most recently Citi Field in New York and arguably New Yankee Stadium — home of the Yankees. Yes, despite the lure, the magic, and the memories, the Bronx Bombers opted to tear down their history in place of a new, bloated stadium that includes a Hard Rock Café — and probably a Tiffany's. Longtime Yankees fans felt a connection to the other stadium more than this imitation, an inflated one that lacks any history. Perhaps that changed when the Sox's rival bought their World Series in 2009 — the first year in their new digs — but some old-school fans still balk at the new park. And that brings us to the Red Sox. They have called their park home — and will continue to do so — since their first major league game on April 20, 1912. "When you walk up the ramp, see the field and the Green Monster with the city in the background, there is nothing that compares to it," said Randy Adams, general manager of McGreevy's 3 Base Saloon. "You walk in, you smell the sausages, you hear the Boston accents saying 'selling tickets,' and you see it's always packed. It will make the hair stand up on your arms. I still get chills."

Even Yankees fans would probably agree that the park located at 4 Yawkey Way represents all that is good and holy about baseball and its rich history. It's a classic that has been altered. (There have been additions and renovations. Seats atop the Green Monstah are new school.) In 2012 the park celebrated its 100 anniversary by being added to the National Register of Historic Places. "Everybody who's ever been to Fenway," said Larry Callahan, chief judicial marshall in Hartford and Cromwell, Connecticut, "when they walk through the tunnel, the green of the place just startles you. I've always gotten that feeling. It's a great old park. It's a national monument."

Every major league city should have a park like Fenway, but let's be honest: we're glad they don't. It's fitting that a little more than a decade into the 21st century that the oldest American League ballpark resides in America's first frontier, New England. While several states (California, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Texas, Florida, Missouri, and Ohio) have more than one franchise located within their borders, the entire region of New England sinks its collective teeth into their Boston Red Sox.

Most New Englanders remember the movement in the 1990s to replace Fenway Park in Boston. Many major league teams had succumbed to what Rick Reilly described as "bulldozing real vintage ballparks like Tiger Stadium and Fenway Park to put up fake vintage ballparks." The sentiment to keep Fenway Park vital was shared by many, as online ventures to save the stadium endlessly popped up. It led Bob Costas to declare on a Game of the Week in 1999, "When we lose Fenway, we lose the sense that somebody sat here and watched Ted Williams hit." As fortune would have it, new owners would come and not only keep Fenway, but also pave the way for a Red Sox renaissance similar to when the stadium opened 100 years ago. Fenway Park has inspired all comers to wax poetic at the 100 anniversary in April 2012. "When you walk and come to Fenway, it's just like it was 30 years ago," Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig said. "The beauty and stability here is why the park means so much to many generations."

Two of Selig's predecessors spoke fondly of Fenway, including Bowie Kuhn, who oversaw the game from 1969–1984. "As commissioner, you're supposed to be objective," Kuhn said. "It wasn't much of a secret, though, that I loved Fenway Park, especially how it made you a participant." The late A. Bartlett Giamatti served briefly as commissioner before his untimely death in 1989, but he was a lifelong Boston Red Sox fan. "When I was seven years old, my father took me to Fenway Park for the first time," he said. "As I grew up, I knew that, as a building, it was on the level of Mount Olympus, the pyramid at Giza, the nation's capitol, the czar's Winter Palace, and the Louvre — except, of course, that it was better than all those inconsequential places." You'll be hard-pressed to find any baseball fan or player (okay, maybe those of the Chicago Cubs) who disagree with those sentiments.

During his three years with the Red Sox, pitcher Bronson Arroyo lived in the Back Bay of Boston and used to walk to Fenway. Arroyo, who played on the 2004 championship squad, moved on to the Reds in 2006. He has enjoyed success in Cincinnati, posting double-digit victory totals five times and twice reaching the postseason, but part of him yearns for those walks to Fenway and the atmosphere of the historic park. "I definitely miss the excitement of Fenway," Arroyo said. "There's such a long history — generations after generations have been going to this place ... Baseball is closer to football and soccer fans there. They act almost like they're playing 17-game seasons instead of 162. It's a life-or-death feeling every time. As a player, you feel that. It's part of what drives you."

The Fenway atmosphere not only drives the players, but it also provides lifelong memories for the Red Sox fans. The beauty of sports is that you remember exactly where you were when a noteworthy or historic event happened. Each generation has its own top pivotal moments that become mythologized and rhapsodized beyond a lifetime. These events have even more sizzle when you watched them inside the ballpark where they actually transpired.

Long before Matthew P. Mayo became a published author and editor who has written fiction, nonfiction, and has contributed to countless anthologies, he was a Fenway and Sox fan. Loving the home team was just something that he gravitated to before he wrote his first manuscript. He'd often visit Fenway while living in Rhode Island, but when his family moved him to Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, a piece of him stayed there. "I loved it there, on a riverside...