Forever Fenway

The unique qualities of Fenway Park have been written of often and eloquently. Many writers have lovingly described the Wall, the Triangle, the scoreboard, Pesky's Pole, etc. For me, it's the smell. I have no idea what the smell is — it's impossible to explain or describe. It could be almost 100 years of built-up crud for all I know, but next time you step into Fenway, take a whiff. You won't smell that anyplace else in America. It's not a bad smell or a good smell. It just smells like Fenway, like a slice of Americana. It smells like history and a lifetime of experiences. It smells like Boston baseball.

The players come and go, and even the memories fade, but the one enduring constant about the Red Sox is the ballpark. Fenway was built in 1912 in the "Fens" area of Boston, hence the name given to it by the original owner of the team, General Charles Taylor, who also owned The Boston Globe newspaper.

Generations of baseball fans have created lifelong memories there. Just as baby boomers remember the day John F. Kennedy was shot, New Englanders remember their first game at Fenway. Taking in your first Red Sox game is a rite of passage passed down from fathers to sons and now from fathers to daughters. It's guaranteed that neither the child nor the parent will ever forget.

The ballpark has undergone numerous changes inside and out over the years, but somehow the core of the edifice never seems to change. It's funny how people react to seeing it for the first time. In 1984, when 21-year-old Roger Clemens was driven to Fenway for his first taste of the major leagues by farm director Ed Kenney Jr., Clemens turned to Kenney and said, "This isn't Fenway. This is a warehouse!" Kenney had to convince the young flamethrower that this was indeed his new home — and it would continue to be his home for the next 13 seasons, until he departed for Toronto as a free agent following the 1996 season. Clemens certainly grew to love the ballpark: the setting, the environment, and the challenge of pitching there.

It's easy to see why tours of Fenway are becoming very popular. They're available year-round, and you can smell ... er ... see for yourself all of the unique nooks and crannies around the ballpark that often make fans wonder, "How did they do that?" But even those little unseen places — such as the inside of the scoreboard in left field — are rapidly changing and being updated.

The biggest changes to the park, other than the modern improvements made by the John Henry/Tom Werner/Larry Lucchino ownership group, came when Thomas A. Yawkey owned the team. He bought the franchise in 1933 and rebuilt parts of the ballpark that had been damaged by a fire. The left-field seats were part of the fire; the old owners hadn't bothered to fix them because they ran out of money. Yawkey leveled off an even stranger phenomenon in left field: Duffy's Cliff, so named because left fielder Duffy Lewis did a great job playing the ball despite the 10-foot incline in left that had been designed to keep nonpaying fans from sneaking into the ballpark.

One of the things you'll learn on the tour is that the first game ever played at Fenway took place on April 9, 1912, when the Red Sox played Harvard in an exhibition game as part of an open house the team held to allow fans to see the new facility. There were snow flurries that day, and only about 3,000 fans were present to witness the Red Sox beat the Crimson 2–0. The first major league game played at Fenway — an 11-inning, 7–6 win over the New York Highlanders (yes, the team that would eventually become the Yankees) — took place on April 20 before 24,000 spectators. A number of fans actually stood in the field area to watch the game because some of the seating was not yet in place. Tris Speaker drove in Steve Yerkes for the winning run.

The ballpark originally had a capacity of 27,000, but after Yawkey poured some $1.5 million in improvements into it, the basic bowl of the park looked much as it does now, with a seating capacity in the mid-30,000s.

Yawkey was the one who rebuilt the 37'2" tall left-field wall with tin, replacing the original wooden structure. He also added the netting over the Green Monster to prevent balls from damaging buildings across the street. That 231/2-foot netting was replaced by the Monster Seats in 2005. On April 26, 1912, Hugh Bradley, a reserve first baseman, became the first player to hit one over the Green Monster. It was one of only...