Fenway Park

by John Powers

  When the new group took over in March, they immediately made changes, replacing General Manager Dan Duquette with assistant Mike Port on an interim basis and hiring Grady Little, a former bench coach, to succeed Kerrigan, whose tenure lasted only 43 games.

  There were changes to Fenway, too, as the owners endeavored to show the faithful that they were committed to restoration instead of relocation. “When I think of Paris I think of the Eiffel Tower,” Henry mused. “When I think of Boston, I think of Fenway.”

  Before Opening Day, the ballpark was painted, the clubhouses freshened, and 10 new concession stands and 400 new seats were added. “Fans want to be at the game,” said Henry, who ensconced himself in a front-row box for the unveiling. “So we’ll put them on the field, we’ll put them on the rooftops, we’ll even put them on the bench.”

  The fans soon got a close-up of the first Fenway no-hitter since Dave Morehead’s in 1965 and it came from an unlikely source—Derek Lowe, who’d been booed mercilessly during his 5-10 campaign the previous year. “It’s surreal,” marveled Lowe, whose teammates presented him the ball on a silver platter after he’d allowed Tampa Bay only one base runner during his 10-0 masterpiece on April 27.

  While Lowe went on to start the All-Star Game and have a career year (21-8), his teammates faded after a 40-17 start that helped them stay in first place until late June; they finished more than 10 games astern.

  Sport’s most storied rivalry heated up during the off-season when Lucchino referred to the Yankees as the “Evil Empire“ and New York owner George Steinbrenner called the Sox president the game’s “foremost chameleon of all time.” The clubs fought each other to a near-standstill in 2003, with New York winning the season series, 10-9. “They know we are here,” Little proclaimed in late July. “And they know that we are not going away.”

  SWEET SEATS

  They have been voted the best seats in baseball by ESPN SportsTravel and USA Today. And even Fenway purists would have to admit that when the Red Sox added seats atop the left-field wall, they did it right.

  When his ownership group took over the team in 2002, John Henry broached the idea of putting seats atop the 37-foot-tall Green Monster, which has been called the most famous wall this side of China. It wasn’t the first renovation project Henry & Co. undertook, but, initially, it was the most controversial.

  “Certainly there were raised eyebrows,” recalled Charles Steinberg, former Red Sox executive vice president for public affairs. But by the time the project was finished, it became the most popular of the many ballpark upgrades. Henry credits Janet Marie Smith, the Red Sox senior vice president of planning and development, with the design of 269 stools with bar rails. The section has three rows, plus a fourth of standing-room-only and concession stands. The Red Sox resisted the urge to cram in as many seats as possible.

  The challenge, said Smith, was “how to put seats up there without overpowering the Green Monster. We wanted to make the seats special even after the novelty wore off.”

  “They should’ve done it years ago,” Marty Feeney, of Quincy, Massachusetts, told the Denver Post when he attended the 2007 World Series. “Now you get the real feel of a home-run shot. The camera’s on you. You get your one minute of fame.”

  During a game in 2008, one fan atop the Monster was swamped with text messages from friends within seconds after he narrowly missed catching a home-run ball.

  Smith was with the Red Sox for nearly eight years (she left in 2009 to help renovate the Rose Bowl), during which time the team spent roughly $150 million on improvements to the park, increasing Fenway’s capacity by 5,000, while waterproofing its leaky stands and reinforcing its foundations to last another 40 years.

  Another of the most popular changes is just outside the walls of the park: the Yawkey Way concourse, which debuted in 2002. The street named for longtime owner Tom Yawkey is closed to traffic and non-ticket holders on game days, creating a sort of street carnival with entertainment, food carts, vendors, and often a chance to visit with and get an autograph from a former Sox player.

  RECENT CHANGES MADE TO FENWAY:

  2002: Dugout seats and Yawkey Way concourse.

  2003: Green Monster seats and right-field concourse.

  2004: Right-field roof seats.

  2005: Third-base concourse and Game On! Sports Bar.

  2006: EMC Club and State Street Pavilion.

  2007: Jordan’s Third-Base Deck.

  2008: State Street Pavilion expansion, Coca-Cola Corner, Bleacher Bar under center-field bleachers.

  2009: Right-field roof renovations, repair of original 1912 seating bowl.

  “When I was there, I always realized there was something bigger than us as players: these people that had bled, cried tears, and cheered over the years. Winning a World Series in Boston is more than an individual player winning a World Series—it was winning a World Series for these people.”

  —Nomar Garciaparra, March 2010

  The Sox had become relentless buckaroos who rode into the late summer with a sense of urgency, sporting red T-shirts that declared “THE TIME IS NOW . . . SO COWBOY UP.” Yet Boston needed a near-miracle to earn a postseason date with the Yankees after losing the first two games of their best-of-five divisional series at Oakland. “I know it can be done,” said Varitek, who had played on the 1999 club that had come back to beat the Indians after spotting them a 2-0 advantage in the playoffs. “Just let us get home and see what happens.”

  The odds, though, were daunting, especially given that the Sox had lost 10 straight playoff games to the Athletics. “[Our fans] may be jumping off bridges,” conceded Garciaparra, “but I guarantee they’ll get out of the water and they’ll be out there supporting us on Saturday.”

  It was almost Sunday morning by the time the club began its great escape with Trot Nixon’s long, looping pinch-hit homer into the center-field seats for a walk-off victory in the 11th inning. “There was a little gust of wind from the good Lord,” said Nixon, after his homer sealed the 3-1 triumph, “and it ended up going out of the ballpark.”

  There was an earthly intervention on Sunday afternoon from David Ortiz, who cranked the winning double off the Oakland bullpen in the eighth. “I’ve never cried at a baseball game before but I couldn’t help it,” said Henry after Ortiz, who’d been 0 for 16 in the series, knocked in Garciaparra and Ramirez for a most unlikely 5-4 decision. “It was an unforgettable moment.”

  A street-fair atmosphere took root on Yawkey Way outside Fenway Park beginning in 2002, but it’s for ticket-holders only. No ticket? The Cask ‘n Flagon still accepts all comers.

  SO LONG, TEDDY BALLGAME

  When Ted Williams died at 83 on July 5, 2002, there was no wake and no funeral. Only the makings of a circus, with his three children battling over what exactly his last intentions were, and son John Henry Williams insisting that his father had signed an agreement to be cryonically frozen in Arizona.

  Though the legal battle over Williams’s remains would play out for months, the Red Sox held a ceremony in his honor on July 22 at Fenway Park, where lifelong friends and former teammates found kinship and a measure of closure for the passing of “Teddy Ballgame.”

  “The tribute was to him and his life, what he did on and off the field,” said former Sox shortstop Rico Petrocelli. “And that’s the way it should have been. I think we needed this, we being Boston and the former players, needed this closure.”

  Jerry Coleman, a former Yankee rival and fellow fighter pilot, met Williams at the 1950 All-Star Game. He said he immediately admired Williams. “He went to the wall to make a catch and crashed into it. He broke his arm,” said Coleman. A few innings later, Williams came to the plate and singled. “I was thinking, ‘Geez, this guy hits better with a broken arm than most guys do with two arms.’”

  Said Dan Shaughnessy: “Teddy Ballgame was our own Babe Ruth, an oversized figure who forged his way into every New England household. . . . Forget cryonics. The Kid stays alive through folklore, the tel
ling of tall tales. He’s a baseball Bunyan.”

  In a sad footnote to the Williams ceremony, long-time Sox announcer Ned Martin died of an apparent heart attack at the Raleigh airport after participating in the tribute at Fenway. Martin, who delighted New England with his erudition and gentle wit, described the Sox action on radio and television between 1961 and 1992.

  Martin served in the Marines in World War II and saw action in Iwo Jima. He worked with Ken Coleman on Sox TV broadcasts from 1966-72. He famously cried, “There’s pandemonium on the field” when Petrocelli caught the pop-up to end the final game of the 1967 regular season, as the Sox won their first pennant in 21 years.

  As a closer, Lowe held off the A’s to save Martinez’s win in the finale on the Coast, and then he and his mates headed for the Bronx, and grabbed the ALCS opener from the Yankees with three homers and Wakefield’s devilish knuckler. That was the beginning of what would be the most spirited, memorable and, ultimately, painful October meeting between the two rivals.

  The first game in the Fens produced a bench-clearing brawl that included Don Zimmer, the former Sox skipper turned pinstriped Buddha. Zimmer charged Martinez, who’d thrown at Karim Garcia’s head, and the 72-year-old was tossed to the ground in the scuffle. “When this series began everyone knew it was going to be quite a battle, very emotional, with a lot of intensity,” said Little after the visitors had prevailed, 4-3. “But I think we’ve upgraded it from a battle to a war.”

  Though Wakefield evened things in Game 4, the Yankees countered with a 4-2 victory that sent them home with two chances to win the pennant. “The clock is ticking on us right now,” acknowledged Little. “This isn’t something we’ve never been through before. We were through this about a week ago.”

  Red Sox pitcher Pedro Martinez threw Yankee bench coach Don Zimmer to the ground after Zimmer accosted him during a brawl in the fourth inning of Game 3 of the AL Championship Series on October 11, 2003 in Fenway Park.

  Despite his controversial antics, Manny Ramirez never lacked a following in Boston, on or off the field.

  Jason Varitek grappled with the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez after Rodriguez was hit by a pitch from Bronson Arroyo on July 24, 2004 at Fenway Park. They were among four players ejected after a bench-clearing brawl. The Red Sox rallied from a 9-4 deficit to win the game, 11-10.

  ROCKIN’ THE PARK

  This time, when Fenway Park echoed with the chords of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” it was different.

  The organist was Danny Federici of the E Street Band, and Bruce Springsteen was taking the field for the first rock concert in the park’s 91 years.

  It was September 6, 2003, and it had been 30 years since Stevie Wonder, War, and Ray Charles had played at Fenway as part of the Newport Jazz Festival. But this was different.

  “What this park needs is a rock ‘n’ roll baptism, a rock ‘n’ roll bar mitzvah . . . a rock ‘n’ roll exorcism,” Springsteen told the capacity crowd of more than 35,000 as he and his bandmates played a typical “Boss” show that encompassed 28 songs and three hours, ending appropriately with a cover of the ubiquitous Beantown anthem, “Dirty Water,” helped along by Peter Wolf, former lead singer of the Boston-based J. Geils Band.

  Bruce was starting the final month of a 14-month world tour in support of his The Rising album, a paean to America in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. His Boston audience was receptive to all of it, except his teasing about the Yankees rivalry. When he brought up the “evil citizens” to the South, the crowd booed lustily.

  Still, Springsteen obviously got it. Toward the end of the show, he said, “There’s not many places where you can walk into an empty place and feel the soul of the city, but this is one.”

  Since Springsteen headlined Fenway’s coming-out party as a rock music venue, it has hosted at least one major rock or pop act per year, and it often plays host to the Dropkick Murphys, the backbeat of Red Sox Nation.

  21ST CENTURY PLAYERS

  2003: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

  2004: Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefer Band

  2005: The Rolling Stones

  2006: Dave Matthews Band with Sheryl Crow

  2007: The Police

  2008: Neil Diamond

  2009: Dave Matthews Band with Willie Nelson

  2009: Phish

  2009: Paul McCartney

  2010: Aerosmith and the J. Geils Band

  2011: New Kids on the Block and Backstreet Boys

  Standing atop the Red Sox dugout, the Dropkick Murphys played “Dirty Water” in October 2004.

  “Other places have spectators;

  Fenway has 35,000 participants.”

  —Bill Veeck, longtime owner and baseball executive

  Teammates swarmed David Ortiz after his 10th-inning home run clinched a three-game sweep of the AL Division Series against the Anaheim Angels on October 8, 2004.

  A fan was rewarded for keeping the faith in the 2004 AL Championship Series against the Yankees: David Ortiz rounded third after hitting a home run in the eighth inning of Game 5, which Boston went on to win, 5-4, in 14 innings.

  Resurrections had become routine. So when Boston came from two runs down to force a seventh game with a 9-6 victory, anything seemed possible. Before the Sox took the field, the Fenway grounds crew painted a 2003 World Series logo on the grass behind home plate. “They’re crazy!” remarked Yankee closer Mariano Rivera. “It’s silly. . . . Maybe they want to believe they won.”

  The finale, with Martinez and Clemens dueling again, was more painful than the 1986 World Series nightmare in Queens. With his club ahead, 5-2, in the bottom of the eighth and a fresh bullpen in reserve, Little left Martinez on the mound as the Yankees rallied and erased the Sox lead. The season slipped away in the 11th inning when pinch hitter Aaron “Boone-bino” Boone, a light-hitting infielder, lofted a Wakefield knuckler into the left-field seats. “Go back to Boston, boys, good-bye!” New York owner George Steinbrenner crowed as the buses pulled out of the stadium lot.

  That was the end for Little, who was let go before the end of the month. “Yes, we came up short of our goal,” Little acknowledged in a statement, “and to the Red Sox Nation I say: I hurt with each of you. It was painful for all of us.”

  For his successor, the front office selected Terry Francona, who knew about working in a demanding town after managing for four years in Philadelphia. “Think about it for a second,” said Francona, who’d been a big-league player like his father, Tito. “I’ve been released from six teams. I’ve been fired as a manager. I’ve got no hair. I’ve got a nose that’s three sizes too big for my face and I grew up in a major-league clubhouse. My skin’s pretty thick. I’ll be okay.”

  Prospects for an autumn rematch seemed remote in 2004 after the Sox had fallen well behind the Yankees by late July. But one startling turnabout at Fenway foreshadowed what ranks as the greatest resurrection in baseball history. Aroused by a brawl touched off by Varitek shoving his mitt in Alex Rodriguez’s face after he’d been plunked by Bronson Arroyo, the Sox rallied from two runs down in the ninth and won on Bill Mueller’s two-run homer off Rivera.

  “I hope we look back a while from now and we’re saying that this brought us together,” Francona said. “I hope a long time from now we look back and say this did it.”

  That set the stage for another October showdown with New York. But Boston first had to finish off the Angels, who arrived at Fenway on the verge of extinction in their divisional series after being hammered twice at home. What the Sox needed, on the heels of setting a dubious record by blowing a 6-1 lead in the seventh, was a coup degrace. Ortiz provided it with a two-run shot over the Green Monster off Jarrod Washburn with two outs in the 10th for an 8-6 triumph and the second Sox sweep of a postseason series since 1903.

  Fenway was more than ready for World Series action as Game 1 got underway in 2004. A historic sweep was ahead.

  “Now we have two more celebrations to go,” observed Theo Epstein, who had become t
he youngest general manager in MLB history two years earlier when the Red Sox named him their GM at the age of 28.

  That seemed impossible when Boston dropped the first two games of the championship series at New York, and then absorbed an ugly 19-8 smackdown at home that was the worst postseason loss in franchise history. No major-league ball club in history had won a seven-game series after losing the first three matchups. The only way to do it, Francona pointed out, was to win one each day.

  His club came within one inning of a devastating sweep, trailing by a score of 4-3 in Game 4 with Rivera on the mound in the ninth. Then Kevin Millar drew a leadoff walk and the greatest comeback in MLB history was underway.

  Dave Roberts, who’d been picked up from the Dodgers at the trading deadline as a speedy spare part, was sent in as a pinch runner and stole second on the next pitch. Then Mueller knocked him in with a single to center to tie the game and send it into extra innings. David Ortiz won it in the 12th with a two-run homer into the visiting bullpen off Paul Quantrill at 1:22 a.m. “This is a team that never gives up,” Ortiz declared after Boston had won the five-hour duel by a 6-4 count. “Great heart.”

  The Sox again defied probability later that same day with another far-fetched escape. This time, it was a 5-4 triumph that required 14 innings and five hours and 49 minutes to complete, and ended with another killing blow from Ortiz, whose two-out single to center scored Johnny Damon. “To continually do it night in and night out, it’s ridiculous,” marveled Red Sox first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz. “It’s a freak of nature.”

  Had Ortiz not clouted a homer in the eighth to help his teammates climb out of a two-run hole, the season likely would have ended an inning later. “Being down 3-0 and being down the last two nights shows the depth, the character, the heart, the guts of our ball club,” proclaimed Wakefield, who collected the victory as Boston’s seventh pitcher. “And it took every ounce of whatever we had left to win tonight’s game and to win last night’s game.”