FAITHFUL TO FENWAY Believing in Boston, Baseball, and America’s Most Beloved Ballpark pdf

[...]... Unlike most buildings in most cities, Fenway Park brings you into it, even if you’re only observing it from the outside You get the feeling that something has happened there and that “something” is significant There is a certain but hard -to- define buzz emanating from the ballpark that demands onlookers to take notice of it and recognize it as a place that is important to the people of Boston who, since... tickets are the most expensive in baseball, Fenway Park sells out more 22 FAITHFUL TO FENWAY than any other ballpark in the majors and it is not because the Red Sox keep winning championships, nor is it about the individual players who are regularly swapped and shopped to other teams Why then have Red Sox fans and patrons fought against the building of a new ballpark and fought to “save” Fenway Park with... five-minute walk to the T and then a fifteen-minute ride to Fenway Park, we decided to jump in my car and drive down Beacon Street We had to be prepared for what we might encounter in the next twenty minutes and didn’t want to get stuck in the crowd that we knew would flood Kenmore Square When we turned off the television and left my apartment, it was the top of the eighth inning and the Red Sox were leading... have invested not only time and money but meaning and value into it Fenway is nothing less than a national icon, and for many people it is Boston’s most treasured local attraction and delicacy Not only do people pack the ballpark on game days, but hordes of baseball fans also flock to the bars and restaurants that surround Fenway and flow into Kenmore Square, which is only a stone’s throw away Certainly... make pilgrimages to Fenway to pay homage to one of American culture’s most cherished shrines They take the tours, touch the Wall and the new seats on top of it, and try to remember the things that happened there that they only know about secondhand They try to imagine players of yesterday, from stories that their grandfathers told or that they only vaguely recall themselves Memories and stories are shared... communities and collective identities That is, I am interested in the ways that people use places like 16 FAITHFUL TO FENWAY Image not available As Updike notes, everything, from the field, to the outfield walls, to the press box, and the metal limbs that block views and keep the ballpark standing, is painted green (Photo by the author) Fenway Park as cornerstones for understanding both cities and themselves... high enough to keep us away from being a part of history.1 Whose history and why that history matters, however, were two questions swirling in my head as we ran through the parking lot across from Fenway, with a radio in hand, listening, as the Red Sox took the field in the bottom of the ninth for the last time in 2004 Not many people who saw the Red Sox win the 1918 World Series were living in the fall... cultural landscape There are about as many opinions about Fenway Park as there are people who have sat in its wooden seats or dreamed of doing so one day Those opinions remain of paramount importance because plans for tearing Fenway Park down and building a new ballpark have played a large role in its story since the mid-1990s And with Yankee Stadium coming down in the Bronx, meeting the same fate as most. .. Red Sox were out of town just to see if Fenway could still draw people in without the team It did I walked around the inside of the park, from the executive offices through the tunnel behind home and first and up to the standing-roomonly section, where I conducted many on-the-fly interviews with cheering and jeering fans I sat in the front row of the coveted Green Monster 18 FAITHFUL TO FENWAY seats Thirty... The line stretched down the street, around the corner, and continued several hundred feet down Brookline Avenue The timing (the day after the Red Sox won the World Series) and the place (outside Fenway Park) added to the mystique of the sought-after treasures 8 FAITHFUL TO FENWAY Image not available The Red Sox and slugger Manny Ramirez thanks the Fenway Faithful for believing in and supporting them . alt="" Faithful to Fenway