Touring Fenway Park

So after leaving Cape Cod Monday morning, me, Kim and Brian drove back to Boston, we were hoping to get to be tourists all day until our flights, but it didn't quite work out. Traffic was awful getting to Boston, so all we had time for was the Fenway tour. For starters I can't believe how busy these tours were on a mid-Monday. We got there at about 11:30 and the 12pm tour was sold out! So we had to kill some time and bought tickets for the 1pm tour. These tours allowe up to 200 people per tour!!!! Sold out on a Monday afternoon!!!! And its not like it was a bunch of kids who were still out of school for the summer. So we had over an hour to kill and just walked around the outside of the stadium. There seemed to be alot of construction going on outside the stadium. Parking seemed like it is probably a problem on game days. We had to wind up paying $15 to park in a garage in the middle of the day. Only because I apparently broke the parking meter we originally found! Oops! There's actually a Fenway High School across from the stadium. How cool is that? Going to high school across the street from Fenway! Anyways, kept walking...people charge $30, $40, even $50 for gameday parking. Unreal! We went into some bar to get a beer, it was called "Game On". They had some pretty nice TVs in there. Then met up with the tour at the big souvineer shop on Yawkey Way. This old guy started the tour in the shop with a couple corny jokes. He was asking where people were from, some kid said Ohio. He then went for an Ohio State joke...saying they'll be really good...once they get everyone out of jail...someone was from canada and he commented about the national anthem, it has been changed to something like Oh No the Expos are gone. He asked what the NY in New York stood for...and said "Next Year". I felt the need to booo on that one. I'm guessing he didn't use that line in 2003, eh? :) Oh, a friggin shot glass (I collect them) in that place was $10!!! I couldn't do it. Even in the airport the only shot glasses I saw were Red Sox ones and were $10. Oh well.

Alright, so we finally start the tour, went in the stadium and the first stop was the seats above the Red Sox dugout, but still a couple dozen rows up. (See view from first 2 pictures attached).The tour guide was some young 20 something asian girl. She was actually pretty good, she knew her Red Sox trivia...even cracked a few jokes. She made sure there were no Yankees fans around. I was wearing my Mets t-shirt and people were giving me crap for it, but in a fun way. I just had the easy comeback and said, hey, we hate the Yankees too! Anyways, the "trivia"...the very first Red Sox game was against the NY Islanders...now the Yankees. Found out that the ladder on the green monster is absolutely worthless (the black one, not that silver one that is actually being used as I took the picture!). The green monster used to actually be navy blue (Yankees colors???) with ads all over it. The players started complaining that it was distracting as they were trying to hit, so the owner changed the color and removed the ads. The owners wife actually picked out the color and can now only be purchased by the owner of the red sox and the head groundscrew. So, no one can paint their houses that color - Fenway Green.

Next we went to the seats all the way upstairs in RF. I learned that Pesky's pole (the yellow foul pole in right field) wasn't officially named that until last year apparently. It was named after an old Red Sox player named Johnny Pesky who seemed to hit all his home runs right by that pole - which is the shortest homerun distance in the major leagues (302ft). Anyways, the seats up here are actually tables, with either 2 or 4 seats per table. These seats cannot be owned by season ticket people, they are put up for a lottery and if you win, you have the option to buy a table, once per season, and includes 4 seats for about $500. But you get a $75 voucher for food/drink I think. You can kinda see (in the picture on the right) that the Red Sox grounds crew got a "B" on the outfield grass. Kim was curious and asked the question if all teams have a B in their outfield. Ok, so maybe it came out wrong, but it was funny.

Next we went over to the seats farther up and above the red sox dugout. Got a good view of the seats above the green monster where the prior tour was at, I guess. The tour guide said that the seats right behind home plate and upstairs, some actually have seat warmers built in. You have to buy those tickets and commit for 7 years or something. I think a seasons worth costs about $325k. All the seats in that place were insane. The seats we were actually sitting at were about $90 a game, a little bit higher sell for "only" $75.

After that we went up to the green monster seats, which the tour guide said sold out for the season in just over an hour. Apparently they have one red seat in the outfield. A long time ago, Ted Williams hit the longest HR in Fenway history - 502ft (kinda surprised no one's topped that) and it apparently hit some guy in that seat who fell asleep. (Williams said that he noticed the guy sleeping and aimed for him - he's a comic too apparently) Anyways, the guy who got hit was a yankee fan. After getting hit by that ball, the media was asking him questions, asking if it was fate telling him not to root for the yankees anymore...and they said he woke up as a Red Sox fan. So the headline the next day said something like "Williams knocks sense into Yankee fan". The left field foul pole is called the Fisk Foul Pole (I got to touch it!) because of the famous homerun by Carlton Fisk in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series where you can see Fisk trying to push the ball fair with his arms as he's jumping on his way to first base. The ball did stay fair and the Red Sox won game 6...but lost game 7.

Then on the way out, saw Coco Crisp (yes, there is a baseball player named Coco Crisp) pulling out in his orange hummer.

And that was our tour of Fenway. Well worth (Brian's) $12 (Thanks again!!!). I wonder if every stadium has tours like that? Fenway has got to be the best one just because its the smallest and oldest stadium out there. A coworker of mine said he took the Braves tour of Turner Field...not quite 200 people...he said there were about 8. HA! One thing I regret is that apparently during the offseason the tour includes alot more, like a tour of the clubhouse, maybe even the dugout and the field. And I was sad not to have gotten a tour of the Bill Buckner hall of fame :)