Mike Green, an original Batter's Box roster member and still a regular Bauxite visitor to Canada's best baseball site, is a wonderful writer. So when he asks if he can contribute a "Pinch Hit" feature to the site every now and again, the only concern we have is that readers will want to know why there aren't more frequent Green missives.
Recently Mike and his lovely bride Ellen took a trip to Boston to visit Fenway Park. (Yes, yes, insert your own "Green Monster" pun {here}.) Let's talk a stroll down Yawkey Way and into the Fens with the Greens ...
Walking up Yawkey Way from Boylston Blvd. yesterday at noon, I was on air. The turnstiles are set up in the middle of the street, and passing through them feels more like entering carnival grounds than a ballpark. The handler scans our tickets and says simply "enjoy the game."
There are no security checks or restrictions whatsoever, which I am grateful for -- we are bringing in buns from a wonderful Turkish bakery in Waterford. We make our way up to section 25; the Orioles are in the middle of batting practice as we sit down on the slightly uncomfortable wooden seats just inside the third base bag and about 40-50 rows back.
Fenway is a fan’s park. The closeness of the seats to the foul lines makes the park unfriendly to pitchers, but ensures that many more fans enjoy the immediacy of the action. The fans return the park’s love in quite tangible ways -- from their unapologetic participation in sentimental and somewhat hokey rituals to their tolerance for the struggles of home team players.
It was Vermont Day [the day before] at the park; the Sox honoured before the game an elderly doctor who had performed quite a few good works including setting up the Vermont chapter of the American Association of Family Physicians. Half the crowd gave him a standing O.
John Smoltz started yesterday for the Sox. After I told Ellen all about his Hall of Fame career and his arm surgeries, he came out and was hit hard. Roberts and Pie singled to start the game. Adam Jones stepped into the box. I noticed the breadth of his shoulders and the 10 on the back of his shirt, and memories of a young Andre Dawson came to me. Jones struck out, as a young Hawk might have, Markakis hit a sacrifice fly and the O’s led 1-0 after half an inning.
I thought back to my first intended trip to Fenway. I was 12 years old. My parents had planned our first and only long summer road trip from Toronto to New York, Boston, Nova Scotia (via the ferry from Bar Harbour, Maine) and back in our Peugeot station wagon.
On the first day, we were driving on the New York Thruway in the Finger Lakes region when smoke starting coming out of the engine. We made it to a repairman in Ithaca, who told my parents that we had blown a head gasket and that it would take a day or two for a new one to arrive (Peugeots being even more uncommon then than they are now).
After some ice cream and a morning hacking around on a golf course, the part arrived and we returned to the road, with New York and Yankee Stadium now off the agenda. We made it to Boston, where we had a clam chowder at the famous and thoroughly mediocre Durgin Park restaurant. The day before the Sox game we had tickets for, we were driving on the Interstate 93 to somewhere inconsequential (in the mind of a 12 year old baseball fan) when a tire blew out. My mother was, and is, superstitious. As far as she was concerned this second driving event constituted two strikes against us, and something much worse happened on the third one. So it was that we headed back to Toronto immediately without seeing the game.
Smoltz continued to be hit hard with the O’s peppering line drives everywhere, and leaves after five innings, shortly after a Markakis homer. Meanwhile, David Hernandez is cruising for the Orioles, initially on the strength of his stuff (a 95+ fastball, a change, and a slider), and later because the Sox look plain tired. The Sox trail 6-1 late in the game, but the fans are very much in it.
After the full-throated singing of God Bless America by a Vermont native during the seventh inning stretch and the slight altering of Take Me Out to the Ballgame ("root, root, root for the Red Sox"), I tell Ellen that the Orioles bullpen is a weak spot, and with Hernandez near 100 pitches, the game might yet get interesting. A glance at the out-of-town scoreboard shows that the Jays have defeated the Rays 5-1, and the two of us give a quiet cheer.
It’s still 6-1 after the top of the eighth, when it is "Sweet Caroline" time. The two large women to our left (are they sisters or lovers?) stand and belt it out with enthusiasm. Meanwhile, the three elderly women with their knitted blankets in front of us visit with a friend from a nearby section. Dustin Pedroia doubles in a run in the bottom of the eighth, and then Kevin Youkilis hits a fly ball to centerfield which pretty obviously does not have enough to go. The fans ooh and ahh, but it settles in Adam Jones’ glove on the edge of the warning track, and that, for all intents and purposes, is the ballgame.
After the game is over, I am still on air, as part of a crowd surging past Lansdowne into Kenmore Square. The C train into Coolidge Corner where our hotel and Trader Joe’s await is filled with sombre Sox fans. Later at the airport, our flight is delayed two hours -- will Air Canada Jazz be renamed Air Canada Blues by passengers? -- but even though we arrive home well after midnight, the day has been perfect.
