I was in Boston for the Ontario long weekend and I attended two games at Fenway Park, both Red Sox walk-off wins. Both wins came at the expense of the Detroit Tigers whose bullpen was exposed in these games after Jose Valverde had to throw over fifty pitches on Friday to nail down a win for the Tigers.
Obviously Fenway Park is a busy place, they have had over 600 sell-outs in a row. The aisles are narrow and the seats are small as you would expect with an old park. There are obstructed seats back in the grandstand so you have to be careful in ordering tickets. I went with tickets from stubhub and they are not cheap, you have to pay around $120-$150 for a decent seat.
Here is the famous view of the main stand behind the plate at Fenway. The picture is taken from on top of the Green Monster. You need a ticket to get onto the green monster and I didn't feel like paying $800 for a seat there (scalper prices). But I got lucky, a combination of two female security guards having an indepth chat and the camera in my hand which made me look somewhat official allowed me to sneak into the monster area. You might not know that there are three rows of seating atop the monster and two rows of standing room. The standing room extends a bit longer than the seats so there are probably as many standing room seats for sale as there are seats.
The grren monster includes a scoreboard and before the game the attendant updates the pitchers from the outside while making sure he doesn't get hit by a batting practice line drive.
On Saturday Miguel Cabrera in one round of batting practice hit four home runs in five swings. As he stepped out of the cage the crowd gave him an ovation which Miguel acknowledged. In his first at-bat on Saturday Cabrera hit one over the monster and out of the stadium off Dice-K.
Here is the game view from the monster seats.
The Red Sox trailed heading to the ninth on Saturday. David Ortiz came to bat with the bases loaded and the Sox down by two, he doubled off the wall scoring three runs for the win. Once he got to second he started his celebration, yelling to the skies.
It wasn't long before his teammates joined him.
On Sunday the Tigers trailed 3-0 heading to the ninth. With two runners on Jonathon Papelbon came on to face Cabrera. First pitch, mano-a-mano, Cabrera doubled off the centre field wall to make it a one run game. Don Kelly ran for Cabrera and when Jhonny Peralta singled Kelly scored the tying run much to the delight of third base coach Gene Lamont.
The Tigers bullpen put the first two runners on in the bottom of the ninth. Marco Scutaro was called on to bunt.
The pitcher, Robbie Weinhardt, and third baseman Peralta, got in each others way fielding the bunt. Weinhardt made the throw, and threw it down the line, ending the game.
Marco Scutaro was mobbed .... until he escaped.
