I haven't written as much here lately but that's not for lack of activity. Over Labor Day weekend, my wife and I went to Boston for the hell of it. It's not the first time; sometimes we go for only a few hours and then drive right back. It's just a little 300 mile road trip.
This time we stayed overnight. The first day we visited Fenway Park (never been there before) and saw the hated Red Sox beat the hapless White Sox. I actually rooted for the Red Sox because I don't really care; I was just there to see the park.
I've been more into baseball lately - I used to love it, and then lost a bit of interest when players started wearing these
ill-fitting uniforms in the 90's (I'm kind of kidding, although I do think most baseball players look ridiculous these days). I'm really into
baseball parks right now. I think stadiums in general are some of our most impressive and potentially lasting monuments (except that we have a bad habit of tearing them down usually after just a few decades). And they're definitely among the last big public works
we in the United States specifically put any real effort into making beautiful and uplifting public spaces.
Fenway's the oldest park in baseball at 101 years, and it really is amazing for that reason. There's nothing "retro" or contrived about it - it's authentically old and quirky.
Despite its age, Fenway's got plenty of good food. The Fish Shack is run by Legal Sea Foods, and the clam chowder tasted just like the stuff you get at their restaurants (I've had it - more on that in another post). The fish & chips was a little disappointing, though.
Something great about these old concourses too, even though you can't see the field from them like in a new stadium.
The view from our seats. A little far away, but at least they were unobstructed! And not too expensive despite coming from a reseller (aka a legal scalper). I liked that the usher actually wiped down the seats before we sat down - they do it for everyone.
The Red Sox web site is interesting in that it obviously knows where the obstructed seats are and sells them last, regardless of section - I tried every single option I could think of to get different seats on their site and every one of them had a beam directly in front. If you're a n00b like us, you really need to be careful about this at Fenway! It's very easy to get stuck with a view like
this one (those seats look like they're right behind where we were). Such are the joys of an actually-old ballpark. I ended up buying our seats from
Ace Ticket after looking at seat views on
Precise Seating, which really helped a lot.
Panorama shot. That's the foul pole near the center of the shot.
Green monster! I still remember watching Gary Carter's
two home runs in the 86 World Series over that thing on TV, back before they had the seats up there. (It looks weird
without seats now, when I watch old games.)
Sadly, no home runs on this night. I'm usually okay with that - I like
small ball - but I just wanted to see a home run hit over the monster.
The game's scorecard. I don't usually keep score but wanted to see if I still could. I think the last time I tried to do it was at a California Angels game my dad took me to in like 1987. I still have that scorecard somewhere and now that he's no longer here, it's a meaningful souvenir to me - something about having a personal, handwritten record documenting something you shared with somebody else. Anyway I was happy to see after the fact that my scorecard on this night was pretty much right, if a little messy. (Though I'm glad nobody batted around in any inning.) You really shouldn't keep score in pen.
I was originally going to write about the whole little mini-trip here, but this is long enough so I'll do day 2 in a separate post!
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