Fenway

When Sally and I went up to Boston and got some bad news on my clinical trial, we had arrived on Sunday afternoon for the Monday appointments, and in the interim we had plans to catch the Royals against the Sox that night.  At least some stars were aligning properly.

We had made a few pilgrimages to Wrigley. but never to Fenway, and now both the Royals and Sox are gunning hard for the post-season. Of course we would proudly represent Kansas City -- we brought along our World Champion gear, one of us a little more stylish than the other -- but we didn't know quite how the local fan base would receive us. On our first trip to Boston 25 years ago, after driving cross-country with Kansas tags, as Sally tried to navigate the cow-trail streets downtown a local driver helpfully suggested to us "Dorothy, go back to Kansas!"

That is apparently a funny joke to someone who lives in Boston. They are a tough crowd, even to their own. Ted Williams was not only the greatest hitter in the history of baseball, he was also a Korean War hero who raised money for children's cancer treatments. But the fans gave him a hard time because he was not properly deferential to the fans. (Nats fans, like Royals fans, are consistently polite; we stand and cheer even for the guys we don't like.)

So Sally and I approached the park warily, as we had in Philly earlier in the year, and found that in fact our seats behind home plate were within spilled beer range of the standing-room area where hooligans could congregate pre-riot.

Fortunately we had some serious protection. Sitting behind us was an 81-year-old grandmother from Connecticut (which is apparently the Yankees and Red Sox Alsace-Lorraine) who said she had been coming to Fenway once a year since 2004 just to see David Ortiz hit a home run, and she had not seen one yet. She didn't care who we cheered for, she said, as long as we didn't cheer against Papi. We put our hands to our hearts and assured her that we had no intention of cheering against Papi, in Fenway, at the end of his valedictory season. There were those ruffians to consider.

Photo by Connecticut Grandma.

The Royals didn't show the Sox such respect, however. They went ahead in the second with a Salvador Perez solo home run that bounced off something in left field; that big green wall is quite disorienting. Then, bottom of the fourth, Royals up 2-0. Big Papi goes deep. The stadium erupted, the grandmother erupted, and we gave her enthusiastic and sincere high-fives. She told us it was now OK for the Royals to win and pulled out her phone to call the extended family.

The Sox moved ahead in the fifth 4-2, generating enough enthusiasm to rally a few of those hooligans behind us. One particularly well lubricated young man waited for the stadium to settle down then shouted, over and over, "Let's Go Red Sox," while pounding the standing-room rail. A few scattered fans joined in, then settled down, then after a pause, he resumed. We huddled behind Grandma.

His cheers of sorts continued even past the top of the sixth, when the Royals put the game away with all of 8 runs. That gave us a chance for some contemplation of the park, which struck me as claustrophobic as much as historic.

Can't they just knock down that outfield wall and start over?

Royals stadium -- now The K -- was designed to nestle into the open expanses of the Blue Valley in suburban Kansas City. There was, and still is, nothing much there but the intersection of two cross-country interstates, leaving plenty of space for tailgating as well as room for Amos Otis, or Lorenzo Cain, to roam in the outfield. It is a wide-open ballpark for a team of the West that likes to run.

Fenway seems to have been designed by guys in tri-cornered hats, its dimensions constrained by the effective range of the muskets of the local militia, or perhaps the grazing rights of the Royal Governor's Sheep. While acknowledging Fenway's history and tradition and all that, and genuflecting to Ted Williams as required, to me the Green Monster in Left Field looked like a big construction wall they forgot to remove. Then there's this thing in Center Field where they failed to line up the bullpen with the bleachers -- the architect having spent too much time in the local tavern debating the Articles of Confederation -- leaving an odd angle more appropriate for miniature golf than baseball. And Right Field -- Right Field just keeps on going, out into the neighborhood, backing up apparently into an alley behind that local tavern, or crossing the border into the next little state up the coast. Maine?

Who knows. Royals, 10-4.