Fenway: A lyric little bandbox of a ballpark | Opinion
Howard G. Sutton, who started his newspaper career at The Warwick Beacon, is publisher emeritus of The Providence Journal and a lifelong Yankees fan.
“People ask me what I do in winter when there is no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.” − Rogers Hornsby
Over 112 years ago with little fanfare, General Charles Taylor (publisher of The Boston Globe, founding member of the elite Algonquin Club, and principal of the Fenway Improvement Association) along with his son John Taylor, owner of the Red Sox, began construction of Fenway Park. It would cost $650,000 and take only six months to build the 27,000-seat ballpark resplendent with green Kentucky bluegrass.
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Fenway has made more than its fair share of baseball history, has had more facelifts than Jane Fonda and is a bucket list destination for any real fan of the greatest game on earth.
“Baseball is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona.” − George Will
A few fitting tributes to the Taylors’ creation:
“As I grew up, I knew that as a building (Fenway Park) was on the level of Mount Olympus, the pyramid at Giza, the nation’s Capitol, the Czar’s Winter Palace and the Louvre − except that it is better than all those inconsequential places.” − Commissioner Bartlett Giamatti
“Fenway is the essence of baseball.” − Tom Seaver
“New England’s parlor, a region’s night club and the Olde Town Team’s hearth. To generations of Americans, going to Fenway Park has been like coming home.” − Curt Smith
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“When the Red Sox win, the P.A. system immediately blares forth 'Dirty Water,’ a number 11 hit for the Standells back in 1966. It’s usually no more than background music as we make our slow, slow way to the exits. But after a dramatic win … a good percentage of the fans hang around and sing 'I love that dirty water…Oh Boston you’re my home.' I don’t sing along because Boston’s not my home, not really. But if you’re a baseball fan, you haven’t lived until you’ve heard 30,000-some New Englanders sing their victory song, in the greatest ballpark in the world.” − Rob Neyer, ESPN
“Why? Why should the bond between people and their baseball team be so intense? Fenway Park is part of it, offering a physical continuum of the bond, not only because Papi can stand in the same batter’s box as Teddy Ballgame, but also a son might sit in the same wooden-slat seat as his father.” − Tom Verducci
One can wonder if at The Algonquin Club back around 1910 over Cubans and a fine glass of port, a Boston Brahmin didn’t innocently remark to General Taylor that, “Perhaps General, if you build it, they will come.”
Play ball!
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: The home of the Boston Red Sox has made more than its fair share of baseball history.
