Trin: It was my first professional baseball game, which apparently was a Very Big Deal. In retrospect, it was pretty cool, for the most part. My track record for first professional sports games isn't all that great - for my first NFL game, I was dragged to Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, NC on a freezing, rainy Sunday afternoon to watch the Panthers take on the Patriots in a game that was blacked out due to embarrassingly low attendance. I really think there were more Pats fans there than Panthers fans, the Panthers got their asses handed to them, and I was cold and wet and just generally miserable. I think, then, that it wasn't much of a big deal that my first professional baseball game experience was less than perfect.
You know, I think the first time at Fenway is pretty much the same for every serious Red Sox fan. Walking out of the tunnel and catching that first glimpse of the field makes you pause for a second to take it all in. You look at the Green Monster or the retired numbers or Pesky's Pole and you realize that you're sitting in the middle of baseball history. So many things have happened in that place; it's almost impossible to comprehend them all. Everyone around you is wearing player shirts and blue caps and it really is like crossing the border into a whole new country. Red Sox Nation. And I really did enjoy it, don't get me wrong. I ate a Fenway Frank and sang Sweet Caroline at the top of my lungs. I took a zillion pictures, determined to get shots of everyone who played that day. Wakefield was pitching! I got a Beckett shirt and changed into it right there in the middle of the street because no way was I going into Fenway wearing anything but my Baseball Boyfriend's numbers. It occured to me at one point that I'd traveled something like 600 miles to see the Sox play a team that plays four hours from my house. But, you know, it was the Sox, so that's okay. And they won, 12-1 over the Orioles. J.D. Drew and Manny Ramirez hit back-to-back homers and Kevin Youkilis hit his first career grand slam, and I was there.
It was really pretty cool to look out over the field and see all these players that until then were just people on a TV screen. Like being there made it all a little more real, in a way. And I won't ever forget that. Watching a baseball game live is so much different than watching one on TV. For the most part, I had no clue what pitches were being thrown or how many balls and strikes a batter had, but when you take all that away it seems like you can focus more on the action. The close plays seem closer and the great catches seem outstanding. You hold your breath as you watch the trajectory of a fly ball and cheer loudly for every out the pitcher records. You can feed off the energy of the crowd, and it's a pretty awesome experience. But there were some parts of the Fenway experience that I really was not prepared for, things that, honestly, soured my experience just a little bit.
The first was the crowd. I don't know that I've ever been some place with quite that many people in it; not somewhere that small, anyway. It seemed like it was literally wall-to-wall people. I mean, I knew it would be crowded. I've seen pictures of Yawkey Way on game day, but it doesn't seem all that bad until you're actually standing in the middle of it. And I'm short, so crowds and me don't get along well. It would have been nice to hang out for a little while and take in the pre-game atmosphere, but I have no idea what all that could have entailed, because all I could see was people. Maybe there were bars or souvenir stands or whatever, I don't know. Just people. So we just went in and found our seats. And oh my god, those seats. Char and I took a tour of Fenway a few days after the game and discovered that where we were - the infield grandstand on the third base side - were the oldest seats in baseball. History, awesome! Sixteen inches of space per person, not awesome! Especially since a portion of my sixteen inches was taken up by the person next to me, who was also kind of rude and not your typical "let's talk to the strangers next to us because we love the Red Sox and so do they" sort of Fenway-goer. That was disappointing. And again, I'd heard about how small Fenway was, but you don't really realize it until you get there. It was really fucking uncomfortable! Quite honestly, I spent a good third of the game absolutely miserable, because Fenway Park + fibromyalgia does not equal fun.
But around the 7th inning, the people next to me left and it was back to happy fun Fenway times! We moved over and found ourselves with plenty of room, and I was able to be my yelling, cheering, picture-taking Sox fan self. And despite the squished-ness and the rude dude next to me, I don't think I'd trade the experience for the world. I learned a couple things that day:
1. Pay the extra money for more comfortable seats next time!
2. As far as the view is concerned, there really isn't a bad seat in the park.
3. Mike Lowell has a really nice ass (yeah, I'm a girl. Deal.).
4. Knowing the box score is not necessarily a requirement for fun baseball viewing. Sometimes you just have to sit back and watch the boys play.
Will I go back to Fenway? Yeah, probably. I want to sit on the Monster!
My experience (Char's) was slightly different than Trin's. What struck me the most was how different going to Fenway was from all of my other (limited) baseball experience. It was pretty clear I wasn't in Kansas anymore. Or you know, Chase Field. Whatever. What surprised was the level of dedication the city of Boston has to that team. It is literally impossible to set foot out the door there and not see someone wearing hats or T-shirts. They were everywhere. Living in a mid-market like I do, it was a level of passion I had never experienced before.
As for Fenway, it was beautiful. There's something jaw-dropping about watching a baseball game as the sun sets behind the Boston skyline. It's a different experience, sitting in an outdoor park. Sure, Chase isn't exactly indoor (it's no dome, thank god) but even with the roof open, it's not the same. Chase Field envelops you, a technological marvel. Chase is Magic Mountain to Fenway's Coney Island. They have the same purpose but the experience is different.
I was a little excited to find out that we had been sitting in the oldest seats in baseball, what our tour guide described as the "ultimate Fenway experience." That's something. But the seats being small is no joke. I think I heard somewhere that the wave was invented in Fenway, and I believe it. You know how it probably started? Not as a means to distract the opposing pitcher but probably because some guy at the end of the row in the grandstand got up to get a beer, forcing his entire row to stand to let him pass.
A fan a couple sections over was determined to get a wave going. It never happened but the guy never gave up. And that's another difference. The fan interaction is so involved. In Arizona, people cheer when the scoreboard prompts them to; the chant might last a few rounds and then peter off. At Fenway, it's not unusual for spontaneous cheers to erupt from the stands. Also, the tone of the game is so different. Fans go nuts and there's no bullshit, no "in-game hosts" chattering at you between innings, no distractions because somebody decided people are too impatient to sit the five minutes between innings. It's just baseball, the same way they've been playing it there for decades. Trin: That's something I was surprised about, too, because ridiculous between-innings games are a staple of minor-league baseball. Probably to distract you from how badly your team is losing. Go Tides!
Oh, and singing "Sweet Caroline" is awesome.
The other fun part I had at Fenway? The Dbacks game had already finished but I didn't have time to check the score, so I looked at the scoreboard on the Monster. Seeing a zero and a four, I figured the Diamondbacks had been shut out again. Until a helpful girl sitting in front of us told me the Diamondbacks had won "ten to fawh." It did not suck.
