A Park for the ages

My Turn — by Mark J. Yablonsky In an era of mega-buck contracts, brand-new stadiums and 150-plus cable and satellite TV channels that can bring you almost any game you wish to see, old baseball purists like me point with pride to the 100th anniversary of the opening of Boston’s Fenway Park.

Located in Boston’s Back Bay area, the venerable old ballpark has become as much a part of Boston and New England history as Faneuil Hall, the route that Paul Revere took on his midnight ride and the Boston Common itself. She stands proudly and is the very first modern era stadium to last for 100 years. While more modern amenities have been added in clusters to her over the years, she still looks very much like the park that Ted Williams and Carl Yastrzemski starred in, through good years and bad so many years ago.

Indeed, with the mighty Green Monster looming ubiquitously in left field you cannot help but notice Fenway even before you get too close to her. For a team with as storied a history as the Red Sox have, it is fitting that a ballpark can last that long, despite the constant critics who say that Fenway is too old.

Nonsense, I say. Bill Lee, the team’s colorful, controversial lefty pitcher of the 1970s, once called Fenway Park a “shrine.”

Well, or course it is. The very first game ever played there was on April 20, 1912, when the Bosox won, 7-6, in 11 innings against the New York Highlanders, who would be renamed the Yankees the very next year.

Then-mayor John F. Fitzgerald, the grandfather of future president John F. Kennedy, threw out the first pitch.

But at least some of that newspaper coverage was dwarfed by reports of the sinking of the Titanic just a week earlier.

In more recent days, Fenway has already amassed a record-setting 600-plus straight sellouts, after its low point in that regard was reached late in the 1965 season when less than 500 spectators paid their way into the park.

John Taylor, whose family owned the Fenway Realty Company, had the ballpark built on an asymmetrical tract, just like so many of the old-time stadiums were.

If you have never been to a game at Fenway Park, then by all means, you should try and go. The ambience there, the often-festive atmosphere in a baseball-crazy town is always evident and the place is such an experience that even Yankee fans should go!

I did just that myself, on June 27 and 28, 1988, when I treated myself to two games there, when my ‘Sawx beat the Cleveland Indians twice in absolutely crystal-clear weather, with low humidity and a deep blue sky.

But my personal highlight occurred before the first game that Monday night. In the lobby of the old park, there was a fund-raising mechanism for the Jimmy Foundation, whereby a huge team photo of that year’s Red Sox team was in place — with one open slot where you could fit your head in place and take a photo, making it look as though you were on the team.

Afterward, while I was standing there, admiring my new team photo with myself in it, a man came up to me and asked, “Are you a Red Sox?”

Of course, in 1988, I looked much younger, with then-all dark hair and no glasses and a bushy mustache, not to mention a few extra pounds.

Trying to be honest, I hemmed and hawed about it, but again, “Are you a Red Sox?” the man wanted to know.

And so finally, I signed his ticket stub with my name on it. Thus, somewhere in New England all these years later, is a man with a ticket stub with my autograph on it. See what I mean about that place being so special?

And so, as the Red Sox begin the celebration of their historic 100th season at Fenway, I say play ball and, of course, long live Fenway Park — and the Red Sox and all of baseball, too.

It’s all distinctly American, you know.