Fenway Park

Fenway Park
4 Yawkey Way
Boston, Ma 02215

August 28, 2009: The day did not start off promising. Tropical Storm Daniel hit Long Island early, making the first leg of our drive slow and rainy.
The gang misbehaved like they’d never been on a road trip before. The Bird in particular was rowdy. On multiple occasions, Lisa had to turn around to tell him to shut his trap. Mariner Moose kept biting the Phanatic and Stomper continued to stick his trunk where it didn’t belong.
However, after only one short potty break, we reached the Boston city line and sunshine.
A few wrong turns later (thanks largely in part to Map Quest’s vague directions), we arrived at Maria’s apartment in Dorchester. Maria had left us a key in her mailbox and directions to the closest T (Boston’s subway system) stop. All we had to do was let ourselves in without releasing Violet, her fabulous cat, and drop off our bags before catching the next T into Boston.
Unfortunately, the aforementioned key did not work. Serena was able to get the key into the lock, but it just wouldn’t turn.
Despite attempts to break into the apartment via the back door and an open window that we couldn’t reach, we were unable to get into the place. We finally gave up, locked our luggage up in Serena’s car, and grabbed the T.
Typically, we would’ve taken the T all the way to Fenway, but we wanted to enjoy as much sun as possible and see some of the city before meeting Maria at the game. We got off at the Downtown Crossing stop and walked the rest of the way to Fenway. Along the way, Serena pointed out to Lisa a few of the sites on the Freedom Trail, the Boston Common, Public Gardens, her old college and dorm building, the Boston Public Library, the Prudential, Boylston Street, her ex boyfriend’s old college dorm and school, and Maria’s old apartment building. Once we hooked up with Maria, we walked around the perimeter of the stadium.
At Serena’s co-worker’s suggestion, we each bought sausage sandwiches at a stand at the corner of Yawkey Way outside the stadium. We paid $7, but they were pretty delicious (not RFK Stadium good, but still…). Maria had the brilliant idea to add mustard to hers while we topped ours with BBQ sauce.
When we finished eating, we got our tickets scanned and joined the Yawkey Way festivities. Apparently prior to the game, Yawkey Way is barricaded at both ends and becomes a part of Fenway until the game starts.
Yawkey Way (as strange as it may sound) was probably our favorite part of the Fenway experience. It was similar to a street carnival. There were a ton of shops and entertainment. In our first shop, we purchased our traditional hat and mascot. Normally, Serena would have worn the hat during the game, but she thinks that there’s a special place in hell right next to Judas for traitors of that sort, so the hat was simply stuffed into her purse. Mamadukes (die hard Yankees fan, mind you) had already lectured her on breaking tradition. However, no offense to Mamadukes or anything, but Lucifer is way scarier than she is. We also found an enormous blow up Wally the Green Monster. We asked a fan to take our picture with it. Unfortunately, like at Citi Field, she cut Wally’s head off. Instead of deleting it like we did with all of the screw-ups from the Mets game, we’ve posted it here so that you can see the kind of crap that we deal with when it comes to idiot photographers. Look at this picture and tell us exactly what’s acceptable about it. How hard is it to turn the camera so that you get the best angle?
Anyway, Serena asked the woman to re-take it and even instructed her to hold the camera portrait length. Duh.
Outside, Lisa got her picture taken with Big League Brian, a man on stilts who liked to play catch with the fans milling about. He told Lisa that at that moment, she was his favorite fan. We assume that he tells all of the fans this.
Inside Fenway, we found the famous red seat in section 42, row 37 (right field bleachers). The red seat marks the spot where Ted Williams hit the longest measurable home run inside Fenway in 1946. It was recorded at 502 feet.
From the bleachers, we took a picture of the field and then continued on our investigation of enemy territory (to the best of our knowledge, no one smelled “New York” on us). We were disappointed when Maria pointed out that we had basically seen all there was to see. In fact, we had already walked end to end of the stadium.
Serena took a picture with a fake Wally, pretending to have a lack of confidence in our ability to get photographed with the real deal. Of course, we were merely acting as we had already purchased his services to surprise Maria for her birthday.

After fake Wally, we headed to our seats.

From here, we could get a fairly decent look (after zooming in with the camera) at the manual scoreboard in left field. In between innings, a man emerged from a door to the right of the WB Mason sign (in the picture, you can see that it’s slightly ajar) and updated the scores from around baseball.
Our seats were, needless to say, extremely uncomfortable. They were very small and close together. The seats in our section were still wooden. Several rows in front of us, the seats have been refurbished to the commonly seen plastic chairs. The wooden seats are chipped and splintery from age. While we understand that with the size of Fenway, larger seats are simply not practical, we cannot figure out why they didn’t update all of the seats at one time to be plastic. Lisa feels strongly that she got a splinter in her butt from sitting in these chairs.
Pre-game festivities included Aaron Neville singing the National anthem and Dane Cook throwing out the first pitch. As players took the field, Wally high-fived each of them. The pitching match up was between Boston’s Josh Beckett and Toronto’s Scott Richmond. Just as the game started, we noticed that a few vendors wandering the stands were selling clam chowder. Even though we don’t particularly care for clam chowder, we found this to be the perfect choice to represent Boston. It should also be noted that unlike our other travels around baseball, we did not once see any fans wearing the memorabilia of a baseball team not playing. This is a first for us, therefore kudos to Boston for exhibiting proper fan fashion etiquette.
In the top of the 2nd, Beckett gave up a 3-run home run to Aaron Hill. Lisa, momentarily forgetting where she was, cheered until Serena smacked her shoulder and gave her a dirty look. At the end of the inning, the score was 3-0 in favor of the Blue Jays. During these early innings, Maria grilled Serena for information about her surprise. She guessed correctly almost immediately, but Serena gave an Oscar-worthy performance and denied it. In the meantime, we were really nervous that Wally would stand us up, completely humiliating us. After all, we did have to pay for him to pretend to temporarily be our friend. All of this questioning and worrying and waiting made Serena hungry again, so she flagged down a nearby vendor and ordered a Fenway Frank for $4.80. A pretty decent dog, she must admit, though when compared to the dogs of Chicago, it didn’t really stand. That being said, she feels that if she had eaten the Fenway Frank first, she would’ve rated it as one of the best hot dogs she’s had.
Maria got herself a $4.05 bag of popcorn. How random are these prices?
At the bottom of the 4th, the Red Sox tied the game. While this was very interesting, more importantly, during the top of the 5th, Wally showed up to wish Maria a belated Happy Birthday. He grabbed Maria’s face and planted the biggest, pervy smooch on her. He posed for a picture with all of us and then tried to make out with us too as if Maria wasn’t enough. Our faces saw the inside of his pie hole.
Wally autographed a stuffed animal of himself and gave it to Maria as a gift. He also left us with Wally postcards. This purchase was so worth it. Okay, so Brad Ziegler didn’t jump out of a cake for Maria’s birthday. Who cares? Wally is a much better investment and here’s why: 1. Would Ziegler jump out of the cake, grab Maria’s butt, and try to make out with her? Probably not. 2. Would Ziegler then turn around and try to make out with the TBB? We don’t think so. That’s a bit dirty, dirty. One girl’s not good enough? You need three of them? We think Wally may be the mack daddy of the mascot world. 3. Is Ziegler a fuzzy creature? Not that we can tell, no. 4. Would Ziegler have given Maria a stuffed animal version of himself and personally autograph it? We should say not. After all, how many MLB players do you know that come in stuffed animal form? Finally, last but not least, 5. We think that Maria would probably prefer Antonio Banderas jumping out of a cake to Brad Ziegler. It’s just where her priorities are. No Bay Area pitchers should take offense to this. It is what it is.
Kelly Clarkson sang God Bless America during the 7th inning stretch. Shortly after that, Hurricane Daniel (he was upgraded to category 1 from tropical storm just for us it seems) arrived in all his glory and delayed the game. The score was tied at 5-5. Unable to stand yet another damn rain delay, we decided to leave, but not before Lisa pissed off the fans behind us by loudly complaining about the discomfort of the seats. Serena thought he was going to shank her. It’s not like she said that Fenway should be burned down or anything, so we’re not really sure where the source of his animosity was coming from. Perhaps his mother gave birth to in those seats. On our way out, we snapped our usual photos of the scoreboard (we could get a good look at it from our seats)…
…and a picture of us with the field behind it.
Outside, Serena made sure to document the wall of retired numbers…
…and since we had forgotten to do it when we first got there, we took our picture outside Fenway totally exposed to Daniel’s wrath. Wet.
Finally, back at Maria’s cozy apartment, soaked to the bone and exhausted, we gathered the gang to meet their new brother, Wally. He seems to fit right in. Annoyingly enough, they took up most of the bed.
Alanis Morisette must’ve been singing about us when she said, “it’s like rain during every single baseball game you go to…and who would’ve thought, it figures.”