Happy Birthday: Fenway Park turns 100 years old

From USA Today:

[QUOTE][I]By Seth Livingstone[/I], USA TODAY

From 1903 through 1911, the Boston Red Sox played their home games at the quirky yet functional Huntington Avenue Grounds.

With unusual dimensions of 350 feet down the left-field line, 530 feet (expanded to 635 feet in 1908) to center and 280 feet to right, the Huntington Grounds featured a tool shed in deep center field that was in play and patches of sand where grass would not grow. The wooden-fenced stadium had a single turnstile, a main grandstand capable of seating 2,500 and held a total capacity of 11,500, though more than 15,000 crammed in for opening day in 1902.

By 1911, the venue had run its course. For one, the wooden structure was deemed a fire hazard.

With his lease on the Huntington Avenue Grounds expiring, General Charles H. Taylor, publisher of TheBoston Globe and a real estate investor, began looking for property. He purchased an 8-acre parcel at auction for $120,000 from the Danas, one of the founding families of Massachusetts.

Bounded by Lansdowne Street to the north, Ipswich Street to the east and Jersey Street to the west, the largely undeveloped site was less than a mile from Huntington Avenue. It was located on the outskirts of the Fenway section of Back Bay, home to Boston's Opera House, Museum of Fine Arts and the winding gardens of Francis Olmstead.

"Unlike most of the Back Bay, that land was never under water," says Richard Johnson, curator of the The Sports Museum in Boston. "It was land that had actually been on the shoreline of the Charles (River). In terms of it being a viable piece of property to build a large and heavy structure like a ballpark, it was perfect."

One hundred years to the day of the first regular season game played at Fenway, the Red Sox commemorate the centennial anniversary Friday before an afternoon game against the New York Yankees.

"It's the Sistine Chapel of baseball," says Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy. "The new owners have done a great job improving it.

"It's very expensive (to attend) we give that. But it works. Granted, there are poles. If you're sitting behind a pole — not so good. But, upstairs, the poles are your friends because you can see everything, almost (as if) you're hanging over the field. The seats between the aisles were built for people 5-foot-6 in 1912. The bathrooms, parking, in-city stuff — some of the things that don't work are never going to work. But overall, it is the jewel of baseball and the best place to watch a baseball game."

Possible dreams

Fenway was one of the new concrete-and-steel parks to open in 1912, joined by Navin Field in Detroit and Redland Field in Cincinnati.

On opening day, April 20, 1912, the crowd paid as much attention to the "electronic" scoreboard attached to the plank fence in left field as to the action. Although manually operated, the ball-and-strike calls and out-of-town scores were relayed to the scoreboard keeper by telegraph. It was, at the time, a modern marvel.

Attention was refocused on left field at Fenway when Boston's second batter, Steve Yerkes, struck a ball that threatened to hit the fence. The ball sailed over the head of the New York Highlanders' Guy Zinn in left-center and landed beyond fan-retaining ropes for a ground-rule double.

On April 26, 1912, Hugh Bradley's second career home run permanently reshaped the perception of baseball and the way it was played in Boston. Bradley's ball cleared the plank wooden fence that had been erected in left field at Fenway Park.

"Expecting to hit a home run was like expecting to be hit by lightning," historian Glenn Stout writes in his book Fenway 1912: The Birth of a Ballpark. "Some spectators threw their hats up in the air, and others jumped up and down and slapped each other on the back with delight.

"They could not have been more surprised if Halley's Comet had made an appearance."

The idea that years down the road, the left-field fence might morph into a giant wall that would actually be enticing to hitters would have been unfathomable back then.

"Fenway Park, in its original construction, was viewed as a defensive fortress, not an offensive pinball machine, which is what it has since become," Johnson says.

"The left-field wall was built primarily to keep folks from sneaking into the ballpark. It also had the additional use of being a wonderful platform for advertising."

After a fire on Jan. 5, 1934, the 25-foot-high outfield fence was replaced with a 37-foot, 2-inch-high wall. Among its signature characteristics was a long, horizontal, manual scoreboard along the lower left-field portion of the wall.

The manual scoreboard remains in operation today with numbers on 13- by 16-inch plates placed in slots to denote runs scored in each inning and the cumulative hits, runs and errors totals for the visiting and home teams. American League scores are also updated in the same manner, with numbered plates being slid in from behind the wall.

The success of the 1912 team, which won a franchise-record 105 games and the World Series, led to added stands: 5,000 on the third-base side, 4,500 in right and 1,200 bleacher seats, increasing stadium capacity to about 38,600, including standees.

The Red Sox would also win World Series titles in 1915, 1916 and 1918 with a pitcher/outfielder named Babe Ruth before an 86-year drought ended with a title in 2004. Between 1919-1966, the Red Sox won won pennat (1946).

By 1967, the team had finished no better than third in the American League since 1949 and hadn't posted as much as a .500 record since 1958. Fenway, which was showing its age, was more empty than full, except when the New York Yankees came to town.

"If you were born in 1953, you never knew the Red Sox to be a team above .500," Shaughnessy says. "All of a sudden, it's '67 and what's going on? They're in the race.

"It was the greatest pennant race of all (and it) completely transformed Boston baseball."

When new manager Dick Williams promised his young team would win more games than it would lose it drew mainly guffaws from those who bothered to take notice. The Red Sox were 100-to-1 long shots to win the AL pennant.

The Red Sox went 8-6 in April, kept their heads above water in May and June and took off with a 10-game winning streak — the final six games of which were on the road — in mid-July.

"The fact that we were actually a good ballclub occurred to us when we came off (that) road trip," says former Red Sox pitcher Jim Lonborg. "We were met at the airport by maybe 5- or 6,000 people, pounding on the bus, welcoming us back home to Boston. I think that's when we realized we were starting to develop a special feeling with the fans of Fenway, the fans of Boston and New England."

Lonborg and outfiedler Carl Yastrzemski were the catalysts for success in 1967. Yaz hit 44 home runs, and, in some ways by default assumed a leadership role among the young position players. Lonborg, standing 6-for-5, led the league in starts (39) and strikeouts (246) on the way to a 22-9 season.

The Red Sox would eventually fall to the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series, but 1967 was a watershed year that altered Boston's sports landscape and its expectations.

"(Red Sox general manager) Dick O'Connell took over and changed everything," longtime Boston-based baseball writer and commentator Peter Gammons says. "Even though the Celtics were very good at the time — still the greatest team in Boston history, I think — it was the turn toward Boston becoming a great sports town."

'Little Engine that Could'

Still, there were major doubts that Fenway Park would live to see its 100th anniversary. Prior to the purchase of the Red Sox by the John Henry-Tom Werner-Larry Lucchino group in 2002, Fenway, then with the smallest seating capacity in the majors, was in a state of neglect and decay that many thought irreversible. With luxurious state-of-the-art facilities popping up throughout baseball (some teams replacing parks as young as four decades old) common theory dictated that new ownership would need to build a new, larger park to keep up with the times and the competition.

"There were plenty of naysayers who thought this place should be destroyed, replaced," says Lucchino, who had overseen the building of new parks in Baltimore (Camden Yards) and San Diego (Petco Park). "Of the six groups interested in buying the team, ours was the only one committed to preserving and protecting Fenway. We came in with the experience of building parks in other places, so we knew what the alternative was about.

"We also came with a strong sense of how important Fenway Park was … the importance of it to generations of Bostonians and New Englanders. So we had a full-blown appreciation for its charm and appeal and we thought it could be renovated, enhanced, expanded, modernized in certain ways."

The vision to produce today's Fenway emerged through the eyes of Janet-Marie Smith, who had teamed with Lucchino to design Camden Yards, a breakthrough in ballpark in terms of retro design with modern amenities in 1992 and still considered a benchmark by which other major league facilities are judged.

"Our society is so disposable, so quick to tear down buildings and build something else," Smith says. "Fenway is such a classic. To me, it was important to try to save because it's been a model for a whole generation of ballparks. All 20-plus of the new ones have been born out of the same kind of architectural interest and relationship with a neighborhood that makes Fenway most special."

The Red Sox believe the $285 million they spent on renovations in a 10-year span should make the stadium a viable major league facility for the next 40 years or so.

Lucchino says the gradual and consistent improvements, including new seating, concession options and amenities such as improved video boards have been well-received.

With 269 Green Monster seats above the famous walls (sold only online) and 4,997 in the EMC Club/State Street Pavilion luxury seating areas, capacity, which was 35,000 in 1912 and 33,357 in 1961, is up to more than 37,000.

"The Monster seats look like they could have been here 100 years ago and so do the other improvements they've made," says Sean McDonough, who spent 17 seasons doing Red Sox play-by-play.

On May 15, 2003, the Red Sox began a sellout streak that has grown to a record 718 games heading into Friday.

"We've increated our revenue dramatically over the last four years," Werner says. "We think of Fenway as the 'Little Engine that Could,' and it just keeps chugging along."[/QUOTE]