New seats on Green Monster are already
a big hit.
ATOP THE GREEN MONSTER – Kenmore Square and its landmark Citgo sign are at my back, the nightclubs of Landsdowne Street below, the Boston skyline is off in the distance and, to my right, almost close enough to touch, will be the foul pole that welcomed Carlton Fisk’s famous homer into history.
I am sitting in Fenway Park’s newest seats. They are already the most coveted seats in the ballpark, a season’s worth snapped up in a matter of hours. Although the section is still under construction, and the only action on the field is the grounds crew, it is obvious that they are the best seats in the house.
Wearing hard hats, Janet Marie Smith, who is helping the ballclub decide whether to renovate or rebuild its home, and I visited the Green Monster this week. An April snow was falling on Boston, the Red Sox had lost the opener in spectacular fashion (as the Red Sox tend to do) and their world-weary fans were already gearing up to concede the 2003 season (as Red Sox fans tend to do).
So here is some good news for the Boston faithful as their dynasty of disappointment stretches into its 85th year: Fenway Park is becoming a more comfortable, more enjoyable place to watch a baseball game. And no change will be more popular than the new Monster seats.
Unlike hotel rooms that offer a distant view of the SkyDome field or the frolicky diversion of the Bank One Ballpark swimming pool, the Monster seats are immersed in atmosphere. The view of the plate is perfect (though a play at The Wall is obscured); you are a mere 310 feet away (and 40 feet up); and unlike the luxury boxes that seal fans off from the crowd, you are thick in the middle of it.
And you might catch a home run, too.
Or, as long-suffering Red Sox fans know too well, a popup.
The team’s owners, in place less than a year when construction began, are understandably squeamish about tinkering with Fenway’s allure. The seats were floated as an idea, then discussed in community meetings before they were announced with great fanfare.
In the end, the team felt that the best way to show off Fenway’s signature feature was to allow fans to get close to it, rather than treat it as a museum piece.
“We wanted to try and celebrate the authentic things and the moments than exist naturally, rather than treating them as objects under glass or clichDes,” Smith said. “With Fenway, it is the real thing. It’s one of the last of the real things. We certainly expect to treat it with some reverence.”
Even in stodgy, red-brick Boston, fans welcomed the change. They’ve already gobbled up each of the 270 seats at $50 a piece and 100 standing spots at $20 a pop for every game after its scheduled April 29 opening, the team’s second homestand.
By then, fans will be able to cross a spacious and steady concourse from the suite level or the centerfield bleachers to the new section. For the first time since the ballpark was built in 1912, Fenway visitors will be able to circle the field inside it, though the team won’t open the new section to gawkers until things cool down.
For now, though, the only access comes by a rickety scaffolding that Smith and I joined halfway up by climbing over the grandstand wall. At the top, a catwalk balanced 37 feet, 6 inches above the warning track takes us across the top of The Wall to the new seating.
It’s cantilevered over Landsdowne Street, the landing place of so many home runs that cleared the Green Monster and its netting. Just a few of the seats have been bolted down so far, each one a metal barstool painted Fenway Green, perforated in a pattern like the seams of a baseball.
Each stool is behind a counter with a drink rail, but a fan in the front row can peer down on Red Sox left-fielder Manny Ramirez as he plays the carom. Had the seats been here for the ’78 AL playoff game against the hated Yankees, one of these fans could have gone home with Bucky Dent’s pennant-clinching popup.
Fenway has its bad seats: Under the scoreboard in centerfield, you are 600 feet from the plate; others are behind posts. Even the good ones are too narrow, cramp-inducingly spaced too close to the row in front, and pointed at the wrong angle.
All of this will be addressed when the team decides whether to replace Fenway, a six-month evaluation process now into its second year. For now, though the team is going after the low-hanging fruit, as president Larry Lucchino has called it: The fixer-upper projects that fall between a new coat of paint and a total teardown.
Although the Monster seats have gotten the most attention, there are other changes afoot for baseball’s oldest and smallest (and, for the sixth year in a row, its most expensive) ballpark.
Among the most visible is the growth of the manual scoreboard to twice its width – it now covers almost the entire length of The Wall – to include updates of National League games and advertisements. Two rows of seats now go the length of foul territory.
The club seating behind homeplate, renamed the .406 Club to pay tribute to Ted Williams after his death last summer, will be redecorated with memorabilia from the Red Sox star.
The area where the TV trucks used to park has been brought inside the ballpark walls for a barbeque area. Entry gates have been spruced up, and new restrooms underneath the grandstand promises shorter lines for women and changing tables in bathrooms for men and women.
“You have to come back when the bathrooms are done,” Smith said at the end of the tour. “They’re every bit as exciting as the Green Monster seats.”
The foul pole that Fisk memorably dinged with his game-winning homer in the 1975 World Series was taken down during construction to sand off the rust and give it a fresh coat of paint. The section of netting that his shot probably hit has been preserved for the Red Sox Hall.
The ladder that the grounds crew used to clear balls out of the net above the Green Monster was also taken down during construction. It will be put back as well – restoring the threat of ricochets for over-confident left-fielders waiting beneath – even though there’s no need for it any more.
Why?
“Because,” Smith said, “this is Fenway Park.”
–—
Jimmy Golen covers the Boston Red Sox for The Associated Press.
AP-ES-04-02-03 1414EST
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