Playing ball the Fen-Way

It's only appropriate that we followed up our Yankee Stadium trip with a trip to their arch-rivals in Boston. There's a big debate over which stadium places second behind Wrigley Field in terms of the best place to watch a game. What struck us first about Fenway was how small it looks in person.
They can only fit well under 40,000 people in there for a game which is why tickets are so hard to come by. The other surprise was that the Green Monster was not quite the monster we expected. It was also smaller than we anticipated.
It's also possible that our expectations were too high. The name "Green Monster" congers up thoughts of an evil outfield wall that knocks potential home runs out of the sky with long, green arms. That's clearly not the case since Manny Rameriz knocked a ball well over the Monster in the 3rd inning.

Even though the Monster didn't meet our expectations, we were still happy to see a game here before the place falls down.I don't use the term falling down lightly. While our seats gave us a pretty good view of the park, Josh's seat was right underneath this leaking pipe.


But before the Red Sox fix the leaking pipes, they need to do a major upgrade on their seats.


But maybe the Red Sox know what they are doing. Why waste money on seats and pipes when people are going to fill the seats anyway? The Red Sox apparently are much smarter with their money than the rival Yankees since they have turned their multi-million dollar payroll into a first place team. We saw the team at their best as they clobbered the lowly Mariners 11 - 3.
But while it's easy to criticize this creaky, old park, it's still pretty impressive. Even though the Red Sox don't have as much positive history as they would like, there's no doubt it's an historic ballpark and a must see for any baseball fan.

It's hard to see in this picture, but the date above the name plate is 1912. That's when William Howard Taft was still president. He once got stuck in a bathtub, but the Red Sox got stuck with the curse of the Bambino. I don't know how long it took to get Taft out of the tub, but it took the Red Sox 88 years to shake their curse. I think Taft got the better deal.