Loss aside, here’s my thoughts on the trip to Fenway:
fukk Boston first and foremost
I’ve been to 6 stadiums used for Major League Baseball (both Yankee stadiums, Tropicana field, dolphins stadium when the marlins played there, marlins park when it opened in 2012, and now Fenway). This was by far the easiest or at least quickest stadium to get in and out of. I stayed at a hotel 15-20 minutes north of the park and it took maybe 25 minutes to get out of the garage and back to the hotel. That’s about as walkable and easily accessible at least coming from north of the park as you can ask a venue to be. Way easier than driving to Yankee stadium which took about 20-25 minutes just to get out of the garage on river avenue and onto the cross Bronx expressway the last two times I drove. Same $50 to park though
. My oldest wanted to take the train so next time we’ll try that.
The age of the place really shows in everything about it. Not that I have a strong memory of the old Yankee stadium having probably attended my last game there in 1994 or 1995, but Fenway felt like no other park I’ve been to. Everything about its construction and layout feels different, like a relic of a bygone era. It feels like a park designed just for baseball and to accommodate the area around it and not the other way around.
Everything feels so much closer to each other than in the Bronx or at the marlins park for that matter. The cart vendors selling nuts, kebabs (the teriyaki ones smelled especially good), sausages, hot dogs, and drinks were everywhere and you could still smell the carts and stands from each other. Wish I was able to try some food from at least one stand, but the kids were both not hungry and difficult until they tired out. The aisles are nowhere near as wide and easy to get back to the concourses and vending stands, so when you’re in your seat, you really don’t want to get up. I like that they had vendors going up and down the aisles with food and drinks during the game, which leads to my next point.
It’s hard to overstate how much smaller Fenway is than Yankee stadium or any modern park. I hardly saw any luxury boxes and the concourses in there are far smaller. It was barely 100 feet from the gate to the stairs to my seats in the bleachers in dead center field. Everything feels so much lower to the ground, there’s barely even a second level of seats to sit in, and the seats in general feel way closer to the field than I was expecting. This also leans into something I noticed almost right away which leans into the age of the park, and that’s with so many physical signs used as ads, there’s almost no advertising space in the park compared to newer places.
That left field wall is way bigger than the camera on tv suggests. For a lefty to hit one the other way over that like Soto did last night takes some incredible power and a truly special swing. Also with as narrow at it is, I wouldn’t want to sit in the monster seats regardless of the prices
There were a ton of us at the game last night. Nice to see Yankee fan travel so well. This was the first road game I attended for them since I want to say 2008 so it was more than a little strange hearing them have to bat with crowd noise and pitch to a silent crowd.
All in all, that’s a really interesting park and I definitely want to attend more Yankee games up here.
Also the fans wearing shirts that read “drink like Boggs” were everywhere
. I’m mad at myself for not getting anything to drink during Yankees/Red Sox on his birthday.