|
July 16th, 2006
 | 08:04 pm - Ladies and Gentlemen, Welcome to Fenway Park
One of my coworkers, who hates going to games alone, asked me along with her to yesterday's Sox game. I wrestled with my conscience on the subject, but ultimately decided to go.
Hoppie graciously offered to drive us so there was one less violation of Shabbos I had to leave it. My coworker, Barbra, who lives next town over asked if she could hitch a ride in with. Getting into Fenway and parking was surprisingly easy (well, I was surprised.) We got in around 2.
We weren't able to get into the 3:00 Fenway park tour, but we did get in the 4:00 tour (which is abbreviated), so we had dinner early. I enjoyed the tour, but....It seems to a be a different tour on gamedays generally, which they don't tell you. The abbreviated tour went to half the spots as the regular tour. We did not get to go up to the right field roof desk (which is fine with me.) or into the press box (because the gameday press was already setting up there.)
We did see batting practice and Johnny Pesky and Don Orsillo wandering around. We sat behind the visitor's dugouts and heard the history of Fenway park and some of the highlights of the stadium and Red Sox, and then went up to the Monster seats to watch the Sox take batting practice.
When we left the tour, it was nearly time to enter the park. Hoppie waited around with us for a little bit and then left when we went in. Getting in was pretty easy. They do a great job keeping the crowd moving.
We wanderred around for a bit inside, did boring things like get drinks, it was a pretty hot day. We also stopped to take pictures of the Lego Fenway park and on the bench with Wally, the green monster.
Then we located our seats, "Smallest in any active ballpark!" We sat in the grandstand behind homeplate on the RedSox side. The Sox had finished taking batting practice and we watched the A's make their practice moves while we talked about ourselves. getting to know each other better.
The pregame show went through their usual practice of showcasing various things. Not much of which I remember at the moment, Kenny Chesney threw out the first pitch, but did not sing the national anthem. The national anthem was sung by this guy was a really great barritone who'd raced in the Pan-Mass Challenge, which was that night's featured charity. Shona Schilling, Kathryn Nixon, and a few of the other Sox wives will be part of the Red Sox team in the Pan Mass Challenge (I know no one cares, but I'm trying to write down whatever I remember). Doug Mirabelli was one of the three people to catch one of the three "first pitch" throws.
The game had everything I could have asked for. I had many imaginary conversations with or about hoppie which I will reproduce here.
Mike Lowell takes his first at bat for an RBI double. I imaged the conversation with hoppie going like this:
Me: Mike Lowell hit a double.
Hoppie: Also, the sun rose this morning and headed west.
(Lowell had been tops on the leaderboard for doubles the whole year. Currently he leads the AL and is tied in the major league for most doubles.)
Lowell actually hit two doubles. Wow.
Schilling pitched a great game.
Other high and lowlights include the two errors made the Oakland in a single inning, which amazingly enough did not result in any runs.
Jason Varitek getting hit by a pitch, and Curt Schilling coming back the next inning and drilling Oakland's first basemen (who is the team's hottest hitter and shares Tek's number, coincidence, I don't think so.) I thought it was clearly retaliation. He took a fastball in the general direction of his butt. And from Curt Schilling. Who said in an interview, you don't hit people with curve balls. If he hits people, he wants them to feel it. No brawls broke out, and there were no ejections, but I suspect warnings were issued all around.
Brad Halsey came in to pitch.
So did Many Delcarmen and Craig Hansen.
In the bottom of the 8th, David Ortiz hit a homerun.
I said to Barbra, that's what we needed to make this game conplete.
The next batter, Manny, hit a single. They bring in Sexy Jewboy (Gabe Kapler) to pinch run.
And I said to Barbra, "No, that was what was needed to make the game complete."
Then in the 9th they brought in Doug Mirabelli as a defensive replacement.
And I said, "No, THAT was what was needed to make this game complete."
In my mind I imagined hoppie saying something similiar to Rocker like, "Wow...Marci must be loving this game."
And I did.
We'd decided to T back to Cambridge and hoppie would pick us up at Kendall, since rocker was of the opinion that two hot young things like us shouldn't be walking alone in East Cambridge in the dark. So we made our way from Friendly Fenway across the bridge and into the T station with 8 gazillion of our nearest and dearest.
All I had was a five left and Barbra didn't have any change, and I was not buying five dollars worth of T tokens I wasn't going to use, so I asked the guy moving people along if there were any human people to buy a token from or get change. He said, "Yeah, yeah. Down there." and pointed us off in the direction we should have been going. When we got there we saw a guy directing traffic. "Exact change that way." "Tokens that way" he said. I walked up and said I don't have either, is there someone selling tokens and he looked at me with this odd look, which was probably exhaustion and exasperation and said, "Just go through."
So we did.
We were the second to last group in our train, right before this group of five really big guys. It was a long ride to park street. When we switched over the Red line, it was a better wait, although we had to wait about 15 minutes for our train. Luckily it wasn't too crowded (when we got in) and we got seats (although there was a woman who was giving us the evil eye because I think we might have taken the seats she wanted.) Hey, I used to ride the T all the time. I know all the Park Street station tricks. What side is best to get on from, where to stand, and how to spot and snag seats quickly.
We called hoppie when we got above ground at Charles. The conversation went like this:
Me: Hey babe. We're at Charles St. station.
Hoppie: Charles?
Me: Yeah. You know, stop before Kendall.
Hoppie: I told you to call at Park St.
Me: Park St. is underground. You can't get a signal through.
I thought he would know that. In fact, I thought when he said to call, he meant "call me when you get above ground after Park St. Station so I know when to pick you up." And that made total sense to me.
I'm not saying we didn't test Barbra's phone at Park St. just to make sure, but as expected, there was no signal there.
Hoppie: Oh. Well I told you to call at Park.
Me: (muttering) Yeah, good luck with that.
The guy next to me was amused anyway.
Then hoppie told us he'd pick us up in front of the Marriott. As we got off the T, going through those nifty new electronic gates, and headed upstairs, it occured to me that I didn't actually know which side of the Marriott he meant by the front.
So I called rocker, and he told me, the T side. Which is actually the back, but as it was the side we were on and one that had benchs and lovely, beautiful, breathable air, we didn't much care.
Then we went back to rocker's and watched an episode of P&T (cryptozoology). And then we went home.
I went up to bed directly, but took a shower before crawling into bed. I was still awake when hoppie came to bed half hour later, but I don't think much longer than that.
One more thing about the game. The park encourages scorekeeping. They made an announcement about it early on and were fairly good about posting the rulings up the scoreboard. That was wonderful, particularly as I'm out of practice.
Benjamin's watch came in today! Squeee!
|
sounds like a fun time indeed. :-) | From: | (Anonymous) |
|---|
| Date: | July 17th, 2006 12:47 am (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
Glad you had fun at the park! I gave you my dates for Boston, right? |
