Fenway Park tour

In 1946 when I turned 9 years old, I began to follow major league baseball. The Boston Red Sox won the American league championship that year and became my team. I remember well the stars that year, including Ted Williams (lf), Johnny Pesky (ss), Bobby Doerr (2b, Dom Dimaggio (cf). They famously lost the seventh game of the World Series with the Cardinals, when in the 8th inning the Card’s Enos Slaughter came all the way around to score from first base on a single. According to lore, Pesky double-clutched on the relay throw to allow the score. We had a really fun time touring Fenway Park with David on Tuesday morning. We heard all sorts of trivia and lore about the place:

• It’s the oldest park in MLB (built in 1912 and soon to be on the National Historic Register)
• The name Fenway came from a street that ran through a fen (swampy area)--much of Boston city is land reclaimed from Boston Bay or the Charles River.
  
• The Curse of the Bambino, where the owner sold off (and didn't replace) his star players to New York of all places, including the great Babe Ruth, so that he could finance a production of No, No, Nanette. (His first love was Broadway.)
• Pesky pole (RF foul line marker) supposedly memorializing a home run by the light-hitting shortstop that curled around the pole into the short right field porch and won a game.
• Fisk’s Pole (LF foul line marker) memorializing a 1975 world series walk-off home run by the catcher Carlton Fisk in the 12th inning of the 6th game, in which he was caught on- camera jumping and trying to wave the ball fair on his way to first base. The ball appeared to be going foul but hit the foul pole for a home run. According to legend, a cameraman kept the camera on Fisk rather than the ball as he was assigned to do, because he was distracted by a rat in the camera booth, thus changing the practice of TV to focus on the players rather than the play.
• The Green Monster (short distance–310 feet from home plate– but 37 foot tall left field wall, with antiquated hand-kept scoreboard.) A little man with a step ladder comes out a door in the wall to make changes between innings. Also has the Ladder to Nowhere, which according to the tour guide when a batted ball gets caught in the ladder it’s a ground rule triple–the only ground rule triple in baseball. (It has never happened, by the way.)
• The Lone Red Seat (high in the right field bleachers) commemorating the longest home run ever hit in the park (502 feet), by Ted Williams in 1946. Oddly, it struck a Yankee fan named Mr. Boucher, who was dozing under a straw hat in the warm afternoon sun. Red Sox fans compounded the problem by cheering when they learned that the victim was for the Yankees.
  

Isn't baseball wonderful!