A New Season Beckons
Before Game 2 of the 2007 World Series, Holliday marveled at the Fenway Park atmosphere. “Fans here don’t react,” he said, “they anticipate. This is the most tension I’ve ever felt. It’s great, the way the game should be played.”
This week, Holliday said, “we played there that June, and it was the same way. We loved it. It’s great to feel that kind of passion.”
I regret that as a season ticket holder (Right Field Box 86) I only made it to a couple games back in Boston last year, down from around 30-40 games the year before when I still lived there. But quotes like this from today’s Peter Gammons column really transport me back into my seats, with my kettle korn, tapping my foot in the late innings, rocking back and forth with angst. Fenway Park is like a living organism on most nights, breathing roar and sigh. And it turns on something in fans, something in players – and you can become possessed by the mythology of the almost 100 seasons that have been played in that same tiny footprint on the west side of Boston.
I never would have forgiven the Red Sox if they tore it down. Might as well blow up Faneuil Hall while they were at it, and no one from Boston ever even goes near Faneuil Hall. Only tourists go there, and more tourists go to Fenway than they do Faneuil Hall, a building that helped start the American F’n Revolution.
