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After a surprisingly decent 4 hour train ride, the Defensive Specialist found himself in Boston – home of the Red Sox. As the Defensive Specialist mentioned, New York is a fantastic place, but after a while being surrounded by skyscrapers can lose its appeal. With that in mind, the Defensive Specialist scheduled a strategic road trip to Boston in order to escape the Big Apple but also to take in a ball game at America’s oldest big league ballpark- Fenway Park. People talk about taking pilgrimages to Mecca, to the Vatican or even to Graceland. For baseball fans, it’s likely Fenway or Wrigley Field that best captures the history and majesty of baseball.



Boston has a very different feel to New York – obviously there are less people and it’s less crowded, but it is also a little more laid back. It probably helped that the Boston Marathon had just been run and the entire population was knackered.

The Defensive Specialist checked into the Sheraton, opened the room blinds and lo and behold, there was Fenway Park! The hotel overlooked the Charles River with the famous ‘Citgo’ sign just off to the left. With a couple of days in town, the Defensive Specialist decided to hit a few tourist destinations. After stumbling around the MIT campus looking for blackboards with complex mathematical equations on them waiting for a genius janitor to complete (see Good Willing Hunting) with no luck, the Defensive Specialist decided on a Duckboat tour. These amphibious craft drive you throughout the city (both on land and water) while pumping out historical facts. Another key piece of information for would-be travellers is that all kids (and there were a lot of them) are equipped with an apparatus that when blowed simulates a duck quack. While this seems innocent enough, imagine being stuck on the vessel with these kids while they blow them incessantly for an hour and a half. Forget about a leisurely trip around Boston’s historical sites. The Defensive Specialist nearly committed homicide.

With the Red Sox playing the Texas Rangers at 7pm, it was time for the Defensive Specialist to get his game face on at about 4pm. Fortunately the Boston weather was substantially warmer than what was experienced in New York and the Defensive Specialist did not require thermal underwear. Fenway was a ten minute walk from the hotel and is situated a little outside of town. What’s nice about Fenway is that it’s not your typical monstrous stadium which means it blends into the surrounding suburb. If it didn’t have huge light towers and it wasn’t painted green, it could easily pass for a giant warehouse (without a roof).

The surrounding streets are alive with bars, restaurants and street vendors creating a cool atmosphere. One notable thing about Boston is that its people are incredibly passionate about their sporting teams. Nearly every person was outfitted in Red Sox apparel, (Making the Defensive Specialist and Mrs Defensive Specialist stick out like dogs balls in normal clothes). Entering through Gate D, you are quickly reminded that Fenway is an old ballpark by the antiquated food service areas and restrooms. In newer ballparks, the food is slanted towards gourmet dining. Fenway pays little attention to that by only supplying traditional baseball fare.


The Defensive Specialist grabbed a beer and headed for his lower grandstand seats. Once again, as you walk through the entrances to the seats, the field explodes into view. Having seen hundreds of Red Sox games on television, it was surreal to be there in the flesh. It’s amazing how close to the action you are in Fenway. The seats are close to the action, and the Green monster really is only a short distance to home plate. Watching batting practice, the Rangers hitters were either peppering balls off it or easily launching balls over it.


Fenway is different to Yankee Stadium in that its ushers were significantly less maniacal about keeping people within their ticketed areas. It was easy to walk up to the fence and take in batting practice during pre game.

 

The Defensive Specialist was really pleased with his seat.

Mrs Defensive Specialist was most definitely not.

A quick call up to Theo Epstein’s GM suite had the ticketing situation rectified and the Defensive Specialist (and an appeased Mrs Defensive Specialist) had prime seats for the game.


Red Sox ace, Josh Beckett took the ball and was shaky early on, giving up a quick 3 runs. The Rangers countered with Matt Harrison who had a funky windup and dialled it up to 96mph. Harrison gave up a monster home run to leftfield by Mike Lowell - DH’ing ahead of Big Papi who can no longer remember how to hit. Harrison ran into trouble in the 2nd when he loaded the bases and surrendered a walk-the-dog (meaning he got out in front of it) grand slam to JD Drew taking the score to 5-3. The Red Sox added 2 more runs before Beckett put two runners on in the 7th and saw Josh Hamilton absolutely destroy a 2 strike fastball to straight away centrefield for 450 foot (by the Defensive Specialists estimation) homerun. Extremely impressive piece of hitting.


The Red Sox then brought in flamethrower Daniel Bard who consistently hit 97-98 mph with a hellacious slider that froze hitters. The Rangers rolled out Neftali Feliz who looks like he weighs 45 kilos but pumped 99-101 mph fastballs with what appeared to be little or no effort. It was the first time the Defensive Specialist had seen two guys generate so much velocity and it was quite an experience to ‘ride the lightening’ as these guys went at it. In the 8th inning ‘Sweet Caroline’ by Neil Diamond was played with everyone in attendance singing along while adding their own touches to it.


Following Bard, the Red Sox used their closer Jonathon Papelbon who was introduced to the field with the Dropkick Murphy’s ‘Shipping Out to Boston’ which is a pretty cool song in its own regards but even better when 35,000 people sing it as their hard throwing reliever jogs in.


Neither team could score in regulation and we found ourselves in extra innings. In the bottom of the 12th, Marco Scutaro singled and then astutely tagged on a routine fly ball to centre. It was a ballsy move by Scutaro but questions must be raised over the centrefielders inability to throw him out at second. Pedroia was intentionally walked and Kevin Youkilis banged a ball off the centrefield wall for a walk off Red Sox victory.


It was an awesome end to a great night.


As an interesting aside, the Defensive Specialist was sitting in the lobby of the Sheraton making use of the free wi-fi, typing this post up when he noticed 2 large trolleys being wheeled over loaded with food and drinks. The Defensive Specialist was flattered at the Sheraton's hospitality and generosity until he noticed signs on the counter saying “Orioles Players”, “Orioles Staff” and “Orioles Media”. Obviously the Baltimore Orioles were arriving for their series against the Red Sox starting on Friday. All of a sudden, the entire Oriole team was in the lobby. They simply walked up to the counter, grabbed an envelope with their name on it, loaded up on goodies and headed for their rooms (they flew overnight from Seattle- 5+ hours and it was 8am). The Defensive Specialist contemplated grabbing Nick Markakis and Matt Weiters to give them a pep talk so that they would hit better and help his fantasy team but thought better of it. It must be said that although the dress code was obviously coat and trousers, some of the players had a liberal interpretation of it. Markakis took the cake for worst outfit, wearing an apricot coloured number that looked like a baggy safari suit. It was offensive. Miguel Tejada’s shirt collar was all over the show, but since he had a Versace man bag, the Defensive Specialist left him to his own devices.


And within 5 minutes they were gone.


Next stop on the itinerary – Citifield to see the Mets take on the Braves.