Nothing — with the possible exception of flowers, springtime and the 3rd Earl of Pembroke — has inspired as much gooey bad poetry and aphoristic nonsense as Fenway Park. If Fenway didn't exist, we'd have to toss a bunch of Harvard professors in a room to invent it, which, not incidentally, is how we also wound up with a war in Vietnam. "Fenway Park, in Boston," John Updike famously wrote, "is a lyric little bandbox of a ballpark. Everything is painted green and seems in curiously sharp focus, like the inside of an old-fashioned peeping-type Easter egg."

I have never been on the inside of an Easter egg, peeping-type or no, but I will bet good money that it is nothing like Fenway, a steaming pile of steel and concrete resting on top of marshland that Boston didn't get around to filling in until the late 19th century. Somewhere along the line, however, the crooked old dump became a shrine for the local fancy classes. "I think walking up to Fenway is thrilling," the late David Halberstam once said. "The approach to it. The smells. You go to Fenway, and you revert to your childhood. You go to Fenway, and you think: 'Something wonderful is going to happen today.'" Quoth Stephen King: "There's no place like it, and it's ours." (We haven't even mentioned Donald Hall, whose poetry, without Fenway, would be just a couple of conjunctions and the word "snow.")

This is just a new, sporty strain of that old New England exceptionalism that John Winthrop was preaching back in the 17th century. The thinking runs thusly: Fenway, like its tenants, is somehow different, purer, a perpetual innocent in a fallen, godforsaken world. "The Yankees belong to George Steinbrenner," Sports Illustrated's Steve Wulf wrote in 1981, "and the Dodgers belong to Manifest Destiny, but the Red Sox, more than any other team, belong to the fans."

Let's just say it here, then: Fenway is not different. It does not belong to its fans any more than Tropicana Field belongs it its fans. "It was a land deal, nothing more," Dan Shaughnessy and Stan Grossfeld write in a book that otherwise treats Fenway like some sort of massive green Kennedy. The name itself was free marketing for its owners, the Taylors' Fenway Realty Company, prefiguring all the corporate naming-rights deals that would come at the back end of the century. The front of Fenway, done up in a red brick Colonial style, was ripped off from Philadelphia's Shibe Park. The first outfield fences at Fenway were erected not to enclose the field of play but to block fans — the fans to whom the Red Sox allegedly belonged — from crashing the gate or sneaking free looks from the street, according to Shaughnessy and Grossfeld. Fenway isn't different. Fenway is merely old and has long enjoyed the happy luck of being located among the most literary-minded regional chauvinists in the Union, all of them drunk on a baseball stadium's smells, all of them turning into children.

The view from the stands (everything sic'd):

I visited Fenway a couple years ago and I forgot how shitty it was until one morning I woke up and let a huge hangover fart and thought to myself, "this reminds me of Fenway." (Nick J.)

Me and a friend of mine were at a Red Sox game in Boston in the spring (I think) of 2005, about 10 rows back in the center field bleachers. Two drunk Tawmmys from Quinzee were sitting directly behind us, and spend the entire game yelling at Johnny Damon for having a little girl arm (while true, he's on your team, no?). One says to the other "I BET I COULD THROW A BALL FACKIN FAHHTHER THAN JANNY DAMON." Tawmmy Numbah 2 isn't convinced, neither am I, nor is my friend. Tawmmy 1 then bets my friend ten whole dollars that he can reach the infield on a throw. My friend laughs and takes the bet, as there's no way in hell this moron is actually going to try this during a game, right?

Wrong. Tawmmy #1 disappears for a while, and returns with a fresh beer and a souvenir baseball. My friend and I exchange a quick "No fucking way" look, and Tawmmy lets fly the ball. Sure enough, it hits the infield. Missing the back of Edgar Rentaria's head by about 6 inches . A man of his word, my friend pays up while Tawmmy gets dragged off by the cops, screaming "FACKIN' TOLDYA!" (Matthew L.)

It's a toilet. Whenever you wonder why Boston fans are so cranky and harsh, just go try to sit in those seats for a game. It was built in the early 20th century, when, evidently, people were typically 5'1" and their asses were half as wide as today. I'm under 6 feet tall and my knees were against the seat in front of me. This also makes it nearly impossible to exit your row unless you're on the end. So you climb out any way you can, to walk on narrow, shitty concourses that barely qualify as concourses. Most single-A ballparks have a better layout and walking area than Fenway. Oh, and if you're not a Sawx fan, be prepared to not just be heckled by Sully and Mikey, but to actually be physically threatened just for having the temerity to be from anywhere besides the cesspool that is Boston. The magic of that place is so overblown. We all act nostalgic about old places, but there's nothing wrong with modernizing things every 100 years or so. (Justin L.)

The worst experience I had in Fenway was in the right field box seats. They face center field, so I was forced to watch the entire game in the same posture that I use to back out of my driveway. I could only see home plate through the foul pole grating, which completely obstructed the view of all hitters standing in the righthanded batter's box. Worst of all, I'm not NBA tall or anything, but there was NO POSSIBLE POSITION for me to sit in without the row of seats in front of me digging into my patella tendons. You know, because the park was designed when the average American male was 5'3". This cut off circulation to my lower legs for the duration of the game, and for the next 36 hours I could not walk properly. That park almost took my legs. All for the low price of $50! (Jeremy K.)

Going back to Fenway after growing up with the park is sort of like meeting my dead grandfather if Wal-Mart exhumed his corpse and turned it into a cyborg greeter.

It's amazing how what was once the best park in the majors is now an absolute cesspool of forced promos and moronic "fans." Went to a game last June and got to see some CEO throw out the ceremonial first pitch (at least I wasn't there for the NASCAR force feeding the following night) then another highest bidder threw out the ceremonial...um, second pitch. Followed by those two words nobody wants to hear and the abysmal song that follows.

Saw a decent pitchers duel between Beckett and Haren, ruined by the pink hat buzzing in my ear about putting her house on the market from the time she showed up in the middle of the 2nd to the time she left with her posse of suburban moms who think they're the Carrie of their group in the middle of the 7th.

Ads now dwarf the Green Monster scoreboard (which was always my favorite part of the park as a kid) because WB Mason bought your first born. Any asshole not wearing a pink hat has a cell phone pressed to their ear, flailing their arms so their shithead friends wacthing NESN can see them at the hottest nightclub in Boston. Unless WEEI's harping on some trade that will never get done the Fenway faithful's knowledge of the game goes no further than 50 miles outside of 128, and even then only if it's "OMG Lars Anderson!!!!!111!!!!!!!11" Just like Steinbrenner ruined Yankee Stadium with the mid-70s overhaul Lucchino, Henry and Werner piss all over Fenway with each shoehorned seat. Camden Yards is a better place to see a game, Wrigley Field is a better ballpark, Busch Stadium is a better ballpark, hell even Tropicana Field is a better ballpark now. (Janssen M.)

My Father and I decided it would be a good idea to go to Fenway Pahk (as it is pronounced in Boston) for a summer baseball trip. We're from Houston, and have no AL rooting interests, so I wore a Craig Biggio t-shirt, and my dad a Houston Rockets polo, so of course we were asked about 50 times if we were from Houston, about 60 times "What's it like seeing baseball indoors?", and about 150 times "Where's your cowboy hat, boots, and jeans?" As if that wasn't annoying enough, we had an "obstructed seat" that was not advertised as such on the internet. I found the Sox dans almost as annoying as the fans from Dallas, and that's really sayin' something for a lifetime Houstonian. (Scott S.)

One night a few years back my brother and two cousins were at a game sitting in right field. Around the third inning, because who shows up for a whole baseball game?, a group of 30 somethings with their 8 dollar Sam Adams and still in work shirts comes in and sits behind us. After regaling each other for a few innings with tales of the mediocre chicks they have their dilbert-esque office one of them comes back with a tray of beer and proceeds to stumble, and spill beer all over my cousin and I. Fantastic. So we turn around, unsure at first where the rogue beverage came from (we were sitting under the new RF roof deck bar) and look for an answer. The Dilberts sit idly by acting as though nothing happened. For the next three innings, before they leave in the 7, they whisper and talk all about how they spilled the beer. Did I mention I was 17, and my cousin 12? So we got soaked in beer without so much as an apology, and had to listen to what amounted to three weeks worth of Cathy comics while we tried to watch the damn game. (Brendan from Medford)

When I was 10, I went to a Yankees-Red Sox game at fenway. I rooted for neither team, went in completely neutral clothing with my Dad who is a Sox fan. In the 7th inning, an incredibly fat guy for no reason whatsoever told me to go fuck my mother because he "thought" I was cheering for the Yankees because I stood up when Jeter came to bat. (I stood up to go to the bathroom). When I came back he threw a pizza box at me. Again, I'm not a Yankee fan. (Aaron G.)

The summer before my first year at college my Dad scored tickets for the Red Sox / Yankees at Fenway, something we had always wanted to go to. Believe me when I say that the real action wasn't on the field, but was spread throughout the bleachers. This was the summer of 2002, so we, as Red Sox fans, had yet to break the curse and become the most obnoxious fanbase in all of sports. Fenway was still a place of unabashed debauchery, racist Southies, and DRUNK B.U. students; Not a pink hat to be seen. A quick overview of the stands during the game revealed numerous amounts of fights and no small amount of hot dogs, beers, and plastic ice cream helmets flying back and forth between Red Sox and Yankee fans. Behind my Dad and I sat the biggest stereotypical South Boston resident I had ever encountered; He spent the whole game yelling at the middle aged women in front of us who had unwisely decided to wear their Bernie Williams' jerseys to the game. "Ber-knee! Beeeer-knee! Why are't you in da ghame Berrrr-knee?"

At one point a Yankee fan in front of us was escorted out by security and decided to flip off the crowd as a parting gift; As he was being showered with garbage, boos, and cries of "FAGGOT", I took the remains of my half-eaten hot dog and hit him square in the head with it. My Dad, a lawyer, and usually a model of restraint, turned to me and said, "Nice shot." Never have I felt so close to my Dad. (Sam)

Photo via B Tal's Flickr account.

Next up: The New York Mets' Citi Field. Got any horrible experiences to share? Send them to craggs@deadspin.com.

Tagg Romney, the eldest strapping young lad to burst forth from the American loins of the former governor of Massachusetts, has announced an essay contest (ooh, fun) on Mitt's website. All you have to do is write 250 words about what a "free and strong America means to you" and donate $50 dollars to his dad's political action committee. (I guess the part of America that holds essay contests isn't free.) The writer of the best essay will get a trip to Boston and get to sit in the Romney family seats at Fenway Park. Not with Mitt, though. Just you and Tagg, yuckin' it up and bein' all American and shit.

You may scoff at the offer to discuss family values behind the Red Sox dugout with a semi-prominent Mormon, but the Romneys are still kind of a big deal in the Commonwealth, so I bet the seats are pretty good. Give it a shot! Here's my entry:

"What does a free and strong America mean to me, Tagg? I'll tell you. It means a place where the women are more fertile than the briny, salt-infested badlands that we tread upon. A place where a man can raise whole farms full of strong young boys with names as rugged as the rock formations that will protect us from global warming (which doesn't exist, by the way.) A place where men are judged not by the color of their skin, but by the blueness of their shirts. A place where single-payer healthcare means I can use my American Express card for both Ny-Quil and boob jobs for my "friends." A place where comfortable slacks aren't just for Casual Fridays. A place where our national borders are safe and secure from unwanted intruders ... unless your great-grandpappy needs to a place to lay low for awhile as he builds his freaky, anything goes, sex harem.

Oh, but no gay stuff."

Gee, I still have 100 words or so to play with. I think he'll get the idea.

Essay Contest: Sit in the Romney Family Seats at Fenway [Mitt Romney's Free and Strong America PAC]

It was the Leitch family's first trip to Fenway, and our father couldn't get over the fact that they had seats on top of the wall now. But we really couldn't get over how warm and pleasant everyone was; other that one douche who high-fived us to say "thank you for 2004, dude, yeah!" the whole Fenway crew had a vibe that was on the right side of the force. Unlike some people.

We did enjoy the team shop. Did you know you could buy a Dice-K thong? We had no idea there was such a market.

We hope that Sox fans will remember how Busch Stadium security — in a move that's pretty magnanimous even for St. Louis fans — allowed Red Sox boosters outside the old Busch Stadium to watch the end of Game 4 of the World Series for free. You have to be nice to us now, right?

More to the point: For all the success, infuriating and otherwise, that the New England area has had to celebrate over the last few years, they've never actually clinched a title at home. Both the World Series wins were on the road, and the Super Bowl wins were, you know, at the Super Bowl. We are curious how Boston will handle a hometown championship win.

If it happens, of course.

Turns out, Fenway Park's food failed numorous health inspections on opening day. It's kinda ugly.

In the initial visit, on April 1, inspectors found sausages thawing in stagnant water, employees handling raw burgers without changing their gloves, and rodent droppings underneath service counters, city records show.

Apparently the problems have been "fixed," as much as you can "fix" such a problem, but we're actually a little surprised anyone even bothers inspecting food at sporting events, Aramark aside. Isn't getting the risk of the food killing you part of the exquisite joy that our nation's sports provide?

Fenway Food Stands Failed Inspections [Boston Globe]

Vince Jennetta, a teacher who chaperoned her class trip from Memorial Boulevard Middle School in Bristol, Conn., told The Boston Globe that Alexa is "a little shaken, but OK." The hawk was perched on a railing in the upper deck behind home plate while the group toured the stadium. The hawk flew at the girl and swooped with its talons extended, scratching her scalp.

This is surely an omen, is it not? Things like this don't just happen. The Yankees may not win this division for another 100 years.

And Alexa should consider herself lucky: If the hawk hadn't got her, the mountain lion that lives in the concession stand would have.

Action photos by the Boston Globe.

An Omen? Fenway Hawk Attacks Female A-Rod [MSNBC]

It's a "Season Ticket Application" for the Boston Red Sox circa 1984, in which you simply choose which games you want to go to, select the number of tickets you want and then mail in the application. And the prices are the best part: The Upper Box Seats, sections 8 through 33, are $7.50.

When we were young, our parents used to tell us how going to the movies cost a quarter. We thought they were crazy. This is our modern day equivalent.

Speaking of the '80s, by the way, The Sporting News is starting its Strat-O-Matic simulation of the 1986 season. We're managing the injury-plagued Cardinals, with Baba Booey leading the Mets. We've got Mike Heath fever!

Oh, and here's a larger version of that ticket:

We were fortunate in the League Championship Series this year; both the winning teams got to celebrate at home. Ryan Garko might or might not agree; clinching at home is more fun for everybody. The Red Sox never had the opportunity to do that in 2004; last night had been hard-earned and long-awaited.

We wrote last night that the Red Sox can just be a normal team now, that they don't have to have 100 years of history hanging over their head every night now. This is not a group of plucky underdogs; this is a team that, backs to the wall, blasted out an outstanding Indians team 30-5 in three games to return to the World Series. It might not make the best storyline, but who cares about storylines? It's the freaking World Series!

Natural History [Boston Globe]

Among the 36,360 screaming souls in attendance was Seth Mnookin, author of Feeding The Monster and Hard News, a longtime Red Sox observer (and main reason A.J. Daulerio once interviewed Jayson Blair).

The game might not have turned out the way Red Sox Nation might have expected or hoped, but it was still a telling evening. After the jump, Mnookin's report from the evening, which makes us glad once again that we weren't born a Red Sox fan. Too much stress.

————————————

I've been to Fenway Park a lot in my life; there've only been four times when the pre-game frenzy was as electric as it is before a playoff game:

• Yaz's final game. ***
• The home opener is 2005.
• Pedro's return to Boston in a Mets uniform.
• Last night

When Yaz retired, he was the arguably the most beloved Red Sox player of all time (don't start jawing off about Williams - Boston only truly embraced him after he'd retired). Two years ago, the orgasmic flush of the Sox's World Series finally crested in the home opener's ring ceremony. And even us crusty old New Englanders knew enough to celebrate the best pitcher ever to play the game, even if he was wearing orange and blue.

Last night, on the other hand, wasn't a celebration of the past; this was a frenzy fueled by an expectation of what's yet to come. Daisuke Matsuzaka, the baby-faced assassin whose gyroball shrugs off the normal constraints of space and time like yesterday's jock, was making his first start in Fenway Park. On Brookline Ave., vendors were selling Dice-K thunder sticks. Japanese language cheat sheets could be had for a couple of bucks. (Apparently Sox announcer Carl Beane picked one up: When he went through the lineup, he introduced Matsuzaka in his native tongue.) There were so many flashbulbs going off when Matsuzaka pumped in the game's first pitch to Ichiro that third baseman Mike Lowell said he was just glad Ichiro didn't hit a drive down the line because he couldn't see a thing.

As the recently departed Kurt Vonnegut would have said, so it goes. Dice-K pitched well enough - seven innings, three runs, 4 Ks and a walk - and there were many delightful moments when he made the Mariners wave pathetically at the ball. There were also many times when he got hit, and hard. It wasn't a bad performance by any stretch, and if Matsuzaka turns in six years worth of 15-8 ball with a 3.60 ERA, he'll have been well worth his $8 million annual salary. But not bad doesn't cut it when you're expecting transcendent, and by the end of the night, some fans - at least some of the fans sitting near me in Section 17 - were grumbling about how he wasn't worth all the hype.

Boston can be a tough town to play in. Even taking into account the fact that Nomar is batshit insane, he had a legitimate gripe when he complained about the suffocative nature of being a Red Sox hero. David Wells, not exactly one of baseball's shy wallflowers, told me he loved the energy of pitching in Fenway but hated that he couldn't go to a movie with his kid without being mobbed. Even Matt Clement (remember him?) bemoaned the fact that he couldn't bike to the ballpark, as he'd done with the Cubs.

With that level of obsession - an obsession that justifies the highest ticket prices and least comfortable seats in baseball - comes a certain sense of entitlement, an entitlement that was only fueled by the magical postseason run three years ago. Combine that with the vernacularization of impressive sounding statistical terms - OPS, WHIP, etc. - and you've got yourself a frighteningly combustible mix: a small but vocal number of clowns who are convinced they know what they're talking about and feel as if they have the god-given right to share their opinions with the rest of us. (I'm well familiar with this behavior. In my family, we refer to it as N-CAR disease: "never certain, always right.")

To be sure, the N-CAR's are a distinct minority, but in a city like Boston - a city without the distractions of Broadway, or Wall Street, or Bungalow 8 - that minority can suck up a lot of oxygen. On Monday night, I almost drove off the road after hearing a caller on WEEI's "Planet Mikey Show" (does anyone else have an innate distrust of grown men who still use a diminutive nickname?) confidently proclaim that Manny should be traded because "he's done - he has, what, a .200 on-slugging percentage?" There are many good reasons why it makes sense to trade Manny; the fact that, six games into the season, he wasn't crushing the ball isn't one of them. Most players can deal with this type of knee-jerk criticism, just as most players can deal with being booed. But some can't. And some simply don't want to. (Manny - and yes, I know he's also out of his skull - also has cause to complain about the off-field demands of playing in Boston.)

Dice-K could very well end up being one of the game's elite pitchers (just as Beckett could have a great year ... but after only two games, I'm not yet convinced). I've never seen anyone throw four plus pitches as confidently as he does, and that's including Pedro. Thankfully, the language barrier will likely keep him from being subjected to the worst the local populace has to offer. But I couldn't help but notice that while the Mariners were hitting lasers of Matsuzaka, another phenom, Seattle's Felix Hernandez, was pitching an absolute gem of a game. Remember him? King Felix exploded into the baseball universe two years ago. He struggled a bit last year to the tune of a 12-14 and an ERA above the league average. And guess what? Seattle fans didn't try to run him out of town. So far this season, he's 2-0 with a complete game one-hitter under his belt, 18 strikeouts, and a 0.00 ERA. If King Felix pitched for the Sox, they'd be building a shrine on Lansdowne Street. Of course, if King Felix pitched for the Sox, who knows what could have happened last year. Boston can be tough on rookies. Just ask Cla Meredith.

*** Note: there may not have been that much of a frenzy at this game, but I was 11. It felt frenzied to me. Of course, I was also traumatized at that game by needing to pee in one of the blessedly defunct Fenway troughs.

Neyer originally did the review anonymously, but when a reporter called him out on it, he fessed up, admitting the book made him so angry, he wanted to "throw it across the room." ESPN.com ended up suspending him, nobody bought Neyer's book and now you can buy the two books together on Amazon for a deal. And Rob is probably very sad we brought this back up. Sorry!

Oh, What Tangled Webs [RobNeyer.com]
One Day At Fenway [Amazon]
Feeding The Green Monster [Amazon]
Combing Through Simmons Reviews [Deadspin]