Neyer - Feeding the Green Monster

Also by Rob Neyer
Baseball Dynasties: The Greatest Teams of All Time

This book is for anyone who has loved Fenway Park,
and isnt ready to see her go.

Four years ago, I received an e-mail from a talented young man named Jay Mandel. He was the first (and still the only) agent to express any interest in working with me. Since then weve done two books together, and I hope were together for another twenty-two. Or until he gets sick of me calling him to pitch completely noncommercial book ideas.

Jay eventually got this book into the hands of Zachary Schisgal at iPublish, and Zacharys enthusiasm essentially brought it back from the dead.

Shortly after my arrival in Boston, a talented young jazz drummer named Jason Brannon searched me out, and offered to assist me in whatever way I might think necessary. Well, the project I had in mind was an exhaustive search for the origin of the term, Green Monster. Through no fault of Jasons, we didnt get far with our search, but he proved indispensable in the making of this book, especially as my deadline approached. Besides that hes great company, a welcome commodity when youre a stranger in a strange land.

My mother, Annette Neyer, has always encouraged me. My father, Bob Neyer, has never discouraged me. Im grateful to both of them, for those reasons and others.

David Schoenfield, my long-suffering editor at ESPN.com, deserves a lot more than the complimentary copy of this book that I'll send him. The care and feeding of Rob Neyer aint easy (to which any of my ex-girlfriends will happily attest), but David has accepted this thankless chore, with great grace, for nearly four years now.

I'm also grateful to Geoff Reiss, John Marvel, and John Walsh at the Disney Internet Group, for both their indulgences over the years, and their permission to publish a few of my ESPN.com columns in these pages. Chuck Waseleski, Tom Ruane, Pat Quinn, Don Zminda, and Hall of Fame researcher Eric Enders all assisted me with statistical research.

I remain, as always, grateful to Bill James for far too many reasons to list here.

Two radio hosts have been particularly kind to me in recent months, and Im grateful to ESPN Radios Bob Valvano and WEEIs Ted Sarandis (along with their producers, Andy Elrick and Chris Eno) for giving me the chance to propagate my wild theories over the airwaves.

Im a klutz when it comes to computers, yet my professional life revolves around them. So for his help, Im grateful to Todd Arntson, who was never too busy to figure out which obvious solution I hadnt discovered for myself. John Pastier patiently answered my questions about Fenway Park and its prospective replacements. Nobody knows more about ballpark architecture.

The Boston Red Sox feature the highest-priced tickets in Major League Baseball, and I spent the grand total of two thousand, three hundred and seventy-six dollars (not including monies paid to scalpers) for the privilege of watching a pretty good team in what management considers a pretty crummy ballpark. Id have spent a fair piece more, but for the kindness of friends and strangers who forked over tickets and wouldn't let me pay. In something like random order, those friends and strangers include: Lilia Guerra, Art Martone, Eric Neyer, Mike Slade, Bill Nowlin, Mike Curto, Geoff Reiss, A.J. Preller, Andy Schader, Jon Sciambi, Robert Gilbert, Michael Berman, Mike Kopf, Mark Haubner, Alan Brennan, Adam Kosberg, Jordan Koss, Neal Roper, and Ryan Mulderrig.

Also helpful in acquiring tickets were David Mundo, A.J. Preller, Bill Considine, Tom Nahigian, Rob Mathews, and Jack Howland. Oh, and I shouldnt forget ticket scalpers Tommy and Kevin, who are relative princes among their ilk.

In my various travels during the season, I rarely had to spend money on hotel rooms, and for that I extend heartfelt thanks to Madison Smith, Bruce Feldman, and Alan Schwarz.

Special Awards for Miscellaneous Meritorious Service go to Mark and Meghan Swardstrom, Susan Wolf, Christine Destefano, Steve Schulman, Pete Fornatale, and Allen Barra, for reasons that they know only too well.

And finally, what gratitude I have left must go to Kristien and Micah. In the course of getting this book published, I ran into a real rough patch, a long stretch when it looked like the only people who would read the book would be my agent and my mom. My hopes flagged but my spirits didnt, because I knew that whatever happened to this book, Kristien and Micah would still be in my life.

Tuesday, April 11
Opening Day at Fenway Park

In a couple of months Ill be thirty-four years old, and it strikes me, as I sit here in Section 29, Row 13, Seat 10, that a great percentage of those nearly thirty-four years have been spent preparing me for this day.

Opening Day at Fenway Park.

Im here because I have, since I was a boy, loved baseball more than anything else, and I believe that Fenway Park might well be the best place in the world for a baseball lover to pass his days and his nights.

A couple of weeks ago, Sports Illustrated s cover featured Pedro Martinez, Bostons (and for that matter, the worlds) ace pitcher, along with the words, Why the Red Sox will win the World Series. Heady stuff, but perhaps not so much of a reach, given that the Sox won ninety-four games a year ago and reached the American League Championship Series before bowing to the hated New York Yankees.

Its been eighty-two years since the Boston Red Sox won a World Series.

My baseball life began when I was nine years old. After a decade of moving around the Midwest like middle-class American gypsies, in the spring of 1976 my familyme plus my mom, my dad, and my little brother, Ericarrived in Raymore, Missouri, a small town just a few miles south of Kansas City.

Two things happened that summer: I turned ten, and I fell hard for a baseball team.

Wed moved to Missouri because my dad was starting a new job with a company called American StairGlide (they built chairs that slide up and down rails installed next to stairs). American StairGlide was a subsidiary of Marion Laboratories, which was owned by Ewing Kauffman, who owned the Kansas City Royals. So my dad could get good tickets for the Royals games. That summer, I saw my first major-league game and wound up going to the ballpark seven times. The Royals won all seven of those games. I just knew that I was their good-luck charm.

That same season, the Royals won their first American League West title. In October, I cried when Chris Chamblissof the Yankees, damn themhit a game-ending homer to beat the Royals in Game 5 of the American League Championship Series. (A year later, I cried again, this time at Royals Stadium, when they lost another decisive Game 5 to the Yankees, again in the ninth inning.)

At the same time, my parents were finally ending a lousy marriage, and the daily soap opera of the baseball season was a welcome, stabilizing presence in my life. I have a friend, a brilliant man who has written many books about baseball, whose mother died when he was a boy. Hes never told me so, but I suspect that he lost himself in the comforting intricacies of baseball. Perhaps more than any other American sport, baseball has the power to fill a hole in ones life, because, at least for six months, its so regularly there. Nearly every Monday through Saturday, the Royals would be on the radio in the evening. And then Sunday, in the afternoon. One might have to adjust for time-zone differences when the Royals were on the road, of course, but the rhythms of the season were predictable, and they made sense. Unlike the uncertainties of a busted home.