John Powers - Fenway Park: A Salute to the Coolest, Cruelest, Longest-Running Major League Baseball Stadium in America

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The histories of Fenway Park and the Boston Red Sox have been intertwined with the Boston Globe from the outset, and also with the Taylor family, which owned the Globe for much of the newspapers first 125 years, and which played a key role with the team and its ballpark at various times. Thus we would like to especially thank the Red Sox, present and former staff members of the Globe, and the Taylor family for their involvement in helping to create 100 years of Fenway Park history, and in making it come alive for readers and sports fans in New England, and increasingly, around the world.

A huge thank you as well to Janice Page, the Globes book development editor, who masterfully guided the project from start to fruition; to Globe editor Martin Baron, publisher Christopher Mayer, deputy managing editor Mark Morrow, and the entire Sports staff, especially columnists Dan Shaughnessy and Bob Ryan and editor Joe Sullivan. Our appreciation also goes to the books keen-eyed photo director, Susan Vermazen, as well as Jim Wilson, Leanne Burden, David Ryan, Jim Davis, Stan Grossfeld, and all members of the photo department, along with graphics staffers Daigo Fujiwara, Javier Zarracina, and David Schutz. Thanks as well to the indefatigable Lisa Tuite and the library staff for their research efforts, and Stephanie Schorow (research and fact checking), Alan Wirzbicki (fact checking), Richard Kassirer, Paul Colton, William Herzog, Jim Matte (proofreading), and Ray Marsden and John Ioven (imaging).

At Running Press, special thanks to editor Greg Jones, designer Joshua McDonnell, and every exacting copy editor who had a hand in these pages.

Cheers to Ben Taylor, for sharing both memories and memorabilia, and to Jim Lonborg, whos just as classy off the field as he was on it.

As always, we are grateful for the support of Lane Zachary and Todd Shuster at Zachary, Shuster, Harmsworth Literary Agency. We also thank the good people at the Boston Public Library (Jane Winton, Tom Blake, Catherine Wood), Tim Wiles of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and our friends at Dorian Color Lab in Arlington, Massachusetts. And we especially appreciate the generosity of Dan Rea, Susan Goodenow, David Friedman, and everyone in the Fenway Park front office.

The ballpark is the star. In the age of Tris Speaker and Babe Ruth, the era of Jimmie Foxx and Ted Williams, through the empty-seats epoch of Don Buddin and Willie Tasby and unto the decades of Carl Yastrzemski and Jim Rice, the ballpark is the star. A crazy-quilt violation of city planning principles, an irregular pile of architecture, a menace to marketing consultants, Fenway Park works. It works as a symbol of New Englands pride, as a repository of evergreen hopes, as a tabernacle of lost innocence. It works as a place to watch baseball.

Martin F. Nolan, former Boston Globe editorial page editor

BY

JIM LONBORG

On the final day of the 1967 season, teammates and fans rushed Jim Lonborg after he pitched the Red Sox to victory over the Minnesota Twins to gain at least a tie for the American League pennant.

I first saw Fenway Park in 1965 when I was a rookie pitcher for the Red Sox. We had played a couple of exhibitions on the way home from spring training in Scottsdale, Arizona, and had flown into Boston on Saturday night. We were staying at the Kenmore Hotel and we walked over for a workout on Sunday. I was used to ballparks like Candlestick Park and Dodger Stadium in California, so it was unique to be in a city setting and enter through a beautiful brick facade.

I remember coming through the tunnel on the first-base side and the first thing I saw was the Wall. I thought, this is where I have to work? I stepped off the distance from home plate to the Wall to see whether the posted distance of 315 feet was an accurate reading and it wasn't. But our coaching staff did a really good job of preparing us mentally to pitch in Fenway. The Wall can help you as much as it hurts you because a lot of line drives are knocked down by it. Since I was a sinkerball pitcher, if balls were up in the sky I wasn't making very good pitches.