Touring Fenway

From Rhode Island, Chris and I headed to Massachusetts.

Chris has tons of family in the Boston area and has been promising to bring me up there with him for years now.  I'd never been and have always wanted to go so we headed that direction.  All his family welcomed us up there with open arms - it was wonderful!!  THANK YOU everyone!!  We were so busy this past week that I don't even know where to begin, so I'll just have to start at the beginning.

Tuesday morning we went on a tour of Fenway Park.

We had a fantastic tour guide who unfortunately suffered from the inability to hold back his cheesy jokes (as in: "Cinderella can't play baseball because she runs away from the ball" and "A teacher's glass eyeball popped out of her head one day while she was teaching and you know what she said? 'Oh no! I've lost my best pupil'").  That didn't deter us from learning all sorts of cool information about the park though.  For example - that yellow pole is called Pesky Pole and if a ball hits it, it's a home run. (Probably you all already knew this - but it was news to me!)

Plus, our tour guide had World Series rings from 2004 and 2007 and showed them to us as the tour was finishing up.  I guess he must wear them to work - but they were really cool to see in person!

 We got to see the famous Green Monster.

I'm not sure if you can see it well in this picture, but there's a ladder on the wall between the sox logo and the middle advertisement and we learned that the ladder is completely useless.  I guess they used to have to climb up to get home run balls that would get caught in the netting, but after they put seats up on the Green Monster, people retrieve them.  Plus it's just easier to get up there now than having to climb that ladder.

Another fun fact:  Fenway Park will be 100 years old in 2012.  They say it will be designated a historic landmark that year and they won't be able to change anything anymore, so they've got a current building plan that they're trying to get finished before 2012.  For example, the seats on the Green Monster were only added in 2003.

Another fun fact:  The first game played at Fenway Park was in 1912 - only five days after the Titanic hit an iceberg and sunk.

We got to head up to the seats and check them out.  Apparently they're very expensive, but if you're not in the first row, it's really hard to see left field during the game.

Also, Fenway Park has some of the oldest seats in any baseball park.  They're still wooden and you can still get a splinter from sitting in them (I'm told).

It was a really awesome tour and I hope reported all my information fairly accurately.  There was so much more information, I wish I could remember it all!

This was only the start of our first day in Boston and I have so much more to share!  Perhaps this week's posts will all be mini history lessons for you :)