If you follow me on Twitter at all on occasion you see me mention the different books I am reading. I love to you read and always have from an early age. I recall as a child of about 7 or 8 years old sprawling out on the living room floor in the house I grew up in with the sports section of one of the local papers.
As I’ve gotten older my love of reading has continued and I regularly devour books at my local Barnes & Noble. In 2011 alone I read nearly 50 books from cover-to-cover.
As you also know by being a follower of this blog, I am tried and true Red Sox fan having seen my first game at Fenway in 1973. I remember some of it like it was yesterday as they played the Detroit Tigers.
I’ll never forget the first time I saw the Green Monster in person; the park from outside as you walked toward it and the excitement upon seeing the light stantions or how big the players seemed.
Fenway Park has played a major role in my life. For nearly a ten year period I saw between 30-40 games a year there and then when you throw in the other odd years of times I went to games with family or friends I’d say I’ve been to Fenway nearly 500 times.
This year marks the 100th Anniversary of Fenway Park. On April 20th at 3 p.m. they will play the New York Yankees on the exact date and time and with the same opponent that the fabled ball yard opened with.
To mark the occasion there are several books and magazines out to celebrate the milestone anniversary. The one you need to get as a Red Sox fan or as a baseball fan or as a history fan is “Fenway Park: A Salute to the Coolest, Cruelest, Longest-Running Major League Baseball Stadium in America”.
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Written by Boston Globe staffer John Powers and former Globe copy editor Ron Driscoll and published by the Boston Globe and Running Press, the book is amazing travel through the history of Fenway. It is a published as a large format, hard cover book and is nearly 300 pages of Fenway Park goodness and costs $30 US/$34.50 Canadian and is available where you buy books.
The book contains a special introduction by Benjamin Taylor with a foreword by former Red Sox pitcher and Cy Young winner Jim Longborg and includes a poster of rare blueprints of Fenway Park itself.
The book is full of photos, both full color and black and white, and many stories about not only the players but some of the fans and the people who have made Fenway Park what it is over the last 100 seasons of baseball.
“Fenway Park: A Salute to the Coolest, Cruelest, Longest-Running Major League Baseball Stadium in America” takes you inside the Green Monster with Christian Elias and outside the park with the vendors. The historical photos take you back to Fenway Park through each and every decade from the Royal Rooters and the opening of Fenway through “Smokey” Joe Wood and Babe Ruth’s time with the team.
Each decade breakdown also has it’s own timeline laid out in addition to stories and features written about that decade.
Some of the great features of this wonderful book are the stories about the fans, the owners from Harry Frazee to John Henry. They relive the fires at the park; the return of “The Babe” and the first football game ever played at Fenway.
There are sections on “Williamsburg”, Mrs. Robinson, the longtime Fenway switchboard operator, and the players who went off to war. In addition “Mr. Red Sox” Johnny Pesky is featured as is local boy and two-sport star Harry Agganis and the first night game in the Fens.
As you continue to go through the book and the wonderful history of the park you will learn that they had boxing matches there in addition to football games, concerts and hockey games.
Other features of “Fenway Park: A Salute to the Coolest, Cruelest, Longest-Running Major League Baseball Stadium in America” include sections profiling organist John Kiley, John Updike’s recollections of Ted Williams, the teams first black ball player, Pumpsie Green, and the first Patriots game.
Powers and Driscoll document the start of Red Sox Nation, the enduring symbol of Fenway, the Citgo sign, and they remember Tony Conigliaro along the way as well.
Even longtime groundskeeper John Mooney gets a feature, as the pair leave no stone unturned in chronicling the life of the park. The flashback to the 1975 World Series, Carlton Fisk’s homerun, Fred Lynn, 1978 and Bucky “Effin” Dent.
The managers are featured too with sections of Don Zimmer, Morgan Magic and Terry Francona. Hall of Famer Jim Rice gets a section alone on how he helped the child hit in the head by a ball one sunny afternoon at Fenway.
They cover Ted Williams day, his funeral, the final games of Yaz and Ted, Buckner’s redemption, “The Rocket” bursting onto the seen, the oddness of “Oil Can” Boyd. Mo Vaughn’s departure, a possible new park, the 1999 All-Star game and the once in a lifetime domination of Pedro Martinez are all recalled as well.
The book wraps up with the championship years of 2004 and 2007, the rebirth of “The Standells”, the Sox fans love of Jerry Remy and the Idiots as well as Neil Diamond’s appearance for “Sweet Caroline” and the NHL Winter Classic.
I can honestly tell you that Powers and Driscoll leave absolutely no stone unturned as they traced the history of “America’s most beloved ball park”. They left out nothing; there is no chance if you own this book of being disappointed because some aspect of the park is missing.
There are a lot of books about Fenway’s history and by far “Fenway Park: A Salute to the Coolest, Cruelest, Longest-Running Major League Baseball Stadium in America” is the best of them all.
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