are to rhapsodize about Fenway? I'm ready.
So what do you want? The Dave Kingman home run off Reggie Cleveland about which there is no verification of a return to earth? Any one of the 25 vicious Frank Howard line drives - home runs in every other park in the world, from the Tokyo Dome to Yellowstone - that smashed into the wall and became singles? The time Curt Motton chased the ball around in the left field doorway as men ran madly around the bases? The altitudinous fly balls to left-center that would have been outs anywhere else but wound up as stand-up triples? The balls that roll around the fence in right, sometimes going for inside-the-parkers?
I have never seen a ball hit the ladder attached to the scoreboard, but people say it's happened. I've seen speedy men thrown out at home trying to score from second on a single that wasn't hit all that sharply because Yaz was playing so shallow. And how can I think about the wall and not think about Yaz, and vice versa? The nights when the wind was blowing out and a 12-5 led in the seventh wasn't safe. The night in '75 when the wind was blowing in and a Lee May smash to left that appeared headed for the Kansas City room at the Hilltop barely made the warning track (I know Gammons remembers this one).
The ballpark has intimacy, and, of course, it should, since it was built at the time the Titanic sank and in those days there was no other way to go. Of course, it's not the same ballpark it was when the grand ship went one-on-one with the iceberg, and let no one pretend it is. Fenway as we know it is a mere 65 years old. Tom Yawkey remade it to his liking as soon as he bought the team.
So if you want to get out the ticket stubs and prove you were there when Joe Cronin won both ends of a doubleheader with pinch homers, or the afternoon when the Red Sox rang up a modern-record 29 runs against the St. Louis Browns, or perhaps that even more amazing day in 1953 when the Sox put up the all-time ''crooked number,'' as Roger Clemens would say, that being 17 runs in one inning against the Tigers, that's cool. If you've got the programs and the scrapbooks and the giant-sized tissue box, that's just fine. We can have a pleasant chat about Fenway Park.
I love Fenway, too. But there is nothing contradictory about loving Fenway and pining for something new and efficient. Put me down with the progressives. I'm looking forward to sitting in Son of Fenway, and sooner, rather than later.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Fenway Park was built in 1912 for tiny people born in the 19th century. Furthermore, it is overrated as a place to see the game. Many thousands of seats down the first-base line and all the way out to the bleachers stink. Left field is, by and large, OK, but there are pole problems everywhere, which the Fenway Preservationist Society always seems to ignore.
Now, I realize I am in an extreme minority here, but one thing I did not like about the plan unveiled by the Red Sox yesterday was this business about maintaining the dimensions and, of course, the left field wall, a.k.a. the Green Monster. It's a monster, all right. It has more to do than anything else with the Red Sox being 0 for 81 in world championships since World War I. Can't anyone else see this?
Thanks to the wall, the Red Sox have never been able to construct a balanced team capable of playing equally capable baseball, home or away. With its current configuration, Fenway distorts both statistics and, more importantly, perceptions of reality on behalf of players, managers, and fans. In general terms, I'm all for asymmetry. To a point. But Fenway is way over the line, punishing lefthanded power hitters while rewarding the Felix Mantillas of the world.
Not to sound too uppity, but I thought that intelligent people had come to this conclusion a long time ago. It really never dawned on me that anyone charged with constructing a new ballpark in Boston would be foolish enough to allow gooey fan sentiment to overrule good judgment until a couple of years ago. That's when I first heard that any new architectural plan would include retaining the lovable, but deadly, 37-foot wall.
It is all so typically Boston and, indeed, New England to wallow in history and become trapped in it, rather than to celebrate history while keeping it in its proper place. Boston needs a new ballpark; all reasonable people understand that. What Boston does not need is to construct a new park that will maintain the heavy odds against this team ever winning anything. Repeat: Fenway, as configured, has been an organizational curse.
So give me new. Give me something modern and funky that isn't Camden Yards, isn't Jacobs Field, isn't The Ballpark, isn't Turner Field, and isn't Coors Field - Good Lord, anything but Coors Field. Give me a ballpark with, oh, a 12- or 15-foot wall in left as a polite homage to Fenway and fences elsewhere that will allow fielders to make the ever-popular bring-'em-back-alive leaping catch Ken Griffey makes look so ridiculously easy. Give me some ins-and-outs. Give me some modest asymmetry. Give me the retired numbers and fan-friendly interactive stuff (see Atlanta). Give me what the FleetCenter refuses to; namely, a thorough reflection of the team's rich (and tortured) history.
They say we'll be in whatever we're going to get by 2003, and I say, excuse me, but isn't this Boston? Land acquisition to build in the desired area will be, shall we say, intriguing (wait 'til the D'Angelos name the price to surrender their interests).
But whether it's 2003, 2013, or in time for the Yankees on Tuesday, it can't come soon enough. Fenway is cramped, generally uncomfortable, and, worst of all, counterproductive if your ultimate interest is to see the team win. We are in desperate need of a new park, and I do mean new. Sixty-five fruitless years of this foolish wall is enough.
Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist.
