The Red Sox announced yesterday they are building a new stadium next to Fenway Park. It will be similar in appearance but roomier than the 87-year-old ballpark it is replacing.P arks can be replicated, but memories can never be duplicated. Anyone who's ever been to Fenway probably has a few special recollections; here are a few from some Globe sports staffers:
It was the night of Sept. 16, 1975. Luis Tiant, Jim Palmer. There weren't strict fire laws then, and Red Sox treasurer/vice president John Harrington estimated there were more than 45,000 people in the park, sitting in the aisles and stuffed wherever they could stand.
It was the series the Red Sox, who had blown leads to Baltimore in 1973 and '74, hoped would put the Orioles in their taillights for good. As had become the tradition since El Tiante burst into New England folklore in 1972, he got a standing ovation when he strolled to the bullpen. He got another standing ovation when the gate opened and he walked across the outfield, to chants of ''LOOO-IE, LOOO-IE,'' and when he made his first pitch it was as loud as Fenway gets.
Tiant was what he seemingly always was when it counted: brilliant. Rico Petrocelli and Carlton Fisk hit homers into the screen off Palmer, and Tiant, twisting and turning and dancing, head bobbing, pitched a 2-0 shutout.
''That night,'' Rick Burleson later said, ''we knew we'd won the pennant.''
Peter Gammons
If you were a 10-year-old baseball fan in Boston in 1967, there was no greater gift Dad could give you than coming up with tickets to see the Impossible Dream live and in color at Fenway Park. And if he happened to do it twice - and pick two of the most memorable games of the season - what more could a kid want in life?
First came a Sunday afternoon doubleheader with the Angels Aug. 20 that started out with a bang, a 12-2 Red Sox victory in which Reggie Smith homered from both sides of the plate. But by the fourth inning of Game 2, the Red Sox are trailing, 8-0, and most families are heading for the exits on an already long afternoon. We stay. A Smith solo shot in the fourth and a Carl Yastrzemski three-run shot in the fifth cut it to 8-4. In the sixth, the Sox tie it on a pinch-hit, two-run double by Dalton Jones, a sacrifice fly by Jose Tartabull, and run-scoring single by Jerry Adair. Two innings later, while standing dwarfed in a crowd of adults at the concession stand waiting for a hot dog, I hear a roar and fight my way through the legs in time to see Adair's game-winning home run trot.
So, Dad, what are you going to do for an encore?
How about the World Series? How about Game 2? How about Yaz smashing two home runs in a 5-0 victory over the Cardinals? And how about Jim Lonborg pitching a one-hitter after taking a perfect game into the seventh inning and a no-hitter into the eighth?
Not bad.
Ken Fratus
My memories of Fenway are of covering the 1967 World Series. I flew up from New York, where I had a few drinks at the airport while waiting to see who was going to win the AL pennant, and got into Logan at about 9 p.m. Sunday night, the last day of the season. I took a cab to the Kenmore Hotel (which is no longer; it's now a BU dorm) and when the cabbie tried to make a U-turn toward the hotel, I saw a stake bed truck full of drunken college students slowly tip over and spew the students onto the street. They got up, righted the truck, got back into it, and continued reveling.
The opening game of the Series, on Tuesday, I'll never forget. It was a pitcher's duel between Bob Gibson and Jose Santiago and I remember Santiago belting a solo homer into the center-field TV camera position.
Tito Stevens
In more than 20 years of going to Fenway, the on-field memories are many. Tommy John and the hated Yankees beating the Sox, 2-0, on a Graig Nettles Pesky Pole home run. Being there for the wondrous days of Morgan Magic, when I was lucky enough to live in the shadows of the bleachers and attend the entire 11-game homestand - all wins - that sparked the 1988 AL East championship. Seeing Tom Brunansky's catch to clinch the 1990 division title, then scrambling from the bleachers to get in line for playoff tickets. Having the doubting wives alongside for Exhibit A of ''Why You Never Leave a Ballgame Early'' as Mo Vaughn's grand slam capped last season's amazing ninth-inning Opening Day comeback.
But the fondest memory has more to do with the heart than the diamond. Trips to Fenway as a kid from Pittsfield were always special, with the three-hour drive only making it that much more of an Event. And trips with my grandparents were the best. This time we were even staying over, with a rare chance to see a night game, then a matinee the next day.
Around the fourth inning of the night game, the rains came long and hard, but who cared? John Kiley was belting out the tunes on the organ, and my brother, grandparents, and I had a little singalong that could have gone all night for all I cared.
They did finally get the game going again. And Bernie Carbo hit one of those critical pinch-hit homers that made him my favorite player. And sometime after midnight, long past everyone's bedtime, the Red Sox beat the Angels. But it was the warm moments during a cold rain delay that I'll most cherish when remembering Fenway.
Steve Richards
I was a baseball card-collecting 8-year-old when I made my first visit to Fenway Park. Yes, I gasped the first time I walked into Baseball Heaven. But that was only the beginning.
I come from a newspaper family. My father and his father before him worked for Boston newspapers. One of my father's friends on the old Boston Post was sportswriter Joe McKenney, who became the Red Sox publicity director when the Post died in the 1950s.
We were Joe's guests on May 31, 1958, and the Sox were hosting the Yankees. We had box seats down the first base line and before the game Joe gave me a tour. We stepped from the grandstand onto the red clay that surrounds the field and walked down the long, dark tunnel to the Red Sox dressing room.
I stood in Mike Higgins's office and discussed the lineup with the manager. I sat in the locker stall next to a young catcher named Haywood Sullivan. I told him I caught for my Little League team, and we talked about handling pitchers. Jackie Jensen, Frank Malzone, and Ted Lepcio were gracious and signed their baseball cards. So did Dick Gernert, Sammy White, Jimmy Piersall, and every other Red Sox player we approached.
But the biggest treat was walking down the tunnel from the dressing room to the dugout. Sitting on the steps was Ted Williams. Joe introduced me to Ted and I sat beside him, and for five minutes we talked baseball.
As for the game, Yogi Berra tied it in the ninth with a two-run double and Enos ''Country'' Slaughter hit a two-run home run in the 10th that proved to be the game-winner.
I was sort of shell-shocked. I was so moved by meeting my heroes that when I returned to my seat I began eating peanuts, shells and all. By the sixth inning I was sick and heard the rest of the game from the first-aid station.
Nevertheless, it was a moment in my life that will never be forgotten or jaded by growing up. I believe I do what I do today because of that afternoon.
When Fenway Park is gone, I will miss it as much as I miss my late father, who also shared the same passion for the Red Sox. But in time, all things must pass.
Paul Harber
During the first days of the 600 Club (in 1988), nobody noticed its effects more than Wade Boggs.
As he took batting practice one day, his mood was changing for the worse with every swing. Balls he tried slicing off the left-field wall were now falling short.
He got so frustrated that he stormed out of the batting cage and went out right beyond the mound, looking up at the new structure with a look of unforgettable disdain.
''The wind currents have changed,'' said Boggs, who made his living hitting the ball to left field. ''The ball used to carry to left field. Now it's a swirling wind. Everything has changed. This is ridiculous. This doesn't give us an advantage anymore.''
This was precisely the issue Red Sox executives had wrestled with before the erection of the 600 Club, which is actually the sight of the old press box, while a new press box was constructed above it.
Former co-owner Buddy LeRoux wanted the team to build the restaurant/luxury seating in right field so as not to disrupt the ballpark.
Boggs agreed.
The third baseman looked at the flag above the new construction and shook his head. It was blowing in.
''They have ruined the ballpark forever,'' said Boggs. ''It'll never be the same.''
And he was right. It never was.
Nick Cafardo
Personal memories at Fenway? What's more personal than your own family?
All three of my children were born at Beth Israel Hospital, right down the street from Fenway. I remember handing out cigars behind the batting cage the night my daughter Kate was born in 1985. And I remember nine years later when Roger Clemens gave her pitching tips before she threw out the first ball on Kids Opening Day.
I remember sitting with my sister Ann in Section 27 when Carlton Fisk clanged one off the foul pole to win Game 6 in 1975. I remember visiting that same section of grandstand to shake hands with my dad on my way to the Orioles clubhouse on a getaway Sunday in 1979. My dad died a month later. Our last time together was at Fenway.
Dan Shaughnessy
That October afternoon when the Red Sox clinched the '67 AL pennant, I sat with my father in the last row of Fenway Park's bleachers.
''C'mon,'' he said, by the top of the eighth inning, ''let's go.''
This was, I thought, my father's usual early exit.
If you were going anywhere with Melvin Dupont, you were going early.
If you were going to see the Sox, you were there for the first pitch of batting practice and usually gone by the top of the eighth inning. His perfect game was a Red Sox victory and a timely exit. There was nothing better than beating the Yankees (rarely) and beating the traffic. My old man was the Cy Young of beating traffic.
Our departure in progress that day, my father surprised me - and I have to think surprised himself - when he led the two of us in a dash to the right field grandstand. We were at the rail at the bottom of section No. 1 when Rico Petrocelli dropped back for a short pop fly, and we already were on the field when he pocketed it for the final out.
My amazement was profound. The Sox had won, I was on the field, and my father, my ever-law-abiding, straight-laced father, at age 45 was running like some teenager across Fenway's outfield grass. Most surprising of all, we were still there. The traffic would have to leave without us.
For about an hour, we ran all around the place. Kids climbed the scoreboard at the base of The Wall. Others climbed up the screen behind home plate to shake the hand of Sandy Koufax, working as a network commentator that day.
At one point, my father and I rolled up the Red Sox on-deck circle, a thick rubbery mat, but quickly realized it was too heavy to carry up Comm. Ave. His '62 Falcon, poised to beat the traffic, was parked well beyond the BU campus. We left the mat behind and I settled for a pocketful of dirt from the third-base line, and a lasting memory of my father's lapse into my adolescence.
Kevin Paul Dupont
What a college recruiter's dream, this bigger-than-life, greener-than-green urban oasis that sent chills down my spine - no exaggeration - the first time I visited Boston, spotting it from the Mass. Pike as I arrived in town to check out higher education options. Boston University had the course of study I sought, sure, but the prospect of living in a dorm where you could hear the roar of a Fenway Park crowd helped lure this Jersey kid to town.
The short stroll through Kenmore Square to the vintage ballpark was at the core of my curriculum during the college years - sometimes for spur-of-the-moment mischievousness when it was too sunny to sit in class, sometimes for a brisk evening in the bleachers doing homework (I tried, Professor, I swear). Green Monster 310, my favorite elective.
Two decades later this kid is still in town, no longer wearing that damnable ''NY'' cap - it didn't take long for me to be indoctrinated into the local loathing for all things Big Apple - but still occasionally stealing away from a laborious magazine writing project for an easygoing afternoon of pondering pitching, not prose, at Fenway. I'll miss the old place - but maybe I'll finally start meeting deadlines.
Jeff Wagenheim
My first memory of Fenway Park was watching Jim Lonborg and Bob Gibson in the 1967 World Series on a huge black-and-white television in our living room in Norfolk. I was 7 and was fascinated by that wall in the background - just how high was it, what color was it, and would I ever be able to see it in person?
My father got tickets to a game in 1968 and took his first-born son. Our seats were a few rows behind the Red Sox dugout and George ''The Boomer'' Scott launched one over the Green Monster, which caused the fans to rise to their feet, screaming. ''Can you see it? Can you see it?'' my father asked, lifting me in the air to give me a better view. I told him I had, but to this day I haven't seen Scotty's tater. What a wide-eyed youngster did come to realize that moment, crystal clear, was that his father would always be there for him, and would always be trying to give him a boost, for which I am forever grateful.
Oh, and Dad ...? I still think Yaz was better than Ted - if only in '67!
Pete Goodwin
Everybody remembers the finish of the 1975 season: the unforgettable Game 6 of the World Series followed by the Reds dancing triumphantly on Fenway's green in Game 7. But one of my most cherished memories of Fenway Park occurred at the start of that season - Opening Day. Luis Tiant was on the mound, Yastrzemski was in the field, and kids named Burleson, Lynn, and Rice were on the roster, but the name that brought the biggest ovation when the lineup was announced was the new designated hitter, Tony Conigliaro. The prodigal son had returned. Once the hometown hero after being the youngest player in the major leagues (22) to hit 100 home runs, the Revere native was traded to Anaheim in '71, then retired months later. He ended his retirement that cold April day, and the stands were alive with chants of ''Tony, Tony, Tony.'' And in Hollywood fashion he responded, knocking in a big run in the late innings with a single to right. He stood on first base wearing a huge smile as the crowd stood and roared. Thoughts of Jack Hamilton and feuds with Yaz and Dick Williams were distant memories. He was back in the spotlight. However, it was a homecoming movie that sadly had a short run; he retired again 21 games into the season. But in that 5-2 victory over the Brewers on April 8, 1975, Tony C was once again the star of the show.
Jack Thompson
My first memory of Fenway Park left a lasting impression. After coming home from work on a Friday, my Dad told me we were going to the Red Sox-Brewers game the next day. My first game. Forget about sleeping that night. Walking up the ramp to our seats I'll never forget the green. Green paint, green grass, and of course the Green Monster. We sat behind home plate, and chatted ball with the parents of Milwaukee rookie Robin Yount, who sat right behind us. Juan Beniquez led off for the Sox with a triple. Great, I thought, an immediate rally. I was disappointed when he was left stranded at third. My first Red Sox disappointment. Will they ever stop?
Jim McBride
It was Opening Day 1986. Red Sox-Royals. Some college friends and I were lucky enough to get front-row seats in the bleachers. A pregame idea strikes: Hey, let's make a banner and get on television!
We bought a can of red spray paint, hung a sheet in our dorm bathroom, and worked on our proclamation: ''Go Sox. KO KC.'' (OK, so we weren't poets.) Happy with our work, we took the banner down, only to see our words staining the cinderblock walls of the bathroom. We panicked, we laughed, we went to the game.
University officials launched an intensive search for the vandals. Perhaps they even watched the game hoping to spot some guilty faces hoisting the evidence. No such luck: We hid our faces behind the banner, and later learned we were not on TV anyway.
Gregory Lang
Since I live only about a 10-minute walk from Fenway Park, it's easy for me to see more than a dozen games each season. But the one I really remember was the second game of the 1986 AL Championship Series. My seat in Section 1 of the grandstand made me appreciate just how difficult it is to play right field at Fenway during an afternoon game. Since the blinding sun nearly rendered my sunglasses useless, hopefully the new Fenway won't present as much of an impediment for right fielders.
Judy Van Handle
Memories are made by people, not ballparks. Most of the memories you've read to this point make that clear. Mine is no different. My father, too, was the one to introduce me to Fenway Park. It was 1967; I was 13, and a huge Carl Yastrzemski fan. My father not only took me to Game 6 of the World Series, but he got seats in left field so I could watch my hero up close. Pitcher Gary Waslewski came up clutch for the Red Sox, but I spent most of the game just watching Yaz. It was my first real sports thrill.
Over the years, I would go to many more Red Sox games. I would sit in the bleachers with my brother in hopes of catching Yaz's 400th homer. I would drink cheap beers with friends. I would root on the young fools who charged onto the field during a long rain delay. My most recent appearance at Fenway was Boston's playoff finale against the Indians. I watched as my companion, 13-year-old Harry Bane, a cancer survivor, prayed to the heavens for Mo Vaughn's long fly ball to clear the wall. It didn't, but that didn't make the moment any less special.
I'll miss Fenway, just like the Old Garden. But it's the people I shared Fenway with that I'll cherish forever.
Robin Romano
