A Night At The Old Ballyard

I went to a game at Fenway Park last Thursday, a nice little contest between the Devil Rays and the Red Sox. I love to go to the ballpark. But the problem with going to games in Beantown is being surrounded by crass New Englanders double-fisting beers and having to listen to them say things like ideer and pahk. Is there some sort of rule that everyone that goes to Fenway has to a Southie? And then there is the stupid jumbotrons that have ruined the baseball experience in every major league park except for Wrigley Field. And why do they feel the need to pump loud, crappy music between innings? And then there is the cold, hard fact, and Bostonians hate it when you say this, that Fenway is a damn dump. It really is the most uncomfortable, run-down, piece of shit relic of a baseball field. They won't let them tear the stupid thing down, Bostonians gasp in horror at even the suggestion, so let's just hope for a direct hit by a tornado someday. The best idea I've heard over the last few years is to let the team build a new park and turn Fenway into the new home of the Baseball Hall Of Fame, and take the HOF out of that dinky upstate New York town that has nothing to do with the history of baseball (and because of its inconvenient location makes it the least visited of all the major sports' halls of fame). But I suppose that's too brilliant of an idea for it to actually happen.

At one point I was sitting there in a cramped seat with no leg room, drinking a $7 beer, surrounded by Bostonians while a Led Zeppelin song blasted all around me and I couldn't help but think to myself, "Holy Crap! I've died and gone to Hell!"