A loving look at Fenway Park

Posted Dec 10, 2011 by Bob D'Angelo

Updated Dec 11, 2011 at 12:06 AM

You don’t have to be a Red Sox fan to love Richard A. Johnson’s retrospective look at Fenway Park. But if baseball history strikes a chord with you, then his look at 100 years at the fabled ballpark will be sweet music.

“Field of Our Fathers: An Illustrated History of Fenway Park, 1912-2012” (Triumph Books, $35, hardback, 314 pages) is more than a coffee table book. It is an education in the long and colorful history of a ballpark that opened on April 20, 1912 — five days after the Titanic sank.

And it’s more than just about the Red Sox. Johnson, the curator of The Sports Museum in Boston for almost 30 years, has written or edited 20 books, most of them about sports in the Boston area. He digs down deep to bring a full, rich look at the events that have been held at Fenway. Johnson, by the way, visited Fenway Park for the first time in April 1968, when the Red Sox hosted the Chicago White Sox. Not sure which game, but the two teams played on April 17-18, 1968, and the host Red Sox won both, 2-0 and 3-0. Not a bad way to enjoy your first major-league experience.

Fenway Park has hosted five pro football teams, a pro soccer squad, the Harlem Globetrotters three times, the Boston Bruins in an outdoor NHL game, concerts by Bruce Springsteen and the Rolling Stones, championship boxing matches and pro wrestling. Pop Warner coached his 400th game there. The Washington Redskins began their career there as the Boston Redskins. The Yankees’ Joe DiMaggio hit 29 homers there.

The Red Sox are not the only team to host a World Series at Fenway. The Boston Braves completed their miracle sweep of the Philadelphia Athletics by winning Games 3 and 4 of the 1914 Series there.

Satchel Paige barnstormed at Fenway. Jackie Robinson was given a halfhearted tryout there by the Red Sox in 1945. Pumpsie Green finally integrated the Red Sox and played there in 1959.

Johnson includes items that will resonate with the Red Sox Nation. Those fans will know the significance of Section 42, Row 37, Seat 2 (the longest homer ever hit inside Fenway, by Ted Williams off Fred Hutchinson on June 9, 1946 — a shot measured at 502 feet). They will recall that the earliest starting time for a major-league game (10:15 a.m.) was at Fenway on Patriots Day in 1953.

Music has been a part of Fenway’s lore. Ray Charles, Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck and Thelonius Monk played Fenway in 1959 as part of the Boston Jazz Festival. Bruce Springsteen, the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney and Aerosmith have played concerts there.

Republican Barry Goldwater (1964) and Democrat Eugene McCarthy (1968) campaigned for president in rallies at the park.

Back to baseball. Billy Martin and Reggie Jackson nearly fought in the dugout there during a June 18, 1977, game there. Roger Clemens struck out 20 batters there in a 1986 game against the Mariners. Most memorably, Carlton Fisk launched a home run down the left-field line to win Game 6 of the 1975 World Series at Fenway, and three years later, Bucky Dent broke the hearts of Boston fans with his three-run homer that was the deciding blow in the Red Sox’s one-game playoff loss to the New York Yankees.

“Field of Our Fathers” contains more than 300 photographs of vintage shots from Fenway, plus other memorabilia like patches, ticket stubs and game programs. There’s also a photo of a uniform patch that proclaimed the “World Champion Red Sox, 1986 (which turned out to be a bit premature).

And I would be remiss if I did not congratulate Johnson for mentioning the souvenir empire Twins 47 (originally known as Twins Enterprises, Inc.,) run for many years by twins Arthur and Henry D’Angelo at 19 Yawkey Way, a pop fly from Fenway. Henry has died, but Arthur is 85 now. They helped preserve the neighborhood flavor of Fenway Park and became millionaires in the process. Sadly, I am not related to them.

Ebbets Field might have had Hilda Chester ringing cowbells in the stands, but Fenway’s biggest fan had to be Lib Dooley, who attended more than 4,000 games. Dooley sat in Box 36-A in the front row behind the Red Sox on-deck circle and gave Oreos and Starbursts to Red Sox players. From 1944 until 1998, she did not miss a home game. She died in 2000 at age 87 — she was a year younger than Fenway.

Vintage newspaper excerpts and essays from some of Boston’s best-known writers are included in this book.

I’ve never attended a game at Fenway Park, although I drove past it while on vacation in Boston in June (Yes, you can see the Green Monster from the interstate). And while it’s a goal of mine to see a game there, Johnson’s book is the next best thing to being there.