Good morning!
Ten years ago last February, I wrote here that I couldn’t wait to take my newborn grandson Chase Greene to his first Red Sox game, and on July 1 that momentous occasion happened.
It was getaway day for the Red Sox, a rare weekday afternoon game, and April dropped Chase off at 8:30 a.m. dressed from head to toe in Red Sox garb. He got in the back seat and made himself comfortable. “On long car rides I like to take my shoes off because I tie my shoes very tight and it gets very annoying,” he said.
Chase is gripped by baseball fever. He collects cards, watches the Red Sox on NESN and keeps score (guess who taught him). He played shortstop in the Newt Guilbault League and though he excelled, he’d made the last out in the league championship game.
“That was a lot of pressure on you the last game,” I said.
“You mean striking out with the winning run on for the last out? With like 300 people watching? I didn’t even want to go up to bat.”
“That’s baseball,” I said, “and you went down swinging.”
We parked at a Trader Joe’s in Cambridge and walked past an elementary school and little league field and across the Memorial Drive exit ramps to the BU Bridge where a gaggle of geese flapped up from the river bank looking for food.
On the bridge, we saw kayakers passing under a graffiti-scarred railroad trestle, not far up from the boathouse where the Head of the Charles, the world’s largest two-day regatta, will resume again in October.
We crossed the trolley tracks on Commonwealth Avenue and joined Red Sox fans striding purposefully toward the ballpark like pod people from Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Several wore Andrew Benintendi jerseys in honor of the popular left fielder who saved the season by catching Alex Bregman’s line drive in the 2018 ALCS.
Benintendi had been traded to Kansas City for Franchy Cordero. At the All-Star break, Cordero was batting .179 with one home run and Benintendi was hitting .275 with 10 home runs. Alas, he was injured and didn’t play during the Red Sox series.
We walked around the park amidst the crowded din of carnie barkers selling grinders and fans lined up waiting for the ticket office to open.
Chase wore his Navy blue Curt Schilling jersey with No. 38 on the back, blue shorts, a blue Red Sox cap and was carrying the black Rawlings glove he got for his birthday. “Hope ya catch a lotta balls kid,” said a woman who was sitting on a crate and smoking a cigarette.
The scruffy locals who sold bootleg programs on the street for $3 had been replaced by Red Sox employees selling them for $5, and ticket scalpers were gone, done in by digital ticketing. We’ll never again hear those Boston bellowers and their constant refrain: “Who’s got tickets? Who’s selling? Who’s got extras?”
Chase heard his name called and turned to see his friend Jack Burnham crossing the street with his father Mike. We stopped and chatted, officially making Jack the first friend Chase bumped into at a Red Sox game. There will be many more.
Mike pointed to the MGM Music Hall that’s going up behind the center field bleachers. Construction was booming, destroying places like the Motor Inn where transients, out-of-town media and minor league call-ups once stayed. I felt like Frank Gallagher from “Shameless,” griping bitterly that developers had ruined the old-time baseball vibe.
After the gates opened, we walked through the park’s damp concrete underbelly and up the ramp behind home plate. Chase stopped and stared, but it wasn’t the Alice-in-Wonderland moment of generations ago when a kid’s vision of Fenway Park went from black-and-white to a swirl of bright colors and the sound of organist John Kiley playing “Sweet Rosie O’Grady.”
“Let’s get a hot dog,” said Chase, and we went to a concession area behind the left field grandstand. “We’re not open yet,” said the cashier. “Come back in about five minutes.”
We left to find our seats and when we returned the guy at the grill recognized us. “Hot dog, right? You need one. You’re pitching today.”
Chase took a bite and his eyes widened. “This is the best hot dog I’ve ever eaten in my life! I’m not even gonna use ketchup!”
The cashier waved off the money which was about as nice a gesture as I’d experienced at any game anywhere, so kudos to the Red Sox for hiring good people.
About our seats, back before Red Sox Nation, pink hats and Wally the Green Monster there were three ticket choices: bleachers, grandstand or box seats. Today the Red Sox website lists 33 different pricing levels, and the costs quickly skyrocket. Two seats a few rows back of the visitors dugout for the upcoming Blue Jays series cost $362; two seats to watch the Orioles up where the old press box was cost you $810.
I went on the cheap, paying $114 for two seats in Section 33, the no-booze section next to the left field wall. I’d considered buying two Pavilion seats in the upper deck but didn’t want to pay the extra $150.
Chase wasn’t thrilled by the family of four that was sitting to our left and the three teenagers who were on our right, or the kids behind us who were kicking our seats.
“Wanna sit somewhere else?” I asked, and he nodded.
Chase stayed close. He tagged along with me to the bathroom and followed straight behind me on our journey to right field, that vast wasteland of obstructed views and mispositioned chairs. This is where they put the bus groups and people with comped tickets who wind up wondering if their selfies should be on the back of a milk carton.
During our search. I spotted the family from upstate New York who’d let Chase and I move ahead of them in the ticket line. They had taken the ballpark tour and decided to stay for the game. It was a mistake. They were wedged into a section where two aisles converged and fans were crowding past them, like the woman who was using a cane to push herself up the old stone steps and the father who was holding a two-month-old baby.
We sat behind the right field foul pole in chairs that faced the center field bleachers. Chase sat sideways and tried not to let the foul pole hinder his view. He’d tilt his head one way and then another, until he noticed a block of empty seats behind third base.
“Let’s go over there,” he said.
KC’s Whit Merrifield hit Nate Eovaldi’s sixth pitch to center field for a single. “After this inning,” I said.
We trekked back and came up a tunnel behind third base. The usher looked at my Springfield Indians T-Shirt and said, “I’m so old I saw the Springfield Indians play the Providence Reds in their smelly coliseum.”
When the Red Sox were retired, he let us go to our seats. I looked at Chase and said, “After you.”
He was limber and quick and I rushed after him down through the grandstand into the upper box seats where he turned into an empty row and sat down in a seat like he owned it. “Wouldn’t you say those seats over there are the worst in the world?” he said.
Below us another usher had kicked out two kids who’d tried to sit in the lower boxes. He wore an LL Bean raincoat and masked up he looked like Joe Biden. He was scouting for scofflaws and locked eyes with us for a moment, but then turned his attention elsewhere.
We were safe at home.
The game was everything a 10-year-old kid would want to see. Kike Hernandez, J.D. Martinez and Danny Santana all hit home runs and Xander Bogaerts doubled. When Kansas City’s pitching coach went to the mound Chase asked, “Why do the coaches dress in uniforms?”
Great question, I said.
“They’re gonna mercy ’em,” Chase said when the score was 8-0.
“No mercy rule in the big leagues,” I said, so we agreed to leave if the score reached 11-0. In the bottom of the sixth inning Rafael Devers launched a three-run blast to put the home team ahead 12-0.
“Looks like this game’s in hand,” I said, and we left to buy souvenirs. Chase bought a T-shirt for his brother Carter, a pack of Red Sox cards, and a Robby Scott autographed baseball.
Robby Scott was a Red Sox pitcher who was released in 2019. Chase bought his autographed baseball because it cost only $15 and the other unsigned baseballs cost $45.
I held up a glass bottle the size of a pepper shaker that was filled with authentic Fenway Park dirt. “How much, ten bucks?” I asked the clerk.
“Twenty,” he smiled. “Every time somebody buys one it blows me away.”
Chase caught on fast how to find good seats. When I told him about the pricey Pavilion seats he said, “Get ’em. I’ll put in $100.”
Imagine that, a 10-year-old kid offering to chip in $100 for a baseball ticket. I don’t know who should be more embarrassed, me or the Red Sox.
Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for four decades in the Pioneer Valley. He can be reached at chipjet95@yahoo.com