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CNN Sunday Morning
Baseball Landmark Celebrates 90 Years
Aired April 21, 2002 - 08:55 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, a baseball landmark celebrates 90 years. That's how long they've been shouting "play ball" at Boston's Fenway Park.
The anniversary is an opportunity for fans to reminisce about an illustrious past.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE ANNOUNCER: Red Sox up. Joe Conan hustles to the third base coaching box. Play ball. Williams is on deck. The crowd is tense and eager. There's a line drive over second. Score, Johnny, score!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get your programs, $2, here. Souvenir game programs, $2. Sox/Royals game, only $2 here.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have never been to another park in the country and i don't want to go to another park in the country.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE CHILD: It's awesome. You get to, like, catch the foul balls and stuff like that. It's awesome. Seeing the green monster, Manny, Nomar (ph), Pedro, all those good players.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The wall is awesome. You know, so many good hits off of it and everything. You just remember all the players over the year. Who can play the wall and who can't? Rice getting booed. All the people -- just a great place to be.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What's Fenway? it's a church.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fenway is a connection to the game and to our own history.
And as you sit in a seat in Fenway Park and sip your beer and eat your peanuts and your hotdog and watch the play, you can feel and apprehend all the glorious past that's taken place there.
DAN SHAUGHNESSY, COLUMNIST: When you go back through microfilm and try to read up on the first week of Fenway Park, it's not quite highlighted the way youd like because the Titanic went down that same week in the North Atlantic.
And, of course, 1912 ended up being this wonderful season in Boston baseball history where they won the world series, they had great performances from Hall of Fame players. And it really was a good luck building in its first year.
It's interesting. It was considered large. Some of those sports writers thought it was, you know, that the fans were too far away, that it was too big a theater for baseball.
Fenway is wedged between in between five streets. As the hitters got stronger, the ball was more conducive to hitting. The dead ball era was over and guys started hitting long balls. They had to find a way to make this competitive and not too easy. That's why the wall goes up. Because they can't go out, so they go up.
And, of course, that became the thing that people recognize most about Fenway Park.
Inside the wall, at one time was the only manually operated scoreboard in baseball. And I think that as the park gets older and there's more nostalgia about it, you'll have more instances of players going in there to look around, sign their names.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE ANNOUNCER: With fire, spirit and grim resolution, he took his place on the Red Sox firing line.
SHAUGHNESSY: There's been no shortage of star material players here. Ted Williams was bombastic. He played baseball at a time when baseball was the only game that mattered, 1939 to 1960. He's a God- like figure and remains such in the city of Boston and is the most famous player associated with Fenway Park, bar none.
Babe Ruth goes down as a top-ten player in Red Sox history. He was a great pitcher for the Red Sox. Unfortunately, they only had him between 1914 and 1919.
Colley Shrempski (ph), Cy Young, the guys from the early days, Trist Beaker (ph), Harry Hooper, duffy lewis, Johnny Pesky (ph).
JOHNNY PESKY, FMR. RED SOX PLAYER: This park was always kept up real nice. It's always been clean. It's nice coming into this place. It's a comfortable place. And the fans, the fans in Boston are just simply great.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The oldest people in the ballpark.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's great. I love the park. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) mostly every games.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, Ive gone to the other place, and I like the other place, but I love coming here, because we're so close to the field. Some of the places where their bleachers are, you need binoculars to watch the ballgame.
In Fenway Park, they don't do too of bunting and all that stuff. They're always looking for the home run ball or a big hit.
Theres so many games, I mean, theyve been down like sometimes 10 runs and come back and win. And then they'd be up 10 runs and theyd lose. And I can't understand it, but that's the way baseball is.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Baseball is so much like life that we have to realize that this game is as much about loss as it is about gain.
Remember, you fail 7 times out of 10, and you're still a 300 hitter and youre probably heading to Cooperstown.
I do think that we have to be clear-eyed and realists and know that Fenway Park, like you, like me, will not last forever.
SHAUGHNESSY: This place is on its last legs, I suppose. So you build a new park with great modern amenities and old-time feel, but you can't say Babe Ruth played here, Ted Williams played here, this is where the '46 World Series was. You cant do that. You can't replicate that.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Baseball is the only sport that's accompanied every decade of the life of this country for the 150, 160 years.
And when you're in a park, you feel like you're in the presence of an important heritage. And I think Fenway, more than any other spot in the baseball world, does that to you. Reminds you of this wonderful, utterly American continuum that we're all a part of.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE ANNOUNCER: It's a long ball, a very long ball. It's in. It's in for a home run.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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