Category Archives: Fenway Park

Photograph from @FreshNewEngland

Season ticket-holder Edith Coakley knows the feeling all too well. The nervous anticipation, ticket in hand, as she nears a turnstile to enter Boston’s baseball cathedral, Fenway Park on many a warm summer’s day.

It should be a feeling of excitement and euphoria. Instead, all she can do is fret anxiously as the gate attendant goes through her canvas carryall. Don’t find the eggplant, please. For the love of God, take away my carrots, but stay away from the eggplant. 

“I find the ballpark food options to be a bit too predictable,” Coakley explains. “So I’ve been bringing in my own vegetables for years. Fresh cherry tomatoes that you can pop in your mouth instead of stale Cracker Jacks or peanuts. Trust me, on a hot summer’s day, munching down crispy cucumber dices is so much more refreshing than eating some $5 frankfurter that’s been soaking in lukewarm toilet water for the past four hours.”

Her wisdom may be far from conventional, but the organization has finally caught on. The ballpark vegetable craze is no longer mere fad, limited to the over-industrious, enterprising health-nut minority.

Earlier this week, the team announced that this season will serve as the inaugural year for “Fenway Farms,” an on-site vegetable garden that will grow all the family favorite herbs and vegetables: green beans, kale, cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplant, pea shoots, parsley, oregano, cilantro, mint and countless other edibles.

Homegrown products from Fenway Farms will be sold at concession stands and used as ingredients in food offerings. The team will also donate some beans and leaves to local needy school children.

For most fans such as Coakley, this is welcome news.

“No more weird glances when I pull a big-ass squash out of the front of my half-unbuttoned Nomar Garciparra jersey!” she rejoices.

As Loraine Smith from Seekonk put it, “Raw vegetables chock full of vitamins and a revamped Sox lineup chock full of raw power. What more can we ask for as Boston fans?”

John Hammond from Wellesley: “Some people are saying kale is just having its moment right now. That it’s a fad. That it’s a fluke or whatever. Well guess what, people said the same thing about David Ortiz in 2003.”

One club official also confirmed to Fenway Pastoral that there is serious charity auction potential with Fenway Farms. “We have some stuff up our sleeves. For example, fans may enjoy our plan to sell to the highest bidder all heads of lettuce resembling Mark Bellhorn. These will become instant collector’s items and a portion of the sale proceeds will go to the Jimmy Fund.”

Fenway Farms is a worthy endeavor indeed. However, as with everything good in life there are drawbacks. As part of the team’s plan to enter the lucrative farmer’s market industry, it confirmed it will be forced to crack down on fans that continue to insist on bringing outside veggies  into the park on gameday.

“We cannot have unauthorized contraband cauliflower and cukes floating around the bleachers,” said one club official. “It will compromise our business model and I think fans will hopefully understand and accept that.”

Unfortunately, with Opening Day looming on Monday, some fans are planning to fight back.

“These damn big government liberal hippies want to control my every move. This is Agricultural Big Brother gone mad,” said Pete James of Hanson. “I have a right to choose where I acquire and consume my veggies. This is un-American and wrong. So long as this is still the U.S. of A., I plan on chopping my own broccoli fresh in the comfort of my grandstand seat. I’d just like to see them come try to stop me.”

Ray Holtz from Framingham: “This is your garden variety capitalistic get-rich quick scheme. Entice a captive audience with delicious vegetables and make them pay an exorbitant mark-up. Seen it a thousand times. John Henry is just lining his pockets with the money he prints and you just know he’s keeping his pretty fancy boy self trim and his bowels regular with all that free kale.”

Grumblings over the relevance of the Boston Red Sox continue to grow louder and louder this season. Attendance at Fenway Park has been steady but demand for tickets is extremely light compared to the salad days of the mid-to-late aughts. The conclusion of the Boston Celtics’ playoff run and the return of star players such as Jacoby Ellsbury and Carl Crawford have so far done surprisingly little to allay the trend over the last six weeks.

The Red Sox could shock the world in a year or two. But will anyone still be paying attention?

The downturn even amidst the team’s modest success since the end of April suggests that baseball is no longer a mainstream spectator sport in New England.

It ain’t 2009 anymore. And, in fact, most experts agree: the situation will get worse.

By 2014, the Boston Red Sox fan base is projected to consist solely of hipsters.

That’s right: After half a century of stupidly high levels of popularity and rabid fan enthusiasm on a nearly worldwide level, the Boston Red Sox are no longer worth following, says pretty much everybody.

Soon, even the least astute losers of society are likely to catch on.

Pioneering stringers for cutting-edge news outlets such as the Boston Globe newspaper are already reporting on the trend.

For example, in an article entitled the “Ups, downs of fandom” from Wednesday’s Globe, a local restaurateur (or two, maybe!) were quoted as surprised by how little rush patrons seem to be to get to the ballpark in time for the opening pitch. It would seem the team’s last few lingering fans would rather finish their buffalo wings than waste their hard-earned dough on team ‘merch’ like player jerseys.

Says one analyst, “Within the next 12 to 18 months, the only people following the team will be society’s outliers, the people who do things different for the sake of being different.”

Major League Baseball has already taken note of the potential impact that a shift in the Red Sox fan base may have. For one, merchandising prospects for a team supported by hipsters are grim, to say the least.

“Penetrating the second- and third-hand thrift store marketplace with official Red Sox licensed products could be challenging. Then again, we’ve pulled off the seemingly impossible in the past by convincing approximately seven fans to purchase John Lackey game replica jerseys,” says one Sox spokeman.

Just to be safe, the organization has already hiked up prices for “throwback” jerseys and customized jersey tees for players that played in the late-1990s and early 2000s, when most of today’s hipsters were at peak impressionability.

“Wearing a John Wasdin or Carl Everett jersey makes a certain anti-everything type of statement that hipsters really dig,” said one team marketing guru. “It just kind of speaks for itself. These people will turn conventional fandom on its head.”

Meanwhile, the team is in negotiations with the MBTA to increase the frequency of game-day bus routes to Kenmore Square from enclaves such as Lower Allston, Davis Square and Central Square.

Once this niche fanbase is transported en masse to the areas around Fenway Park, enticing them to actually purchase tickets will prove the least of the team’s worries.

“It’s simple, really – the outfield concessions pavillion will be transformed into a farmer’s market and the center field bleachers will be gutted and turned into a stage on which musical acts will perform while either wearing funny hats or sporting unconventional facial hair — or both at the same time depending on what’s, you know, cool at any given time. We can also act very swiftly to any bumps in market demand for ear studs with the BoSox logo or sudden changes in the ideals for cut and fit of a licensed Red Sox T-shirt.”

Boasted another team marketing exec, “We’re so ahead of the curve on this one. I can’t wait to brag to the jerks who join this department in the next five years how fricken awesome it felt to be in on the ground floor for this. It’s going to be so epic.”

USA Today photo.

The Boston Red Sox do not always prevail, but fans at Fenway Park always go home winners at the end of games thanks to the club’s iconic tradition of playing Neil Diamond’s classic ‘Sweet Caroline’ just before the bottom of the eighth inning.

Unfortunately, Red Sox batters and pitchers rank as some of the slowest in the league in terms of Pace, a fancy stat measuring how many seconds pitchers and hitters take to do stuff in between pitches. More often than not, the hallmark singalong moment seems to come at obscenely late hours of the night.

In response to prodding from a growing number of fans – including parents with young children, people diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, NASCAR fans and psychopaths who actually respect Neil Diamond as an artist – the organization has begun researching the impact of moving the playing of ‘Sweet Caroline’ from the middle of the eighth inning to the end of the fifth inning.

“Per regulations of Major League Baseball, all games become official after the fifth inning is completed,” reasons one high-ranking member in the front office. “We’ve heard some of our fans have children that are having trouble concentrating in class the following day because they were at a Red Sox game that ran late the night before. We’ve also heard from many people who hold in bodily waste during games due to irrational fears about utilizing our restrooms facilities. Respecting all these various weirdos as much as we do as an organization, we believe this may be the solution to make everyone happy.”

While some members of the club were hesitant at first, the initiative’s proponents appealed to humanity’s basic core in arguing the cause.

Watch closely. While the image above may appear to be a still-shot of Daniel Bard, it is actually a real-time GIF animation of his pre-pitch routine.

“We sat a few people down in lounge chairs, strapped their limbs in place and wire-pronged open their eyelids a la Clockwork Orange. Then we made them watch Daniel Bard pitch with multiple runners on base,” explained one source. “Everyone quickly came around and once all the vomit and diarrhea was cleaned up, the idea of shifting ‘Sweet Caroline’ to the fifth inning seemed pretty inconsequential.”

(The technique was so effective, in fact, that MLB recently announced that Bard’s go-to pickoff “trick” move will be called a balk by all umpires – not just some! – beginning in 2013.)

It seems to be a unanimous belief internally that fans will submit to witnessing actual baseball during the first five innings if they know a sweet, sweet reward is just around the corner.

“But making people watch this ballclub for eight innings? I can’t believe we haven’t been under assault from all those hippie letter-writing organizations like Amnesty International…” said another club official. “I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that many fans would rather be waterboarded than watch Vicente Padilla pitch.”

Fans interviewed by Fenway Pastoral during the most recent homestand seemed to agree, although some have their reservations.

“I understand where the team is coming from, but I’m a big beer drinker and I can’t sing along with a fifth-inning buzz,” said Irene from Sudbury.

For those worried about a decrease in team concession sales, one club financial officer says there is no reason to fret.

“Yes, studies have shown most of our soft-serve ice cream is served between the sixth and eighth innings to people passing the time waiting for ‘Sweet Caroline’ by indulging in one of our famous helmet sundaes – the Red Sox logo is printed on a plastic helmet and it makes a great souvenir.”

But, the source went on, “We have sold the presentation rights of the fifth inning to John Hancock for a significant sum of money that will make up for the difference. So it will now be John Hancock presents The Fenway Fifth Inning Festivities Starring Sweet Caroline. I know, I know…it’s brief but catchy right?”

Even Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown has fervently applauded the team’s diligence in researching such a landmark decision. “As a diehard Red Sox follower, I can understand the fans’ desire to be able to witness the halftime ceremonies in full. Baseball is not just about socking that ol’ pigskin over the Green Mammoth, but also about the pageantry. The ‘Sweet Caroline’ singalong is an integral part of that perfect evening watching Dusty Peters and company play in that jolly old sandbox, as Henry David Upton famously put it.”