The Pilgrimage

I know it was sort of a rough weekend. Dropping two of three to the Angels, getting the pitching knocked around, and seeing the Yankees close to 0.5 games for the East lead. For me, however, this weekend was tremendous. My parents visited from Wisconsin, and my father and I took in Saturday's game at Fenway- my first ever.

Before I talk about the game, let me first say this: 19-6 was enough. I didn't need much other than that this weekend. The Yankees gave up 19 runs for the second time this season. The interesting thing was their trade-deadline reaction to that. They got Bobby Abreu. Um...can he pitch? Because from where I'm sitting, 19 runs (twice!) is not a failure of the outfield (except that Johnny Damon play). Abreu can hit, yadda yadda, but he's not much of an upgrade on either Matsui or Sheffield. This puts the Yanks outfield almost where it was, but it can't stop the scoring. I like this move.

Now the game. Driving up Storrow Drive I kept looking for signs of Fenway Park. I knew it was in the area, but get a little disoriented in the Boston streets. When we hit Boylston Street, all became clear. I still didn't see Fenway, but I did see the people. Our fellow pilgrims. A steady flow of people in Red Sox gear flowing from many directions, all toward Fenway. That's a neat side-effect of having the urban stadium with dispersed parking. In most other places, you have a central lot with a sea of parking. There's tailgating, but there not the same sense of destination.

We parked in a lot nearly a mile away and just followed the crowds. Lansdowne Street had the feel of a street festival. We entered at Gate C, just to the center field side of the monster seats, figuring we could just cut over and grab our seats up in Section 33. Wrong. We had the honor of getting to walk around the entirety of the interior of Fenway to get up to our seats. This was quite an experience. The day was hot- nearly 90 degrees and humid. The bodies of our fellow fans were dealing with that fact in the only way they could. We were all sweaty. And more than a little stinky, to be frank. My father and I moved, slowly through the enormous crowd, and up-stream as it appeared, to our seats. As we walked past the ramps to each section, I caught glimpses of the field and the stadium. I saw the coke bottles on the light tower, the scoreboard with the big John Hancock sign, the Pesky Pole. I just had to smile. I felt a little giddy- though perhaps that was the body odor getting to me.

We got to our seats, way over near the Gulf sign on down the third base foul line. We could see the whole field- except of course second base, which was obstructed by a pillar. What really ever happens at second base, though? Perfect seats. Aside from the utter narrowness of the seats and the rows (not to be crass, but how do really tall people or really fat people sit at Fenway?), I was enthralled with just looking around the stadium from my new vantage point. After so many hundreds of games on television, I thought I had seen the game from every angle. I hadn't seen this one. The look of the ball skipping up the middle for a base hit, or flying out to ricochet off the wall is very different from up there. There's no substitute for being there, but I have to say, with all the angles and cameras NESN has at the park, baseball is really wonderful on TV.

The part of being in the park that I enjoyed most was the unanimity of the crowd. This was a fan population that understands the game, and unabashedly loves their team. The ovations that Varitek gets when he walks to the plate is deafening. This is for a guy having probably the worst offensive season by a catcher in the A.L., but he's our captain, and he plays the game the right way (except for that part when you're supposed to not strike out so much with the bases loaded). I agreed, and cheered him on as well. Manny and Papi's at-bats just shook the house, as you'd expect. I was surprised, though, at the continued appreciation of Orlando Cabrera, who is now two years separated from his World Series glory. And the crowd reaction when Jonathan Papelbon ran in from the bullpen was probably the coolest of the reactions (well, that and the Yoooooooouk!). Papelbon uses "Wild Thing" for his music, which is both blatantly derivative of "Major League" and just perfect for him, the moment, and the crowd. The joy at that moment is real, and it's something you don't get to see on TV.

The game itself had everything you could want in a Red Sox game. You had the back and forth scoring, the battle of young pitchers (both Beckett and Jered Weaver pitched decently, but neither up to their potential or their hype), the close plays, a late-inning rally by the Sox to tie it up, a homer by Papi to dead center to start that rally, a home run by a deaf guy (we do still love you, Curtis. But that's all you get, ok?), two stellar innings by Papelbon, a near walk-off hit by Youkilis (that ball hit just maybe four feet down on the monster. That was really close to us), and the completely expected, completely scripted, and completely wonderful game winning hit by Papi to beat the shift and bring it home in the 11th.

I, like 35,000 of my fellow pilgrims, was jumping up and down and screaming. My dad was grinning, I think mostly out of relief that we had actually made it through a game at Fenway. I know that it was the only game the Sox won this weekend. I know that the Angels made the Sox look pretty bad for most of that series. I could not care less.