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Fenway Park's 37-foot-high wall in left field, painted green since 1947.
Before that, the wall featured a number of giant billboards, the most
famous being a Gem razor blade sign reading "Avoid 5 O'Clock Shadow"
and a Lifebuoy soap sign saying "The Red Sox Use It." The Green
Monster is baseball's most famous wall (which is more of a distinction
that it sounds), and it's obviously one of Fenway's greatest charms.
But it has probably cost the Red Sox a number of pennants. Here's why:
With such an inviting home run target, the team has traditionally stacked
its lineup with power hitters, forsaking the all-around players who are
the real keys to winning baseball. Additionally, left-handed pitchers
are said to be intimidated by the Wall, so the Sox have trouble developing
them. To Sox fans, the Green Monster really is a monster.
In the 1930s, baseball was in trouble. The Depression was cutting sharply
into attendance, and the Babe Ruth juggernaut, which saved baseball in
the '20s, was winding down. Baseball needed something else. In 1931, the
Baseball Writers Association institutionalized the MVP award, and two
years later, sportswriter Arch Ward created the All-Star
Game. Then some people from Cooperstown, New York, the alleged birthplace
of baseball, approached the commissioner with an idea: a museum honoring
baseball's great players and innovators. The commissioner liked it, and
so did the rest of baseball.
When it opened in 1939, it was a single-room exhibit with plaques and
pictures. Thanks to curator Lee Allen, who presided over the shrine from
1948 until his death in 1969, the Hall added an extensive library and
expanded the museum, so that today the Hall features three stories and
50,000 square feet of exhibits to entertain and enthrall. When you go
there, you can start in the Hall of Fame Gallery, where bronze plaques
of the game's immortals stand in tribute to their accomplishments. The
Great Moments Room features artifacts and photographs from the game's
top events. There's a screening room that shows baseball movies continuously.
And other parts give detailed histories about the game's origins, ballparks,
and innovations. Ultimately, you can visit the Hall of Fame Library for
the greatest collection of baseball books and papers in existence. The
place is open year-round except Christmas and Thanksgiving, but try not
to go in the early summer months because it'll be jammed with people like
you.
Whatever
Happened to the Hall of Fame?
by Bill James
Cooperstown,
Baseball's Hall of Fame: Where the Legends Live Forever
by The Sporting News
A truly unique ballpark, the Polo Grounds known to most fans was actually
the fifth version of the park. The other four existed between 1883 and
1911 but didn't survive for various reasons; Polo Grounds #1, for example,
was unexpectedly leveled in 1889 so the city could build 111th Street
between 5th and 6th Avenues, and Polo Grounds #3 burned to the ground
in 1911. Polo Gounds #5--the storied one--housed the Giants from 1911
through 1957, the Yankees from 1913 through 1922, and the Mets in 1962
and '63.
The park was perhaps most famous for its strange outfield distances: 279
and 258 feet down the left and right field lines, respectively; 447 and
440 to the alleys; and 483 to deep center. These distances made possible
two of baseball history's greatest moments: Bobby Thomson's "Shot
Heard 'Round the World" in 1951, which was really just a medium fly
to left that went about 280 feet; and "The
Catch," Willie Mays'
running, back-to-the-plate grab of Vic Wertz's 440-foot drive to center
in the 1954 World Series, which almost anywhere else would have been a
home run. Even Dodgers and Indians fans would have to admit that these
kinds of oddities account for most of baseball's charm. The same wrecking
ball that leveled Ebbets Field in 1960 demolished the Polo Grounds four
years later.
The grandest of the old-time ballparks, Wrigley Field belongs to the
people of Chicago. At least it should. The park brims with charm and character
-- amazing for an inanimate object. But you can almost feel it! It starts
when you get off the El at the Addison St. exit. On game day (and most
Cubs games still take place under the sun, despite the installation of
lights in 1988), the whole area is primed for baseball: t-shirt and newspaper
vendors, locals, out-of-towners.
There's not a bad seat in the house, from the third deck to the bleachers.
If you're lucky, the wind is blowing out to center field and the home
runs fly. When home run balls go out of the park and onto the street,
there's a mad dash among the waiting kids to recover the ball. It's the
only park where a ball can get stuck in the ivy-covered outfield walls
-- ivy planted originally by the young Bill
Veeck in the 1930s. Across the street on Waveland and Sheffield Avenues,
the rooftops have makeshift bleachers so homeowners and their (sometimes
paid) guests can watch the action. Even though the Tribune Company, which
owns the Cubs, doesn't have many luxury boxes to rake in the millions,
they've never tried seriously to move out of Wrigley. It would be like
the Catholics moving out of Notre Dame.
A
Day at the Park: In Celebration of Wrigley Field
by William Hartel