Fenway isn’t Fenway without fans
Wally is here, but why?
Normally…
People would’ve been cutting out of work early on a Friday afternoon.
The Yankees are in town.
People driving by the park on the Pike can roll down their windows and get a whiff of sausage and hot dogs grilling in and around Fenway Park, and see fans walking across the David Ortiz Bridge. Those fans congest as they get closer to Lansdowne Street. If you don’t have a ticket, you can get one. The vibe is electric.
Fans wear jerseys bearing names and numbers of Sox heroes past and present … Ortiz. Martinez. Pedroia. Betts. Bogaerts. Sale.
As you approach the park, the buzz and the lights and the sensory experience envelopes you. Finally you’re through the gate and looking for your seat, elbow-to-elbow with thousands of other people.
It’s a late September evening, a nip of fall is in the air, two storied rivals are about to square off and usually it feels like everything’s at stake.
But this is not a normal time.
If people are still lucky enough to have a job, they aren’t cutting out of work to go to a game, because a lot of them work from home. And no one can go to the game. Fenway Park’s 37,755 seats have sat almost entirely empty this year save for the occasional journalist or worker who has taken in the action. At least 2.6 million people have shuffled into the park every year this century. The Red Sox will finish this year with attendance of zero.
The Yankees have righted the ship in the nick of time, ripping off eight straight wins coming into Friday night to position themselves for a playoff spot. But if no one is in the stands to yell “Yankees suck!” … do they?
There are no sausages. No hot dog carts. No t-shirt vendors selling questionable items. No hawkers pushing game programs. Scalpers are nowhere to be found. There are no Sox tickets to make their bones on. No Bruins or Celtics or Patriots tickets either, for that matter.
The park is deserted and the only people wearing jerseys are on the field. It feels … lonely. There is no crowd. There is no atmosphere. The game means nothing; the Sox are among the worst teams in baseball. MLB’s bogus 60game season has been a joke. It can’t end soon enough.
But it will, in a few short days.
For some reason, there is music playing over the PA system. Will “Sweet Caroline” or “Dirty Water” play later? I almost don’t want to know. I’ve been advised by photographer Stu Cahill that the pumped-in crowd noise will not enhance the experience, only annoy. Don’t let me get behind those controls … I’d play laugh tracks and the silly music from “Curb Your Enthusiasm” to embrace this surreal scene. I’m not kidding: I just saw Wally the Green Monster, complete with a facemask, go through the media lounge.
Who is Wally here for? At least he/she still has a job. All of this is just crazy.
Baseball is a communal experience. Through recent thick and historic thin, though, Red Sox fans have persevered, worshiping this team and this ballpark for more than a century.
It’s a blessing that none of them have had to spend a night in Fenway watching this mess. The Sox are bad, but MLB should never have thrown together this ducttape-and-baling-wire season. It’s not fair to players, fans or organizations.
Baseball, and sports in general, isn’t just entertainment. But the business has gotten so big that it’s become an industry. Professional sports is an industry. It’s not a pastime. It’s a multibilliondollar monster. All the games being played are being played for money. Not the fans. The smart thing to do was to wait out the virus. Baseball has written off seasons before. They didn’t because it costs more to scrap a season than to play a silly one. It really exposes where the fan ranks in all this: Not very high. Teams aren’t selling tickets, but they’re still gonna get a slice of that sweet broadcast money.
Because we’re suckers, and junkies. We want to watch sports. We want that fix. We NEED that fix. It’s a way to spend a few hours not thinking about the virus, job security, isolation, politics, crime, hatred, social injustice. In sports we can pick a side and ultimately no one cares. In society today, picking a side means you have enemies.
It’s a drag. Sports is a respite. Even crappy sports.
Fenway Park remains beautiful for its scars and even without the adornment of fans and good baseball. But on a chilly night against the hated Yankees, it’s just sad and empty, a shabby shell of itself. A ballpark’s reason to be is a packed house. Friday night at Fenway, only the ghosts were in attendance.