Stout: After 100 years, Fenway matters

From Glenn Stout, winner of the 2012 SABR Seymour Medal and Larry Ritter Book Award, at ESPN.com on April 12, 2012:

Fenway Park changed my life.

I grew up in outside a small town in central Ohio and was never really a Red Sox fan as a kid, but my awareness of major league baseball happened to coincide with the 1967 “Impossible Dream” team. I recall watching Billy Rohr on the news the day after he almost threw his no-hitter and seeing his hat fall off after nearly every pitch. The 1967 season was the first I followed, eagerly waiting for the newspaper every afternoon so I could devour the box scores from the night before. During the World Series, I remember running off the bus and down the driveway to watch the final innings on television. I can still see Julian Javier’s Game 7 home run over the left-field wall seal Boston’s fate as Jim Lonborg, pitching on two days’ rest, fell heroically to Bob Gibson and the Cardinals. Later that fall my parents bought me a baseball bat that is still too big for me to use, but one I absolutely had to have just because it had Carl Yastrzemski’s signature burned on the barrel.

For some reason I have never understood, baseball grabbed me as a kid and has never let go.

Read the full article here: http://espn.go.com/boston/mlb/story/_/id/7803810/fenway-park-matters-100-years



Originally published: April 12, 2012. Last Updated: April 12, 2012.