Fenway, of course!!!

May 20th we went to Fenway to catch a Red Sox game. My first in Fenway. The event started off memorable enough, we got free parking! Parking in Boston isn't like parking out west, which there is a lot of. Out east, the parking is limited and the cost is high. So we drove up to Yawkey Way and decided to work from the inside out, to see if we couldn't stumble upon some great parking. Right at Fenway we asked a cop [sidenote, all cops are used as traffic mediators in Boston...they do no actual crime solving...strictly traffic enforcement] if he could give us some tips for where to park. It was useless....Better said, the Cop was useless. He told us that the $30 parking was as good as any and that we should pay it. We explained we were from back West, and $30 isn't something you pay for parking. He then officially welcomed us to Boston. We drove another few hundred feet and saw a parking garage...Someone was leaving. The mechanical arm that would have normal blocked our entrance was stuck up. After a slick maneuver worthy of a James Bond movie, we slid into a spot in the back of the Garage. Unbeknownst to the parking attendants, we had scored a Parking spot, feet from Fenway. This was destined to be a great experience.

The game was memorable, and the Bostonian crowd was in Good spirits/form for the event. There was a slight nip in the air, and the possibility of rain hung heavy over the stadium.. But the scare of the clouds was much worse then there light drizzle bite. Fenway Park has this cool thing outside of it, at Gate B, called the Scalp Free Zone. You go there looking for tickets and you can buy them from other people, but the cool part is that you buy them at face value. You work through a Red Sox employee and he acts as the mediator for the transaction. Genius. Pictured is the Scalp Free zone.


We got to the game, a little early but there were no complaints from any of the three of us. It was our first trip to Fenway and it seemed that we needed the extra time to soak in the experience. We arrived at the stadium about two hours early, and it was surprisingly full. That was our first hint that this was going to be a different experience. We got to our seats [ ] right next to Pesky Pole. We walked around the stadium for a minute and got out to Yawkey Way. We were done exploring the historic ballpark and headed back to our seats in time to hear the introduction to the lineup. The Red Sox were playing the Royals, a matchup I had seen at Kaufman Stadium four years earlier. Jon Lester pitched the 18th No-Hitter in Red Sox history the previous night, and the crowd seemed especially alleviated knowing that history was made the night before. The chill in the air was becoming stronger and stronger as the night progressed, but so was the excitement in the air. Before long, we were standing and stretching in the seventh inning. Every hit ball, even if for a split second, seemed like it was heading our way, only to land sections away in the glove of another lucky fan. Tradition runs deep at Fenway and the eighth inning we stood and sang Sweet Caroline. I felt apart of a club. There was a brotherhood there. Before we even sat down, Jonathan Papelbon was running onto the field to "Wild Thing." Chills were running down our necks. The stadium was electric. They played Drop Kick Murphy's "I'm shipping out to Boston", the song that IS Boston in my eyes.