If Boston’s Fenway Park is, as advertised, America’s “most beloved” baseball venue, it’d have to be affection of the warts-and-all variety.
For sheer beauty, you’d have to go with Fenway’s only plausible competition for the title of most beloved: Chicago’s Wrigley Field, with its elegant, jewel-box design and ivy-covered outfield walls.
Fenway, on the other hand, has a shape best described as whomper-jawed, sight lines seemingly engineered to put the sun in every spectator’s eyes, and, as the park’s most distinctive feature, a big green monstrosity.
Where Fenway redeems itself, though, is in the history and folklore departments. As the home of the Boston Red Sox since 1912, the park has been the setting for several generations’ worth of thrilling victories, dispiriting defeats, quirky traditions, shoehorned changes, and Lord only knows how many cases of heartburn from eating Fenway Franks by the fistful.
Visitors to Boston can of course soak up the landmark’s ambience by attending a Red Sox game. But doing that probably won’t give you a solid overview of the park’s past and its secrets—and, more often than not, the sun will be in your eyes.
Plus, Major League Baseball tickets are expensive. And what if the Red Sox aren’t even playing when you’re in Boston?
An excellent alternative for the Fenway-curious is the official guided tour of the park that’s offered throughout the year, except when the Red Sox are playing.
In fact, even if you think baseball amounts to watching millionaires stand around and spit for an afternoon, you’re liable to find the Fenway Park tour worthwhile. Compared to a game, a tour contains so much more entertaining info about a noteworthy Boston landmark and requires significantly less time and money to get through.
(Guided tour at Fenway Park in Boston | Credit: Zac Thompson)
Boston’s Fenway Park Tour: What to Expect
Even bleacher seats for a Red Sox game will cost you more than the $25 ($17 for kids ages 12 and younger) you’ll pay for a guided Fenway Park tour.
On non–game days, the roughly 1-hour-long walkthrough of the stands, press box, and other areas kicks off at the top of each hour from 9am to 5pm (on game days, the last tour departs 3 hours before the first pitch). On the tour I attended in late summer, I was joined by a large multigenerational group of around 40 people—mostly families of tourists from across the United States.
Our jokey guide, Meredith (pictured above), appeared to be having the time of her life, even though she has probably delivered the same Yankee burns and Big Papi paeans dozens of times by now. Meredith told me that tour group sizes are much smaller in the winter, and that tours take place despite low temperatures or falling precipitation. In, say, January, Meredith said, bundled-up guides sometimes look and sound like Kenny from South Park.
The experience begins with sitting for a spell in the cramped yet historic seats behind the third-base dugout, as your guide recounts the park’s first half-century or so, against a backdrop of the fabled diamond and the Prudential Tower beyond.
You’ll learn about the park’s origins on the site of a former swamp (that’s what a fen is, after all), and you’ll get the lowdown on the crucial series of upgrades in the 1930s that made the park what it is today.
The narrative covers how the five surrounding streets necessitated Fenway’s misshapen silhouette, how there used to be a 10-foot-high hill in left field, and why, speaking of left field, the famous 37-foot, 2-inch–high Green Monster sports a ladder leading to nowhere. (It used to reach netting designed to stop balls from shattering windshields at car dealerships on Lansdowne St.)
Eventually the group moves on to check out the pricey seats atop the Green Monster—arguably the most dangerous seats in the house, considering that every batter in the lineup is aiming at you for home run bragging rights.
Not far away sits one of Fenway’s most surprising sights: a 5,000-square-foot rooftop organic garden that produces fruits, vegetables, and herbs used in the ballpark’s restaurants and concessions stands.
(Press box at Fenway Park in Boston | Credit: Zac Thompson)
After admiring the Green Monster for going green, you’ll step into the park’s press box above home plate. There’s not much to see in the tiered rows where sports journalists sit during games, though you can spot pockmarks left by past foul balls.
The tour’s next-to-last stop is at the lone red seat in Section 42 of the right field bleachers, marking the distance of the longest home run ever hit at Fenway: 502 feet from home plate. The feat was accomplished by Ted Williams in 1946.
The ball reportedly hit a guy right in the head; he lost sight of the projectile because—get ready for a shocker—the sun was in his eyes. Anyway, the fan escaped major injury, though his straw hat was ruined.
(Babe Ruth’s autograph on a baseball displayed at Fenway Park’s memorabilia museum in Boston | Credit: Zac Thompson)
The tour ends at Fenway Park’s memorabilia museum, a collection of photos and artifacts such as uniforms, baseball gloves, and such. My guide made much of a baseball signed by Babe Ruth. Guess there’s no hard feelings about that whole Curse of the Bambino thing.
For more information about Fenway Park tours or to buy tickets, go to MLB.com/RedSox.