Keidel: My Face Is Red (Sox) With Envy

Can’t they just stick some pin-striped candles in a flaky Pete Sheehy tinea cruris-filled cake and pretend?

My public contempt for the Red Sox is so profound that I hardly consider Boston a part of the republic. My fury spills into other matters of Massachusetts, including the Patriots, Ben Affleck, the native, noxious accent, and perhaps anyone named Kennedy.

But they got one thing right: keeping Fenway Park. It’s Boston’s bedrock ballpark, a temple that doubles as home to a signature franchise and a resounding salute to the sport. Fenway belongs in baseball as much as any accoutrement over the last century. There is now no other place on the planet where Babe Ruth played in his loved and loathed uniforms.

...The Ghosts are gone. They died when the wrecking ball slammed into history. They died when the Yankees, not satisfied with four million fans per year and a $4 billion television network, decided that they could build a new place on the next corner and we wouldn’t notice.

That limestone ode to the almighty coin, the embellished martini bar with $300 jerseys and faux boutiques selling ornate slices of a history that doesn’t exist, replete with nine-buck beer, walls lathered with synthetic pictures of yesteryear, and patrons who can’t name two players prior to 1996 is, well…not home.

Call me crazy, but I want my parks rusty, rustic, and, yes, a little smelly. What’s the worst thing that happened in the old place? Someone illegally lit a cigarette in the bathroom? A toilet backed up? Someone ten-beers deep into the night said the wrong thing to the wrong dude and was ushered from his seat to the subway? I’m one of those fools who find charm in the imperfect.