Hotel California in Fenway Park

“The first time I went to Fenway I was seven years old. This was 1969, a time when kids weren’t pampered and always on leash like they are today. I lived about 3/4th a mile away on Egmont Street and I walked here alone and went to the bleachers for the game. 25 cents a ticket, absolutely amazing!”, the man they aptly call Smiling Dave said to me. I laughed out, marveling as much at his story as the present moment. Thirty minutes to first pitch, and there I stood at a souvenir stall on Landsdowne Street, deep in conversation with three men who were old enough to be my grandfather, as they reminisced about the Red Sox.

“ Do you want to hear my first memory of Fenway Park”?, the spectacled old man with Smiling Dave asked me innocently. I happily obliged. Smiling Dave’s friend, who incidentally was also a David, proved to be quite a raconteur. Despite growing up in New York with a Pirates fan for a father, David’s baseball allegiances remained neutral. When he was 17, he went to Vermont for summer camp, and on a day off, he came to Boston for the first time and visited Fenway and saw the Tigers take on the Red Sox. “ I don’t know if you know, but the Tigers had this legendary player called Al Kaline and he was closing in on 3000 career hits at the time. I had a seat in the bleachers, and he was fielding right below us, so I leaned over and said “ Good luck on 3000 hits”, and he turned around…