Fourth and Goal with the Bam
Fenway Park is a joke. It’s long past time for someone to say it, so I just did.
Sure, the Sox are a good team. That’s not breaking news. They have been good for the better part of the last 20 years. In the last decade, Division titles, Wild Card appearances and a couple of last place finishes litter the landscape since 2007.
One thing that doesn’t litter the landscape is quality pitching. Half of the last decade, Boston has been at or below the middle of the league in ERA.
Despite that, only twice in 10 years have the Sox been better on the road than at home. So no matter how average the pitching is, and average is being kind, they win games at home at an amazing rate.
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that they play their home games in, what amounts to, a glorified Little League park.
Looking at MLB stats on doubles, it is stunning to see the massive numbers that the Sox put up at Fenway. Only 3 times in 10 years was Boston NOT 1st or 2nd in doubles. And the amount of doubles at home versus on the road is not even close.
A 40 foot monster gimmick resulting in the shortest left field in baseball is a good indicator of how these numbers get so skewed in favor of Boston. I mean, the most famous Red Sox home run of all time in 1975 traveled a whopping 315 feet. A real bomb! Fortunate for Boston it was a home game, or that it a routine flyball out and Carlton Fisk is long forgotten in Sox lore.
If Boston had a normal baseball stadium, like 29 other teams in Major League Baseball, they would probably lead the league in flying out to left field and these bogus win totals wouldn’t be so high.
I am sure all the other teams in the league would love to play 81 home games in a wiffle ball park like Fenway, but they don’t.
Additionally, I don’t think I could even find a high school or college ballpark with a 302 foot home run in right field. Another ridiculous gimmick that no other park above Little League features. A Major League stadium that allows a 302 foot homerun is simply embarrassing. It’s such a gimmick that the foul pole is actually named after a guy who made it famous by hitting many 303′ home runs. Not sure how proud someone should be to have a foul pole named after them because they had warning track power, and got rewarded by a ridiculous field design.
It is way past the time for the Red Sox to join the 21st century and get a new ball park. A ball park with normal big league dimensions like the other 29. No more gimmicks, no more fly ball charity. No more of the shortest dimensions all around of any park in baseball.
Fenway Park should be reduced to rubble, or perhaps a baseball museum. Cooperstown is in the middle of nowhere. An outpost. The baseball Hall of Fame is largely a joke to begin with, so why not get it out of the shadows of the Catskill Mountains and move it to Boston? Make Fenway Park the new baseball HOF.
Boston is a city that people actually want to go visit on a regular basis, not just once a year in the dead of summer.
Fenway Park is outdated, antiquated and OVERRATED!!! It’s time for a change. Bring legitimacy to Red Sox baseball. Something it’s never had.
This blog is by The Bam.
He writes Fourth and Goal for the Sports Chowdah
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