The Green Monster

The Red Sox got shelled last night at Fenway Park, 8 to 1,  and our class was there to see it. The A�s had their number. All the BOSOX production came in the first inning, couple hits, one meager run. The next eight went unanswered to the guys in the green and white from Oakland, from a bay on the left side of the country. Oh well. Like the t-shorts say: �Any team can have a bad century.�

At least they aren�t the Cubs, you know? And when did the players stop wearing the high sox and start wearing slacks on the field? It is very disconcerting, not traditional.

Marie-Christine, our indomitable Program Coordinator, had organized this outing to the most historic ball field in the country as a special treat and it was. There was a barbecue buffet in the courtyard of the Kennedy School, hot dogs and hamburgers and all the fixings. The temperature has dropped here by the Charles and it was comfortable in jeans. We took buses to the stadium. The sun was lowering majestically into the west as we passed through security and a pat-down inspection. No coolers or backpacks permitted. When we emerged from the tunnel and into the stands we were bathed in light. It was hard to see the plate against the dazzle, but the bleachers were brilliantly illuminated. We were in a box, eight rows up from the field. I looked up into the crowd and noted a pretty woman standing in the aisle. She was wearing a �Yankees� t-shirt. When she raised her program to shield her eyes from the glare I realized that wasn�t the full story. The shirt actually said �Yankees Suck.� As it turned out, the Yankees were going to lose tonight to Kansas City, so the Sox didn�t lose any ground in the race for the AL East pennant.

The old parks enabled participation by everybody in the crowd. During the warm-up one of the A�s players came over to the wall in front of us, the warm bricks only coming up to his chest. He talked to a group of kids, telling them something that connected the game to them, the way it used to be.

The game wasn�t the point, it was the being there. Being at Fenway, the 1912 temple of baseball. Looking from our box in right field right across to the Green Monster, the great wall that is the property line of the stadium. That puts the left field line at 310 feet. The Monster is the Ted Williams target, god rest his freeze-dried remains. What a place! Green paint on the delicate girders, beer in cups, Fenway Franks. The buns are split down the middle of the top, the way God meant them to be. The young men hawking them to the crowd carry battered aluminum boxes, hefting the Franks above their heads. Other vendors throw bags of peanuts accurately thirty seats away.

This is history that is alive. There is not a bad seat in the place. For all of Major League Baseball�s problems this year, this park is full, sold out, like it always is.This was interesting for our foreign classmates. They dig right in, wearing ball-caps and Harvard tee-shirts. It was a marvelous opportunity to show them this uniquely American experience. It was a stitch to hear the voice from a row back explaining the action. The box where we were seated is just in back of the warning track in right field. The wall separating us from the playing field is no more than five feet tall. A Red Sox screaming liner shot out of the infield in the first inning and bounced off the ground and into our box, still with a lot of energy and went through us to be caught by an ecstatic fan in the first row behind us.

I became an ambassador for baseball to Taiwan, explaining to my classmate the difference between a ground-rule double and a home run. If it had been a home-run, maybe the Sox wouldn�t have collapsed. But that is tradition, too, and it was an honor to be part of it. There is a lot of tradition around here. The buildings ensure that you remember it. Harvard is an agglomeration of brick buildings that grew like a coral reef. Everything has a name, in a way presaging the corporate naming frenzy on the stadiums in our great cities. It is hard to imagine Fenway being anything but that. Certainly not the �Gillette Trac 3 Stadium� or whatever they are going to name the new one here. The papers are full of it. But at Harvard they have been playing the name game for centuries. Trading money for immortality. One suspects that the convention has accelerated, been institutionalized of late.  Parts of buildings have names now, even rooms. One can imagine a Harvard Donations Counselor explaining the level of giving required to establish a major Building, a Center, a conference room, or perhaps a vending station.

I doubt if I will be able to afford to get a Socotra Coke Machine endowed when it is time, but that is OK. Like I said about the game, it is an honor just to be part of the tradition. 

It was good to get a break last night. We have been laboring hard here at the JFK School. I have read and pondered everything they have put in front of us, treating this with the gravity that goes along with the price-tag for the Harvard logo. The cost of this is exactly equivalent to what my four-year undergraduate degree cost from my University in the mid-west.This is not been an environment like the War College where I got my Masters degree. We were assigned to the National Defense University for ten months, and we went to school full-time. We met the accreditation standards. We were all type-A personalities, and most of us accustomed to pretty rigorous standards in our working world. It took a few months for us to realize the meaning of the sardonic unofficial motto of the student body: “It is only a lot of reading if you do it.”Here, I have done all the readings. It seems right and professional But it wasn’t always like that. I got a note from an old pal who retired from the Navy and now has to work for a living. He has a toddler daughter and I think she will be graduating from Harvard in about eighteen years. My friend will be in his seventies. He brought back some memories of another Cambridge, and other times on the Square. Here it is:”Vic, good to see my tax dollars hard at work. I spent the summers of my youth up there at 24 Holyoke flipping burgers and making Roast Beef “Specials” at a restaurant that was know as Hazen’s lunch. The restaurant is now Indian, but believe my uncle still owns the property. He was a hard working son of a gun, but not a great businessman. He moved out of the Square after the student riots in the 70’s. Think it was the May Day riot that was the last straw. We knew the tide had turned when they hit the student health center across the street from what we called “the store” aka Hazen’s. Something you would have loved — the key indicator that the world had changed — they beat up campus cops during that one. Before, that uniform was a safety shield. No more. An ironic footnote, the “hippies” (sounds strange now) looted J.Press clothiers more so than any “hip” stores. As I recall they also hit the Andover Shop pretty hard. One really needs tassel loafers and button down shirts after the riot season is over.My Aunt was working at the time and after the front windows were shattered and the mob came rolling in, she and Charles the short order cook. He was a Cambridge legend, but legend or not he ended up in the basement storeroom hiding behind boxes of Dixie Cup products. Charles carried along his largest knife for protection. Fortunately it was unnecessary as the mob moved on.My uncle moved out shortly thereafter and leased the place, foolishly giving the tenants an unbelievably long lease. He moved into downtown Boston and bought a restaurant in a neighborhood that was just about to slide into decay. He subsequently became quite famous for having his restaurant broken into a record number of times. Made the Boston Globe.Meanwhile, Cambridge settled down, the demonstration and riot phase passed, and soon Harvard was even wishing they hadn’t ejected ROTC. How things change.My Uncle should have never left — he would have had a lot better life if he had stuck it out in Cambridge. Harvard should have done a case study on their own riots. It was a classic sociological event, a case study in crowd behavior. The demonstration started up river, then moved down toward the square. Large crowd under influence of charismatic leaders, moving into crowded place on very hot day. Attempt made to deter and block them.Boom! Explosion.You would have thrived had you been there in the 70’s. You would have had more material than you could ever use. Dogs under the influence of LSD, faucets with screen inserts (hash pipes) for sale on the corner, street theater everywhere. A trip.Well, I envy you. It is certainly one of the most stimulating places in the world. Good luck with the case studies!”I finished reading the note and thought about tradition. I thought about my campus� May Day riot. It had a lot in common with the one in the Square. I like this version of Harvard a lot. But on the whole, I think the tradition I like best here is 310 feet down the left field line. Utilitarian, quirky, historic. Not the product of rational thought, just a function of the way things are. Best viewed with a Fenway Frank on a bun split down the top. The Green Monster.