Fenway Park

AS PART OF my lifelong goal to chow down in every major-league ballpark in America, I recently ate at Boston's historic Fenway Park. There is talk in Boston of building a new ballpark, a replica of the old one. Nothing has happened yet, but I wanted to get there and eat in the original structure before anything is improved. Fenway is the oldest major-league park in the country, and it shows its age, especially in the concourse where the concessions are sold. Compared to the concourse at Baltimore's Camden Yards, Fenway is dark, cramped and quirky.

The Orioles are going for their first sweep of the Red Sox in Fenway Park since June 10-12, 1994 in today's afternoon game against Boston (Read more on that, and the Orioles' loose clubhouse dynamic HERE ). Maine native Ryan Flaherty, who grew up a 1 1/2-hour drive away as a Red Sox fan, will make his first career start here Fenway Park, hitting leadoff and playing leftfield. Nick Johnson will make the start at first and the Chris Davis will be at DH.   Tommy Hunter will head to the mound today against Clay Buchholz.

BOSTON -- When New York Yankees right-hander Orlando Hernandez says a hostile crowd at Fenway Park won't bother him during tonight's Game 5 start, he's not just putting up a brave front. Hernandez knows tough crowds. This one, no matter how vocal, won't compare to what he endured in Cuba."It used to be a little bit worse," he said through an interpreter, first base coach Jose Cardenal.A little bit?"They throw rocks, to tomatoes, to anything they can find on the field," he said."If you win, the opposite fans, they're going to try to beat you any way they can. Then if you lose, your own fans are going to try to kill you. So it's one way or another.

Chris Davis hadn't thrown a pitch in nearly six years, dating to his days as a draft hopeful playing at a small junior college in Corsicana, Texas. But more than five hours - and 15 innings - into the Orioles' series finale with the Red Sox at Fenway Park on Sunday afternoon-turned-evening, manager Buck Showalter turned to Davis, the club's everyday first baseman, in the visiting dugout and directed him toward the bullpen to warm up. The Orioles had exhausted all other relief options - eight relievers combined to allowed one run over seven innings - in a game tied at 6. Davis shrugged.

BOSTON - Janet Marie Smith vs. the Green Monster. If it sounds like an idea coming out of left field, that's because it is. Smith, one of the country's noted baseball park designers and a creative force behind Oriole Park at Camden Yards, is tackling her latest project: the revamping of Fenway Park and its stark green left-field wall that looms as a monster in a city obsessed with baseball. "Sometimes we stop and say, `It's Fenway, can you believe it?' It's cloud nine just to be here," Smith says in a spare moment during a 15-hour workday at the Boston ballpark, the latest city icon entrusted to her for a makeover.

BOSTON -- If you look closely enough, you'll see a little bit of Fenway Park -- where baseball's All-Star Game was played Tuesday night -- in every new-old ballpark that springs up around the major leagues.The famous "Green Monster" spawned the short right field porch at Camden Yards and the huge scoreboard wall at Cleveland's Jacobs Field. The turn-of-the-century ambience has been replicated in such disparate locations as Denver and Dallas.If imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery, then the new wave of stadium construction is proof that the old ballpark on Yawkey Way is the most distinctive monument ever built for baseball, with all due respect to Yankee Stadium -- which no one is in any hurry to copy.

For those worried about Orioles rookie left-hander Brian Matusz and focused on his poor win-loss record and mid-4.00 ERA, there is one statistic that you may want to consider. In eight starts this season against the three heavyweights of the American League East, Matusz has a 2.90 ERA and has allowed just 41 hits in 492/3 innings. That includes three solid starts against the Boston Red Sox, whom Matusz completely shut down Sunday, pitching seven shutout innings and tying a career high with eight strikeouts in the Orioles' much-needed 6-1 victory in front of an announced 37,742 at Fenway Park.

April 18, 1975: Lee Mays hit a pair of homers and drove in seven runs in his first career game at Fenway Park. The Orioles beat the Red Sox, 9-7.

Red Sox: Mo Vaughn singled leading off the eighth for his 1,000th career hit. Boston entered with a .320 team average at Fenway Park.Rangers: When he was with Boston, Aaron Sele was 38-33 with a 4.41 ERA in 108 starts. Entering the game, Texas had four of the league's top nine hitters (Ivan Rodriguez, Tom Goodwin, Mark McLemore and Juan Gonzalez).Pub Date: 5/02/98

On deck Pedro Martinez of the Red Sox looks to go 7-0 as he faces the rival Yankees tonight in the start of four-game series at Fenway Park. He said it "It's not a back factor, it's an age factor." David Wells, Yankees pitcher, listed as day-to-day, said he felt pressure in his back during a workout but no spasms

The Orioles sent 10 batters to the plate in a seven-run third inning that has opened up Saturday afternoon's game against the Red Sox at Fenway Park. The Orioles lead the Red Sox 8-0 after an inning that was capped by third baseman Mark Reynolds' three-run homer over the Green Monster in left, his second in the last 24 hours after going homerless for 76 at bats. Center fielder Adam Jones also hit a two-run homer, a mammoth two-run blast that cleared the Green Monster and landed on Landsdowne Street.

If the suddenly stumbling and bumbling Boston Red Sox fail to make the playoffs, some credit must go to the perennial basement dwellers of the American League East. For the seventh time in nine games, the last-place Orioles inexplicably have beaten a playoff contender. On Wednesday night, before an increasingly nervous, sellout crowd of 38,004 at Fenway Park, Mark Reynolds hit two homers and the Orioles beat the AL wild-card-leading Red Sox, 6-4. "Our guys have had a good look on their face for about two weeks now," Orioles manager Buck Showalter said.

The Orioles keep dismissing the spoiler angle, stressing there is no burning desire to beat contenders down the stretch. Ultimately, in the final stanza of another disappointing season, these victory-starved Orioles simply want to win, no matter whom they play. It just so happens that their recent triumphs are coming against clubs fighting for the postseason, like Tuesday's 7-5 comeback against the Boston Red Sox. "Just the situation they are in and our situation, it's a little added bonus," said first baseman Mark Reynolds, who had two hits, including a two-run single, in his first game since getting plunked in the head Saturday.

The Orioles felt pretty good about themselves Monday afternoon. By Monday night, they just wanted to lick their wounds and duck out of Fenway Park for a few hours. Continuing their success against potential playoff teams, the Orioles beat the Boston Red Sox, 6-5, in the first game of a day-night doubleheader on Monday before dropping a dreadful 18-9 shootout in which the starting pitchers combined to surrender 14 runs and 17 hits. The nearly four-hour bashfest started ugly, with the Orioles scoring three runs against beleaguered Boston righty John Lackey, only to see shellshocked lefty Brian Matusz hand the lead back in the bottom of the first.

As a general rule, baseball players tend to fight about as well as hockey players knit. That's why bench-clearing brawls are usually pretty dull affairs. There's a lot of cussing and grunting and groaning. There's a lot of pushing and shoving. Maybe you'll see a haymaker or two whistle harmlessly through the air, but that's pretty much the extent of the action. On the other hand, the Orioles are in such a death spiral right now that another melee with the Boston Red Sox, who come into Camden Yards on Monday for a three-game series, might actually be the high point of the season for O's fans.

The Orioles were already a little angry about the way they were treated in Boston, and that fire has been flamed by Major League Baseball's ruling Thursday to suspend two Orioles players and manager Buck Showalter and only one Red Sox player, slugger David Ortiz, after last weekend's bean-brawl series at Fenway Park. "I definitely think they need to go back and do their homework," said Orioles left-hander Michael Gonzalez, who was suspended three games and fined $1,500 for throwing behind Ortiz on Sunday.

BASEBALL Orioles@Red Sox 7 p.m. [MASN2] : It's fun to watch New England work itself into a tizzy as Orioles Nation takes over Fenway Park. CYCLING Tour de France 8:30 a.m. [Vs.] : It's Stage 7, when the first cyclist to chain his bike to the rack without having it stolen overnight gets the yellow jersey.

The Orioles are going for their first sweep of the Red Sox in Fenway Park since June 10-12, 1994 in today's afternoon game against Boston (Read more on that, and the Orioles' loose clubhouse dynamic HERE ). Maine native Ryan Flaherty, who grew up a 1 1/2-hour drive away as a Red Sox fan, will make his first career start here Fenway Park, hitting leadoff and playing leftfield. Nick Johnson will make the start at first and the Chris Davis will be at DH.   Tommy Hunter will head to the mound today against Clay Buchholz.