I'm back from a few days up in Massachusetts. I was hoping to post from my laptop while I was up there, but Somerset and Fairhaven are not exactly hotbeds of WiFi.
I got to go to my first Red Sox game in eight years (tickets are expensive and hard to get). Recently in Sports Illustrated, Alexander Wolff wrote, "The greenest ballpark in the country may be Fenway Park, because only an idiot would try driving and parking there."
We did take the T to the park, but unfortunately, there didn't seem to be a lot of environmental features included in Fenway's recent renovations. We sat on top of the Green Monster and had a great time, but at the beer stands, the vendors opened cans of beer, poured them into plastic cups, then threw away the aluminum cans. How wasteful is that? No recycling bins to be found elsewhere in the park, either.
But how much can I complain? It was a beautiful day, Manny gave me the double-point, and the Sox gave Tim Wakefield his 150th win. Here's the view from my cell phone camera:
In the late 60s I was a baseball obsessed 11 year old girl who spent a few weeks every summer with her mother's family in Worcester, Mass. My aunt and grandmother signed up all the kids (there were five of us) for summer camp at the Y. One day in 1968 the camp kids were called together and told exciting news: there was going to be a trip to Fenway Park! I was so excited. Then they dropped the other shoe. The camp director said "Since girls aren't interested in baseball and won't understand it, the trip's for the boys. All the girls will stay here and have 'special activities'." I was crushed and angry. My brother got to go and I did not. All the male counselors went, too, and the special activities consisted of the girls sitting around in a big room with the two or three female counselors doing construction paper arts and crafts. Yuck.
ReplyDeleteThe crazy thing is that no one thought there was anything particularly discriminatory about this and several adults were astounded at the depths of my disappointment. I can't imagine it happening nowadays, so maybe society has advanced a little bit after all.
So, here I am, about to turn 50, and I STILL haven't been to Fenway. You can bet, though, that I get to Nationals games every chance I can, and someday I'll make it to Fenway, too.
sweet caroline... love that song!
ReplyDeletelooks like you had a decent view:)