Fenway Park Hawk Returns for Opening Day

Looks like the red-tailed hawk that dive-bombed a teenager named A-Rod at Fenway Park last week isn't giving up her home so easily.

The hawk hung around the park during batting practice early this afternoon. There's video here and it certainly looks like the same bird.

And now this report from my dad listening to the game on the radio:

Big reaction from the crowd as the hawk shows up - swoops around - maybe he was wondering which one of those humans evicted him from his nest. Nice touch.

Combined with the return of Bill Buckner, quite a day at Fenway!

Hawk Attacks Girl, Fenway Deemed Unsafe for Anyone Named A-Rod

I have a feeling we're going to set a record today for "most times my friends email me a story." Red-tailed hawk, Fenway Park ... if only there was organic beer involved, it would be the perfect The Green Miles story.

So there's this red-tailed hawk that's been coming to Boston's Fenway Park for years now. One would think an empty ballpark would seem like great habitat to a hawk - high rafters to nest in, lots of pigeons and sparrows for easy prey.

They've usually been able to shoo her away before it nests, but this year she and her mate managed to build a nest near the press box above home plate. Unfortunately, the egg rolled out of the nest and is no longer viable.

But the hawk doesn't know that, so she's still protecting her roost. And when a tour group came through yesterday, the hawk dive-bombed a teenager who happened to be standing nearby. Amazingly, a Boston Globe photographer happened to be there and captured the whole thing. The girl only got a small scratch and wildlife officials removed the nest.

Since the teenager wasn't seriously hurt, I think we're free to laugh at an amazing coincidence. Her name? Alexa Rodriguez:

Could it be an omen for Yankee Alex Rodriguez, who once got a catcher's mitt shoved in his face during a scuffle with Red Sox catcher Jason Varitek at Fenway in 2004?

"I deal in science, not mythology," [assistant director of Fisheries and Wildlife Tom] French said, refusing to make any baseball predictions based on the feisty hawk. "Although you could say she has done a good job protecting her home plate."

In hindsight, the hawk should've been moved sooner, but I don't think it was the worst outcome of the situation. If the hawk was this unsettled by one tour group, what would her reaction have been when 39,000 people filled the place Tuesday afternoon for the home opener?

Green Diamonds II: The Monster Gets a Makeover

As I covered in Part I of this week's Green Diamonds series, sometimes the greenest building is the one that's already built. Nowhere is that more true than at Boston's Fenway Park.

It's green as in:

• Promoting public transportation. As Alexander Wolff wrote in Sports Illustrated's recent article on green stadiums, "The greenest ballpark in the country may be Fenway Park, because only an idiot would try driving and parking there."
• Making money. Where else would people pay exorbitant sums to cram into tiny seats that often don't even point towards the field and have obstructed views anyway? But it's a cathedral of baseball that your dad took you to when you were seven and Yaz hit one out. Like the Field of Dreams, you pass over the money without even thinking about it.
• The Monster.

The Red Sox are partnering with the Natural Resources Defense Council on a series of changes that will culminate in 2012, Fenway Park's centennial. But as Business Week points out, this ain't window dressing. The team is looking for whatever edge it can get:

Whatever approach they take, one thing is certain: Big league sports teams have always obsessed over numbers—stats, attendance figures, salaries, TV ratings—now they’re beginning to run the numbers on carbon footprints, fuel prices, electric meters, and LEED scorecards.

Some of the green features have obvious secondary benefits. When the Red Sox renovated the field to include a sand filtration layer that moderates runoff into the city storm drains, they also smoothed the playing surface, upgrading it from one of the worst infields in baseball to one of the best. Reusing bricks as part of reconstruction doesn't just reduce waste, it maintains Fenway's historic feel.

The Red Sox will also install solar panels, expand their recycling program to cover bottles, and include more locally-grown and organic produce in its concession stand offerings.

And really, no matter what the economic or environmental reasons the Red Sox give, I think we all know the real reason they're going green: Because I sort of bitched about it last year.

Tuesday - Green Diamonds I: Nats Open MLB's First Green Ballpark
Wednesday - Green Diamonds II: The Monster Gets a Makeover
Thursday - Green Diamonds III: Avast! Pirates Pillage Yer Recyclables

The Green Miles Meets The Green Monster

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: