Monday, March 26, 2012

Inside Fenway Park: An Icon at 100

2012 marks the 100th anniversary of Fenway Park, in case you haven't already heard. PBS will be airing a National Geographic documentary tonight at 10 (and tomorrow night at 9, and several other times during the week) about Fenway.

I'm told the documentary will tell the history of the ballpark and also show some of the behind-the-scenes operational aspects of the facility. I've worked in sporting venues for a few years now and I'm still impressed with how many people do so many things to make an event happen.

Matt Damon narrates the film. Which is a welcome change from the Denis Leary "I'm the angry Bostonian who smokes a lot" narrated Boston sports material. And Mike Barnacle will be appearing too. Unfortunately, PBS thinks Barnacle is the voice of the Boston sports fan. He was featured prominently in Ken Burns' "Tenth Inning."

The good thing about Barnacle is that he can speak with other people's voices and write with other people's words. That's kind of his problem. He tends to take other people's thoughts and words and pass them off as his own.

That aside, I am DVRing this documentary and am eager to watch it. Fenway's 100th anniversary on April 20th is one of the few things to look forward to this season for the Sox.

2 comments:

  1. I love Fenway, but I really do wish they would build a modern-sized ballpark, with modern seating and enough seats so that we could actually attend a game for a reasonable price.

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  2. They've done a nice job modernizing the facility. The seating bowl looks the same but the concourses look fairly new (except for the cavernous tunnel between home plate and right-field). More seats would be nice. Lower prices. But it is a business. Even if they had 80,000 seats, they'll charge whatever price 80,000 people are willing to pay. Which unfortunately prices out most of us.

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