Boston Red Sox Offer Accessible Tour of Fenway Park to Large Group of Blind Persons

Thursday, May 29, 2008 dawned bright and beautiful in Boston Massachusetts. This was no ordinary Thursday. This was the date of a special accessible tour of Boston’s historic Fenway Park. The tour included members and friends of the Bay State Council of the Blind and students and staff of the Perkins School for the Blind. But the Boston Red Sox gave us a tour that was a bit different from the average tour of Fenway Park. Anyone who wishes to do so may take a tour of Fenway Park, but the Sox went above and beyond the regular tour in an effort to make the event accessible for blind and visually impaired persons.

At 11 am, 90 of us eagerly walked into the park. WE were allowed to walk onto the field and get up close and personal with the many features of one of baseball’s most historic and storied landmarks. These features included the following:

1. The Green Monster, which is a 37-foot high wall out in left field. Fenway Park features one of the smallest left fields in all of baseball. It is relatively easy for professional ball players to bang a ball off that wall for a long single or a double. But it is much more of a challenge to hit a ball over the wall for a homerun. Locals would say that the wall giveth and the wall taketh away. I was surprised to learn that much of the wall was made of metal. I was expecting a brick wall. Some of the wall had padding to protect fielders as they attempt to make catches or field a ball off the wall. Visiting teams have often had their problems getting used to playing in left field at Fenway. This wall definitely gives the Boston Red Sox an extra measure of home field advantage.
2. The big tarp that gets used to cover the field during inclement weather;
3. The two foul polls that distinguish fair from fowl balls. The fowl poll in left field is known as Pesky’s Poll because former shortstop Johnny Pesky was known for hitting homeruns off of it. The poll in right field later became known as Fisk’s Poll after a very memorable homerun hit by catcher Carlton Fisk in game six of the 1975 World Series. The polls were square and I was expecting them to be round. Fisk’s dramatic homerun came in the bottom of the 12th inning of one of the most memorable games in baseball history. I was in eighth grade at the time and was up much later than the time my parents had told me to go to bed. I remember that as the announcer yelled “homerun”, I jumped for joy, clapping my hands and cheering. Yes, I woke up the house. Mom chided me for not being in bed. Dad asked me if the Sox won. AS I reached up to touch Fisk’s Poll, this memory came back to me as if it were yesterday.
4. The dugout is where the players sit when not on the field. AS it’s description implies, the dugout is a few steps below ground level. There is a special bench at the top step where the manager sits which gives him an excellent view of the action. This area also includes a telephone used by the manager to contact the bullpen.
5. The bullpen is where relief pitchers warm up before coming into the game. When the phone rings in the bullpen, it usually means that the pitcher on the field is either tiring or pitching ineffectively.
6. The equipment of the game. Docents passed around bats, balls and helmets for us to check out. The bats were as I expected them to be, but the balls were quite different. I was expecting a smooth baseball like the one’s you’d get new at a sporting goods store. But these balls had been rubbed up with a special mud designed to offer a better grip to the pitcher. Running my finger along the surface of these balls gave me the impression of extremely fine sandpaper. The helmets were pretty much as I had expected them to be with one exception. One side of the helmet is different from the other in that it offers protection of the batter’s ear on the side of the head facing the pitcher. That must be a comforting feeling for that batter who steps into the batter’s box to face pitches that can move at speeds up to 98 miles per hour.
7. The docents also offered excellent descriptions of the parts of the field as well as special moments in Red Sox history.

There was one other special feature of this tour. Every participant received a goodie bag which contained a small pouch of the crushed brick used to denote fowl territory and a very special Red Sox key chain which had a nice replica of the 2007 World Series ring.

I’ve been a Red Sox fan since the 1967 World Series when I was six years old. I’ve listened to thousands of games on radio and television. I’ve probably attended 80 games in person. IT was a wonderful experience to have the opportunity to get a better understanding for myself the many facets of Fenway Park that get mentioned during the games. Now, when the announcer says that David Ortiz just hit a homerun off of Pesky’s Poll, I have a much more vivid idea of what he’s talking about than I did before the tour.

I’d like to offer two special thank yous. Firstly, to Rick Morin, Treasurer of the Bay State Council of the blind who developed the idea for this tour and helped to organize it. Secondly, to Marcita Thompson and Elaine Stewart of the Boston Red Sox who helped make this special tour possible.

For more information on tours of Fenway Park, go to www.redsox.com, click first on Fenway Park, then on Fenway Park tours. You may or may not get access to the field and you won’t receive the goodie bags described above, but you will still get to experience one of the historical sites of major league baseball. For tours of other baseball parks, go to www.mlb.com. From here, you can go to the websites of all of the major league teams.