Description:
A religious shrine or a giant pinball machine? Museum or amusement park? Historical or hysterical? These are just some of the puzzlers posed by Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaugnessy in this lovely homage to the second oldest, single most complex ballpark in the majors. The answers are debatable. What remains absolute are the images Boston's Fenway Park has burned into the imaginations of the faithful and the faithless since the day it opened, a short week after the Titanic sank. Shaugnessy and photographer Stan Grossfeld combine to offer an often-spectacular visual tribute that looks both back in time and into the heart of all the park's odd nooks, crannies, shadows, and hiding places. They go inside the hand-operated scoreboard on the fabled Green Monster. There's even a lovely picture of a pastoral Fenway covered in snow. Shaughnessy's text--"When they raze Fenway, it'll be like cutting down an old tree. Count the rings. There's one for each celebration and heartache suffered by Red Sox fans"--is affectionate and quite personal. He adds to it with a series of short, lyrical reminiscences from those who've mused about the field-- David Halberstam, Bob Costas, Stephen King, and Doris Kearns Goodwin--and those who've played on it: Don Zimmer, Bucky Dent, Dennis Eckersley, and Carl Yastrzemski. Fittingly, Ted Williams pens the foreward. The result of the amalgamation is an altogether splendid celebration of a landmark about to be pushed by progress into memory. --Jeff Silverman
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