Fenway at 100: They play baseball there, too
One century. The idiosyncratic park is slated to host Union and Harvard in a college hockey game Friday night, another fascinating wrinkle in the history of arguably the most iconic ballpark in America. (How well do you know it? Take the quiz on page C2 .) The hockey game would be an indelible memory for these players and their fans, even if it only amounts to a scant footnote in the ballpark’s storied history.
The baseball legends and tales surrounding Fenway have been told and retold because they’ve earned the retelling. All that’s needed is the shorthand. The Impossible Dream. ’41. Pudge. Clemen’s 20 Ks. The Curse. The Idiots. 2007. They are New England’s bedtime stories. And the park and its readily identifiable elements known throughout the sport — the Green Monster, Pesky Pole, Williamsburg, the red seat — are central characters.
The lesser known tales are the ones from other sports and events that took place here.
Fenway hosted high school football as early as 1912; Boston College first played there 1914, while Boston University started playing home games at Fenway in 1925. The NFL’s Boston Redskins called the ballpark home starting in 1933.
A Cricket World Cup on homeground comes close to achieving the impossible: just about any kind of programming gets advertisers, lots of people make money, and everybody has a good time doing so. (Except perhaps the pressured cricketers and the losing