Other than Madison Square Garden, the old Yankee Stadium, and maybe The White House, there isn’t a structure in this country that reflects and embodies its city, and the damn country, more than Boston’s Fenway Park. That big ol’ wall in left is the most recognizable construction in baseball. Over 100 years its stood, covered in dents from would be bombs turned doubles, the infamous manual scoreboard, the iconic green color..but was it always green? was the scoreboard always there? how did Fenway look before all those dents were made? Let’s go down the rabbit hole of the oddball facts about Fenway Park’s Green Monster Wall.
I personally grew up at the tail end of when the wall still had the net on top hanging over Landsdowne Street to protect the storefronts from window-shattering homers, as well as watching Manny drill the famous Coke bottles with would-be 450+ footers. If you lived during World War 1 and The Great Depression however, you’d be more familiar with Duffy’s Cliff. A 10 foot hill that went up from deep left field to the wall, creating an awkward incline for a left fielder. Yes, we’re talking about Fenway Park, and not only was this a very unique feature for the ballpark, but if there was an overflow of attendance for games, fans were allowed to sit on Duffy’s Cliff, IN PLAY! Imagine that in the game today? Tommy Pham having to hurdle some drunk lunatic to track down a liner? Great TV, baseball chaos. Boston’s star left fielder in that day, Duffy Lewis, is who the hill was named after, due to his mastering of fielding while on Duffy’s Cliff. The purpose of the hill itself was to meet street level with field level more fluently, and actually was a relatively common thing among ballparks of that time. Infamous Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey had the hill flattened in 1934, and this, no longer existed. Though the mysticism of Duffy’s Cliff was cemented in historical baseball legend forever.
A number of other intriguing features and changes of the Green Monster that have been lost over time, and even still remain:
- The Morse Code dots that run along the scoreboard are the initials of Tom and Jean Yawkey
- The net that was hung to protect Landsdowne Street was put up in 1936
- The ladder that’s still attached to the wall (and in play) was used to obviously retrieve balls from the net
- The wall is made of wood, and after a fire in the ballpark in 1933, it was covered in tin and concrete in 1934
- It was covered in hard plastic in 1976
- The Green Monster wasn’t painted green until 1947. Up until then it was just covered in advertisement
I’m gonna play Captain Bringdown here and remind you that Fenway’s the oldest pro ballpark today, and the time will come, not too much sooner, but sooner than later nonetheless, when we might have to say farewell to the legendary structure. Boston without the Monster is like Philly without Rocky. Georgia without Augusta Country Club, New York without pissed off strangers. Let’s not take the Green Monster in all its unique towering glory for granted. It’s forever etched into all of our childhoods. So before the Red Sox someday leave Fenway, remember your finest moments involving that wall, lock the image of it in your mind. The scoreboard. The Citgo sign. that entire picture. That’s the ultimate symbol of modern Boston.
