Among the books featured here, this is the slap-hitting batter of the group. It succeeds in rapping out a steady, if unspectacular, succession of singles. The relatively thin volume of 176 pages gives short shrift to Fenway’s nonbaseball history, preferring to concentrate on the trials and tribulations of the park’s diamond denizens. This is a straight-ahead history, accompanied by a DVD documentary hosted by Carlton Fisk, a New Hampshire native who spent the first 11 seasons of his 24-year Hall of Fame career catching for the Red Sox. Saul Wisnia, the book’s author, was born just blocks from Fenway, has written numerous articles on baseball for newspapers, magazines, and books, and still only lives miles from New England’s hardball mecca. Wisnia manages to touch all the high and low points, while also weaving in countless details that provide the sort of “aha” discovery moments that serious fans relish. Among them:
--The ballpark’s short left-field wall, necessitated by the tight urban landscape, was a nonfactor when built during baseball’s Dead Ball Era. With the introduction of livelier baseballs, however, the wall became an alluring target for batters and a threatening presence for pitchers.
--Journeyman Boston hurler Dave Morehead pitched a no-hitter on Sept. 16, 1965 that was only witnessed by 1,247 Fenway spectators. Morehead bobbled the ball on one fielding play, but recovered quickly enough to keep his no-hitter alive.
--Struggling mightily to attract fans, the Boston Braves reportedly sought to move out of their less appealing ballpark and share Fenway with the Red Sox in the early 1950s only to be turned down by Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey. As a result, the Braves moved to Milwaukee in 1953. The irony here is that when the Red Sox won the 1915 and 1916 World Series, they were allowed to move their home games from Fenway to Braves Field to take advantage of its far-larger seating capacity. More ticket revenues meant larger bonuses for the players. Of course, this was long before Yawkey bought the Red Sox in 1933, so he had no reason to feel he owed the Braves anything.
