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"As Commissioner, you’re supposed to be objective. It wasn’t much of a secret, though, that I loved Fenway — especially how it made you a participant, not a spectator." - Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn
"As I grew up, I knew that as a building (Fenway Park) was on the level of Mount Olympus, the Pyramid at Giza, the nation's capitol, the czar's Winter Palace, and the Louvre — except, of course, that is better than all those inconsequential places." - Baseball Commissioner Bart Giamatti
"Everything with me is normal except when I pitch (in Fenway Park). When I pitch here it's a little different. There is a little more anxiety to go along with the nostalgia because this is the park I grew up with as a kid. This is the park I dreamed of playing Major League Baseball in and no other ballpark has that feeling for me. There are a lot more family and friends here than in my normal starts and I want to pitch well here." - Tom Glavine in the Boston Herald (July 9, 2001)
"Fenway is the essence of baseball." - Tom Seaver in the Christian Science Monitor (July 1999)
"Fenway Park is one of the most historic, beloved, and revered ballparks in the nation. In fact, [tourism statistics] indicate that Fenway Park attracts more visitors to Boston than any other single attraction." - C.H. Johnson Consulting, Inc. in The Johnson Report (1999)
"I'm helplessly and permanently a Red Sox fan. It was like first love...You never forget. It's special. It's the first time I saw a ballpark. I'd thought nothing would ever replace cricket. Wow! Fenway Park at 7 o'clock in the evening. Oh, just, magic beyond magic: never got over that." - Art Historian Simon Schama in History in Brilliant Brushstrokes (1999)
"I've always noticed how the Fenway fans get behind the pitcher, especially late in the game if you're having a good game, or if you have two strikes on a hitter, they really start to chant and anticipate a strikeout. And that's the best part about playing in Boston and at Fenway. There are knowledgeable fans who anticipate the flow of the game and they can really help out the pitcher." - David Cone in the Boston Herald (May 28, 2001)
"I've moved from the newest ballpark in the country (Miller Park) to the oldest. It's the dream of my life. It's the best place in the world to be. Fenway Park." - Groundskeeper Director David Mellor in the Boston Globe (April 7, 2001)
"Let me get this straight. We’re bulldozing real vintage ballparks like Tiger Stadium and Fenway Park to put up fake vintage ballparks?" - Sportswriter Rich Reilly in Sports Illustrated (1999)
"Love of Fenway itself may be as much a part of the Sox' 2.6 million annual attendance as Pedro (Martinez), Manny (Ramirez) and Nomar (Garciaparra)." - Sportswriter Michael Gee in the Boston Herald (July 10, 2001)
"New England's parlor, a region's nightclub, and the Olde Towne Team's hearth. To generations of Americans, going to Fenway Park has been like coming home." - Curt Smith in Our House : A Tribute to Fenway Park (1999)
"That moment, when you first lay eyes on that field — The Monster, the triangle, the scoreboard, the light tower Big Mac bashed, the left-field grass where Ted (Williams) once roamed — it all defines to me why baseball is such a magical game." - ESPN Analyst Jayson Stark (March 30, 2001)
"That's the magic of Fenway Park. That’s why people love it so. Come to think of it, at Fenway almost every year is a wonder year." - Red Sox Announcer Ned Martin (1977)
"The ballpark is the star. In the age of Tris Speaker and Babe Ruth, the era of Jimmie Foxx and Ted Williams, through the empty-seats epoch of Don Buddin and Willie Tasby and unto the decades of Carl Yastrzemski and Jim Rice, the ballpark is the star. A crazy-quilt violation of city planning principles, an irregular pile of architecture, a menace to marketing consultants, Fenway Park works. It works as a symbol of New England's pride, as a repository of evergreen hopes, as a tabernacle of lost innocence. It works as a place to watch baseball." - Martin F. Nolan in A Ballpark, Not A Stadium (1999)
"This is the place to be. Baseball town. The intimacy of Fenway, the toughness of it. I like that. I'm used to it. I need it. If I went somewhere else, it might have been a bit of a letdown. I like the edge." - David Cone in the Boston Globe (February 13, 2001)
"To me, the feeling is what you get from standing on this field. It's the memories, the history — you get a great sense of the players who played here over the years. What made Camden Yards a gem was re-creating the atmosphere that a place like Fenway already has." - Cal Ripken, Jr. in the Boston Globe (September 25, 2000)
"We love Fenway Park because we love antiques, be they rocking chairs or ballparks. But we love it even more because the eccentricities of the place mirror our own. It is, like us, difficult and cranky. And this makes it a mighty hard place for a player to play in. Too bad. Players come and go, but Fenway Park may become an American Pyramid." - Boston Red Sox Sportscaster Clark Booth in Fenway by Dan Shaughnessy
"When we lose Fenway, we lose that sense that somebody sat here and watched Ted Williams hit." - Broadcaster Bob Costas on Fox Game of the Week (1999)
"You can say, 'Well, if they tore down Fenway Park, we can build a new one.' But you wouldn’t build it right. It’s better to make the accommodations, to save the old ballparks. If Fenway Park needs sky boxes to bring in the poverty-stricken owners enough money to save the stadium before they tear it down and move it someplace else, then build the damn sky boxes. If Wrigley Field needs lights to survive, put up the damn lights.... Make the damn structural improvements, but save the ballpark because when you try to rebuild a cathedral five hundred years too late, it doesn’t come out the same." - Sportswriter Tom Boswell in The Story of America's Ballparks (1991)
"Welcome to instant prepackaged, brand-new oldness. Camden Yards was baseball's first attempt to bring its past back from the dead. Evocative, nostalgic, and unleashing of a frenzy of building the newest old stadiums man could build, which now, in a total perversion of the idea of actual architectural history, threatens Fenway." - Broadcaster Keith Olbermann on Fox Sports (August 27, 2000)
"When the Red Sox win (at Fenway Park), the P.A. system immediately blares forth 'Dirty Water,' a No. 11 hit for The Standells back in 1966. It's usually little more than pleasant background music as we make our slow way toward the exits. But after a dramatic win — and tonight marked the Red Sox' third walk-off win in their last eight games — a good percentage of the fans hang around and sing, 'I love that dirty water... Oh, Boston you're my home.'" - Sportswriter Rob Neyer on ESPN (August 7, 2000)
"Why? Why should the bond between a people and their baseball team be so intense? Fenway Park is a part of it, offering a physical continuum to the bond, not only because Papi can stand in the same batter's box as Teddy Ballgame, but also because a son might sit in the same wooden-slat seat as his father." - Sportswriter Tom Verducci in Sports Illustrated (December 2004 Issue, "Sportsmen of the Year")
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