Fenway Park has stood since 1912 – Ted Williams, Carlton Fisk, four World Series titles this century, and a hand-operated scoreboard nobody has ever bothered to replace.
But some guy on Twitter decided it "sucks to attend."
And Ron DeSantis – who cheered for the Sox through Yale and Harvard Law – had something to say about that.
Why Fenway Park Is the Oldest and Greatest Ballpark in Baseball
Fenway opened on April 20, 1912 – the same week the Titanic sank.
In the 113 years since, every new stadium built in America has tried to copy it.
Camden Yards launched the entire retro ballpark movement in 1992 because architects were specifically trying to recreate what Fenway already had – the asymmetrical dimensions, the intimate feel, the sense that the game is happening right on top of you.
It didn't work.
Nothing built since 1912 has the Green Monster – 37 feet of left-field wall with a hand-operated scoreboard that opposing players sign their names on the inside of as a rite of passage.
https://twitter.com/RonDeSantis/status/2038087226177806506?s=20
Nothing built since 1912 has Pesky's Pole at 302 feet or the Fisk Foul Pole – the only ballpark in baseball with two named foul poles.
Nothing built since 1912 has a lone red seat in Section 42, Row 37 marking the exact spot where Ted Williams hit a 502-foot home run in 1946.
The National Register of Historic Places added Fenway in 2012, its centennial year.
You don't manufacture that history with a $1 billion construction budget.
DeSantis on the Green Monster and Why His Son Became a Red Sox Fan
DeSantis clapped back the way you'd expect from a man who was at Harvard Law School in 2004 when the Red Sox broke the Curse of the Bambino.
He told the story of taking his son Mason to Fenway during the 2024 presidential campaign.
Mason was five years old.
When they got home and Mason started sorting through his baseball cards, he pulled Red Sox players into a separate stack – without anyone telling him to.
The kid had sorted them by memory – because he remembered the Green Monster.
One visit.
A five-year-old.
That's what Fenway does to people.
DeSantis also ranked Fenway above Petco Park – which takes real conviction, because San Diego's stadium is genuinely beautiful and draws rave reviews every year.
https://twitter.com/RonDeSantis/status/2038004438330118347?s=20
He's right anyway.
Petco Park is shiny and new and completely interchangeable with a dozen other modern stadiums built to look like they have history.
Fenway actually does.
Fenway Park and the America That the Left Wants to Replace
Here's what the Twitter hater doesn't understand and probably never will.
Fenway Park is cramped.
The sightlines in some sections are terrible.
A steel support beam will block your view if you sit in the wrong spot.
None of that matters.
What matters is that you're sitting where Ted Williams sat, where Carlton Fisk waved that home run fair in the 12th inning of Game 6 of the 1975 World Series, where Babe Ruth pitched before anyone sold him to the Yankees and cursed the franchise for 86 years.
https://twitter.com/RonDeSantis/status/2038054905005445610?s=20
That connection to something real, something older than yourself, something that your grandfather watched and his grandfather watched – that's not a feature you can add to a new building.
The people who look at Fenway and see obstructed sightlines and outdated infrastructure are the same people who want to tear down statues, rename streets, and replace everything traditional with something optimized and focus-grouped and entirely soulless.
DeSantis understands that some things are worth preserving exactly because they're old.
That's not nostalgia.
That's wisdom.
Sources:
- Florida Politics, "Did the Green Monster make Mason DeSantis a Red Sox fan?," FloridaPolitics.com, December 31, 2023.
- Baseball Almanac, "Fenway Park History," Baseball-Almanac.com.
- Britannica, "Fenway Park," Britannica.com.
