TUESDAY 29th MAY 2007

Back in 2005 in the infancy of the Postcard project I sent this card with a cartoon of one of the few things that I knew about Boston. As a sports fan there are certain famous things and places that sports teams have about them, it can be players, their uniforms, the songs or even where they play. In baseball which I know a little bit about but not enough to tell you all the records without looking them up there exists a great rivalry between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox, for the football fans out there think Liverpool and Manchester United or Barcelona and Real Madrid. Any fixtures between those teams are always played with a heightened atmosphere of competitive animosity that extends beyond the playing field and into the stands.

In the past 10 months I've made more effort to actually go to see football at stadiums and made the trip to Anfield twice last season. Just as Anfield is synonymous with Liverpool Football Club, Fenway Park is synonymous with the Boston Red Sox. Fenway Park is known for its Green Monster, a 37' high Green Wall that extends along left field at the oldest stadium still in use in major league baseball.

How could I not go to see Fenway Park for real? The Red Sox dominate Boston, you'll see a Red Sox cap everywhere you go, a neon in a bar window, they love their Red Sox. There are tours of the stadium every hour and so I met S at Fenway Park for the tour. I can't describe the feeling of going into the empty stadium flanked by other tourists. An empty stadium is always strange. As we wound our way upwards and round our guide started to explain some of the history behind the stadium. Then we entered the seating areas and stretched out was the field of play and the Green Monster for real. With the sun beating down the grass looked lush and I found it kind of trippy and almost unreal having seen it on TV over the years to actually be there.

I learnt about the scoreboard, the names of the stands, I even felt a bit of vertigo when we went up higher and I even got to sit in the seats at the top of the Green Monster. There is definitely something about Fenway Park and in this day and age of new stadia and new building technology there is still alot to be said and felt for tradition that comes with a stadium that has stood there for 95 years.