CELEBRATING THE CENTENNIAL OF FENWAY PARK

TOM PUTNAM: Good afternoon. I'm Tom Putnam, Director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. On behalf of Tom McNaught, Executive Director of the Kennedy Library Foundation, and all of my Library and Foundation colleagues, I thank you for coming and acknowledge the generous underwriters of the Kennedy Library Forums: lead sponsor Bank of America, Raytheon, Boston Capital, the Lowell Institute, the Boston Foundation, and our media partners, The Boston Globe and WBUR. 

More than any other sport, baseball is about generations. And we take special pride here in the role the Kennedy and Fitzgerald families have played over this past century of Red Sox history. As you know, Caroline Kennedy and Tom Fitzgerald threw out the ceremonial first pitch on Friday, just as their great-grandfather Honey Fitz had done 100 years ago. Were he still with us today, Senator Edward M. Kennedy had been asked to do the honor, and I thought you might enjoy this brief film clip from a PBS show for kids in which he talks about his grandfather.

[film clip played] [laughter] [applause]

TOM PUTNAM: My favorite anecdote about John F. Kennedy and Fenway Park is the story told by Dave Powers about a game he attended with John Kennedy and his father earlier in JFK's political career: 

"Jack, the announcer's about to introduce some of the local dignitaries," Joseph Kennedy said to his son. "You should join them so the fans see you're here."

"Don't do it," Dave Powers replied. "They're here to see a game, not a bunch of politicians."

"Hurry up, Jack, you'll miss your chance if you don't go now!" 

Caught between loyalty to his father and the canny advice of his political aide, JFK stayed put. Irate at his son's intransigence, Joseph Kennedy did not stay angry for long for after the other politicians' names were announced, they were roundly booed by all the fans.

[laughter]

It can be a tough crowd at Fenway, which the Library, along with the City of Boston and Red Sox Nation fans throughout the globe, fondly salute this weekend as one of baseball's most famed cathedrals.

We've assembled a wonderful panel this afternoon, including Tom Fitzgerald, who, as I mentioned, is one of Honey Fitz's great-grandchildren. If I've learned anything in this job, it's not to stand in the way of a Fitzgerald telling stories, many of which are shared in two collections Tom has authored and edited, Tom's Stories and Grandpa's Stories. 

I'm sure we'll hear in a few minutes more about Tom's own ceremonial first pitch at Fenway on September 30, 2007, and exactly where he was at the moment in 1960 when Ted Williams took his last swing at Fenway; although I'll give one hint – the title of that story is, "I Was Robbed." [laughter]

No one is better suited to provide us the early history of baseball in Boston than Peter Nash, author of Boston's Royal Rooters and the writer and producer of the 2007 Emmynominated documentary, Rooters: Birth of a Red Sox Nation, an excerpt of which we will watch as part of this program. Mr. Nash earned his credentials as an official baseball geek by joining the Society of American Baseball Research at age 12. Later, as a young man living in Cooperstown, New York, he helped start Cooperstown Dreams Park, where visiting youth teams play tournaments on gorgeous fields. Mr. Nash has another connection with Fenway, as a co-owner of McGreevy's Third Base Saloon, named after the founder of the Royal Rooters, Nuf Ced McGreevy. The other co-owner of McGreevy's, Ken Casey, the bass guitarist and vocalist of the Dropkick Murphys, will also be here with us later in the program. 

Our moderator is Richard Johnson, curator of the Sports Museum here in Boston and author of numerous books, including most notably, Red Sox Century and Field of Our Fathers: An Illustrated History of Fenway Park, celebrating the legacies of those who played and performed in the shadow of the Green Monster. 

Field of Our Fathers is on sale in our bookstore, as well as Peter Nash's book, Boston's Royal Rooters.

It strikes me as fitting that Fenway Park was opened and dedicated a few days after the sinking of the Titanic. Yet, in this case, this large hunk of a vessel continues to hold a portion of this city's hopes and dreams, undaunted by troubled waters of heartache and defeat, lumbering forward indestructibly, pitch by pitch, inning by inning, generation by generation, connecting us all to something larger than ourselves.

To celebrate this fabled history and centennial anniversary, please join me in welcoming Tom Fitzgerald, Peter Nash and Richard Johnson to the Kennedy Library. [applause]

RICHARD JOHNSON: So I guess we're on. I wasn't sure what the format was going to be today, so I prepared a bunch of notes as though I was going to a Congressional hearing. But I want to thank the directors of the Library, Amy Macdonald and her staff. It's a particular privilege to be here. In the home I grew up in in Worcester, the three institutions we cared the most about were the Catholic Church, the Democratic Party and the Red Sox, and not necessarily in that order. [laughter]

So to be here today is to be in a shrine and a place very important to me personally. I was here at the opening in 1979; actually, the day it opened. And it's such a privilege to be here now.  If you'll indulge me, I will display some of my Hibernian hamhood[sic] here by reciting a poem I wrote on the way over here, driving up from Braintree. 

Our last two games have been the pits.

That bullpen's giving us the fits.

Let's talk today of runs and hits, Of Fenway Park and Honey Fitz,

Like sipping champagne up the Ritz.

[applause] That's the first time that's ever happened! [laughter] 

PETER NASH: Dick, can I interrupt you one second? I'd like Dick to show off with the big Bruins game, his Stanley Cup ring that he has, just for a little good luck, make it beyond baseball when we're in Boston. [applause] So to the Bruins.

RICHARD JOHNSON: I think God will be good to us today. I think the Bruins are going to win, and I think it's going to rain. [laughter]

PETER NASH: Dick also has his Bruins beard in full effect today.

RICHARD JOHNSON: I have my beard and I'm not shaving it off without a struggle.

But I wanted to start the program by asking Tom this question: that is, when my friend Glenn Stout and I were working on the book, Red Sox Century, we discovered that your granddad had put in the high bid to buy the team, to buy the Red Sox, from Henry Killilea back in 1904, and that American League president Ban Johnson – no relation to me – had blocked the deal and had told General Taylor to bid $5000 more to get the team. Was that ever a topic of discussion in the household?

THOMAS FITZGERALD: Well, I don't know where Grandpa would have gotten the money. [laughter] But I don't remember Grandpa talking about that unique opportunity. It would have been fun. My tickets would have been cheaper. [laughter] But I don't recall.

PETER NASH: And if the team had passed on to Tom, he would have strengthened the bullpen.

RICHARD JOHNSON: I would certainly hope so. And of course, the other instance where ownership questions came up was in 1916 and 1920. Apparently, Joseph P. Kennedy had tried to start two groups to buy the team at that point. I don't know whether that had ever been a topic of discussion. Do you think if our history would have changed had any of those scenarios taken place?

THOMAS FITZGERALD: Well, Sunday dinnertime conversation would have been different. We would have had someone to blame immediately and not have to worry about what was said in the paper. 

RICHARD JOHNSON: It's sort of interesting, the observations that you make on the team. And of course, when the new owners -- and we still call them the new guys here, after ten years -- they could buy a triple-decker in Ashmont, and they'd still be the new guys. But when they forked over $700 million for the team ten years ago, the two things they knew, and they knew this inherently, were that Red Sox fans were the best in baseball and would support the team through thick and thin, would endure the worst traffic, pay the most for tickets for the delivery of the goods, which they've done twice.

They also realized that Fenway Park was the enduring and lasting star of the team. And so we have them to thank for the fact that the ballpark is still there, and the team has done very well. Of course, this'll be an interesting year, but the fact is that they've done more than we could have ever expected. I think we'd all agree to that.

I was going to address this question to Peter, and that is do you think Boston and the baseball following in Boston – because you have to include the Braves early on, after all they were here for 76 years – that baseball fandom in Boston could be described as the most empowered and influential group in the history of the game? 

PETER NASH: Most definitely. They introduced songs into the ballpark. Nuf Ced McGreevy was the first guy to walk into the Huntington grounds holding a sign, making derogatory comments about John Brush for not playing the World Series early on in 1904, the year that there was no World Series. And with the following that the Royal

Rooters perpetuated -- actually traveling to other towns and other ballparks, in particular Baltimore in 1897 -- they really established a long-standing tradition. When you see Red Sox fans going down to Camden Yards, it started all in 1897 with the National League club. I mean, without a doubt, they put their mark on baseball fandom.

RICHARD JOHNSON: Would you say that that was an extension of the old country? Because certainly a lot of the Irish immigrants that came here came indirectly. A lot came from Ireland in the 1840s, but a number came afterwards after having been to England to the larger cities like Liverpool and Manchester, where they certainly would have followed soccer and would have been part of the legion of fans who followed the teams and chanted and took the train to away games. So would you agree with my hypothesis that a lot of that was brought over from the Old Country?

PETER NASH: Definitely. And even in the Old Country it would be centered around a pub tied to one team, and it seems like McGreevy and the group of Royal Rooters actually continued that with the Third Base Saloon in Roxbury and other bars, also. Hugh Duffy and Tommy McCarthy had that bar, that was another center in Boston. I 100% agree with you that that Old Country, Irish tradition is really why you see … It made its mark on the fan base today as well.

RICHARD JOHNSON: And Tom, certainly your granddad recognized the political significance and importance of being an enthusiastic supporter of the hometown teams – again, both the Braves and the Red Sox. Certainly, there was great political advantage that he'd associate himself and be on the lead Royal Rooters, one of the leaders of that loyal band that really established this wonderful precedent of traveling with the team and supporting them like no other group in the country. 

THOMAS FITZGERALD: Well, I think so. And I think another hallmark of Grandpa's was that he would go to a game at the drop of a hat. He never had a plan; he just decided that it was time to go. I remember many a Sunday dinner was interrupted by a phone call from Grandpa saying, "I want to go." He didn't say, "Oh, by the way, I'd like to go." He said, "Oh, by the way, come and pick me up." And my father, and often me, would get up and take him to the Arboretum or to see the leaves, or whatever. 

That happened in '48. He called in the middle of dinner and asked me to go to a Braves game – not a Red Sox game – they were playing the Giants. It was a game that they could cinch the '48 pennant with. So I raced into Boston, got to the hotel, the Bellevue, at 20 minutes of two, and Grandpa was sitting here with a napkin under his chin, eating his lunch. I said, "Grandpa, we have to go. The game begins in 20 minutes." And he said, "Sit down." Well, you did what you were told in those days. So I sat and waited and we finally got to Braves Field. We didn't buy a ticket. I knew we'd be arrested. [laughter] We went down and sat in a box seat with a Globe reporter named Hurley. The game went on and in the eighth inning the Braves were up five to three, and Grandpa stood up and said, "Let's go." And I said, "I beg your pardon?" And he said, "We're going."

Well, we weren't going home, we were going to the Braves locker room. And as we walked into the locker room, Vern Bickford, who had been the starting pitcher, was on a rubdown table. The roar went up, the Braves had won, and suddenly I found myself with Grandpa in the Braves locker room with a bunch of men, most of whom didn't have any clothes on. [laughter] Now, I had an older brother, but this was different. [laughter] 

And Jim Britt was in the local room at the time. He was the voice of the Braves and the Red Sox. He was interviewing people and he came over to Grandpa and said, "Well, we're now with John F., the former mayor of Boston. What do you think of today, John F.?" And Grandpa started to tell him and Grandpa had a long memory of what had gone on in the city with baseball. About halfway through his remarks, Jim Britt got impatient and said, "Well, thank you very much, John F." And Grandpa's eyes flashed and his voice got a staccato sound to it, and h said, "Godammit, I'm not through yet." [laughter] And he took the microphone out of Jim Britt's hand and finished telling him what he had to say, and then gave the microphone back to him. [laughter] 

RICHARD JOHNSON: Politics and sports, Boston, Massachusetts. It's interesting to note that there's such a tapestry of Fitzgerald and Kennedy history that weaves itself through the Fenway Park saga. You have certainly the fact that the first pitch was thrown by your granddad, that your cousin, John F. Kennedy, came to the Park in 1946, campaigning, and has this wonderful picture taken in the dugout with local hero Eddie Pellagrini from Roxbury Memorial High School; Hank Greenberg, who had been the first Major League player to enlist in World War II; and fellow veteran Ted Williams.

One story that I had heard from public relations director Bill Crowley, who was a war hero himself, was that Ted and the future President did not get along, which I found a little odd because they were both war heroes. But that the story was -- I don't know whether you've ever heard this one -- that Joseph P. Kennedy had given Ted some bad investment advice. I don't know whether that's true or not. [laughter]

THOMAS FITZGERALD: I don't know. [laughter]

RICHARD JOHNSON: You don't know, okay. And of course, Ted was the most Republican player that ever lived. In fact, he went to Herbert Hoover High School in San Diego. He thought Hoover was the greatest President ever. Herbert Hoover didn't think he was the greatest President ever. [laughter] 

THOMAS FITZGERALD: Well, he was the most Republican until Curt Schilling. [laughter/applause]

RICHARD JOHNSON: Yes, very good. Let me throw this question to Pete. Describe what the baseball culture was like in Boston 100 years ago. What would the atmosphere have been like at the Park? What would the atmosphere have been like after a game at McGreevy's?

PETER NASH: I really think it would be very much like it is today. You would have mass crowds. Everyone would be dressed a bit different, more formal, with their straw hats and uniform. You wouldn't see too many pink hats out there, I don't think, back then. 

As time marches on, things just really remain the same. 

Bill Long, the well-known Red Sox writer and historian, at the game the other day, said to a friend of mine, Chris Wertz, "I really hope for at least two innings they turn off all the electricity, so it's really original back to the old days." But I think there's an awareness of the fan base in Boston of the actual history.

I originally come from New York. My dad was a Brooklyn Dodger fan. [applause] And when you have a team with a lot of different – you have the Giants, the Yankees and the Dodgers. I mean, the Red Sox have been so ingrained here from the turn of the century. And although the Braves were here, they're gone, and they're not in the public consciousness now, and it's all Red Sox. 

And you have that one ballpark with all this history over such a span of time where, gosh, there was so much heartbreak and loss that probably some of the fans that are young today, who have experienced two World Series, Stanley Cups, Super Bowl championships, they might be able to experience, Dick, what you've experienced for the last 40 years, and see what it really means to win a championship and how tough it is.

I think the perseverance of the Boston fan pretty much is unmatched. It goes back to the days where … When I was researching my book, Dick told me about a lot of the days, not that he was there in the '20s, but the days even in the '20s and the '40s when you could look out on the ballpark and there'd be 250, 300 people out in a certain section. When we interviewed Johnny Pesky, Johnny Pesky told us there were so few guys out there in the stands, you could see a couple gamblers up there in Section 33. That's how few people were there. I think overall you don't have that problem today with the fan base. Like I said, I think it's just old is new, and it really is that.

RICHARD JOHNSON: What's interesting to note is that the Park acquired a patina of sort of holiness and sacredness after the '67 season. Prior to that, and in fact even in the midst of that season, Tom Yawkey came to Boston late that year. Usually he was in town for Opening Day; he didn't come to Boston until June of that year. And when he came to Boston, the team was doing pretty well, but they hadn't started to sort of soar like a rocket the way they did that year, but they were doing okay. 

But his message to the media was he wanted to get out of Fenway Park. And like Casey Stengel would say, “You could look it up.” He was trashing the Park and the fact that he'd gotten nowhere with the local authorities and really wanted to leave the place within five years. He said, "If I don't, whoever I sell the team to will." And of course, we forget that the place was constructed in seven months' time back in 1912. Now, in seven months' time, you'd be lucky to add a kitchen and a bathroom to a house. [laughter] They built the Park in seven months and then in 1933/'34, Tom Yawkey reconstructed the Park in seven months' time while the Redskins even played a full NFL schedule there. I would argue that that sort of changed the culture of the team completely, because Tom Yawkey became a hero in Boston as a result of that, because it was the second-largest contracting project in Boston during the Depression era. Only the Tobin Bridge was a larger project.

I was going to ask this question to Tom: Was there much contact between Tom Yawkey and your family?

THOMAS FITZGERALD: I have no idea. I feel like I'm in the grand jury [laughter] to comment on finances and deals. When my grandfather was before the grand jury and he was asked questions – he was accused of stealing coal from the city – his comment was, "Can’t recall." [laughter]

RICHARD JOHNSON: That's a pretty good answer. No, I didn't mean to put you on the spot. It's interesting though that Tom Yawkey, for all the years he owned the team, never owned property in town other than the ballpark. He never owned a home. He lived at the Ritz and was sort of a recluse. You almost could make a movie about him, because he was sort of a mysterious guy. But the ballpark was certainly his first project, was a huge success. Because the Park we see now barely resembles the Park in 1912. The 1912 Park, you sort of squint your eyes if you're, say, out in Section Two, look at the sections from about Section, oh, 26 over to Section 14, and that grandstand without the stuff on the roof, without the EMC Club and everything, was pretty much the ballpark with a bleacher. 

Then on a road trip in September of 1912, when they knew they were going to win the pennant and play in the World Series, the team added – and again you could never get a contractor to do this now – added 10,000 seats to the Park when they built the left-field bleachers and additional bleachers in front of the left-field wall and fronting the bleachers that existed at the time. So certainly the Park was a different place entirely.

Another question, and I'll sort of open this up: When the Rooters got thrown out of their seats before Game Seven of the '12 World Series, and this famous incident where the team oversold the Park, in which could have been the deciding game of the World Series, the Rooters, of which Honey Fitz was one of the leaders, were asked to leave Fenway Park. 

THOMAS FITZGERALD: Heavens.

RICHARD JOHNSON: And as a result, the concluding game the following day only had 17,000 spectators. It was only really half full. Was that ever something that was discussed at all? [laughter] Of course, inquiring minds want to know, because it was a big incident at the time.

PETER NASH: But what could have been discussed that would have been very beneficial, it would have been that a lot of the Rooters actually thought that the next game and a couple games of that Series weren't on the level and that players were throwing games. There was always some controversy in that day and age over the gamblers at the ballpark. 

Sport Sullivan, who's the most shadowy figure in Boston sports history, was one of the primary Royal Rooters, and he was the biggest gambler in town. I was doing some research at the Baseball Hall of Fame and found some documents in the Hall of Fame collection that actually stated that Sport Sullivan and some other guy named Nookie and Schwartzy were all banned from Fenway Park and from Braves Field, because of rampant gambling and pool selling in the stands. I think that if they knew who was going to win that day, they would have put a lot of money, like George M. Cohan. I think he put $50,000 on the Red Sox, on one of the games that they won. Now, he was a big Giant fan.

RICHARD JOHNSON: He's a Giant fan.

PETER NASH: You know that he knew, had some inside dope for that one. I will also mention Dan Shaughnessy has to take credit for this one, but he also mentioned that Sport Sullivan hatched the scheme for the 1919 World Series and the fix in the Buckminster Hotel. And it is odd to note that the Popeye's Fried Chicken is right on the first floor of the exact same building. [laughter] So wouldn't want to throw any aspersions, but it ties the past with the future.

RICHARD JOHNSON: Now, the gambling culture of the Park is one of the more fascinating elements of it in the book I've just written on the Park. One of the letters I discovered in doing research on this was a letter to Baseball Magazine from a traveling salesman from Seattle, who basically said, "I've been to all the Major League stadiums on my business trips. I have never yet been to a place like Boston, where the gambling is rampant." And he compared the Park to a casino. [laughter] 

I connected the dots, and of course it was interesting. Fenway Park in 1912 was the first park to have an electronic ball-and-strike indicator on the scoreboard. That was like a tote board at a racetrack. There was no question about that.

But let me throw this out, and I'll actually direct this to Tom: When did your granddad bring you to Fenway Park for the first time? And do you recall what the circumstances were?

THOMAS FITZGERALD: It was probably in 1946. It's when I went to my first game.

It was Opening Day. It was when the veterans returned with Pesky and Williams and Doerr. Boo Ferriss and Tex Hughson were there, and it was during that season. And much like the Braves story, you simply got a call that said, "We're going." And you would go and you'd be in a cab with Grandpa and if it was crowded around the Park, he would stick his head out the window and say, "John F., John F." And it was like the Red Sea. [laughter] 

RICHARD JOHNSON: That's marvelous. Wow! And of course, it's interesting, he was John F. before the other John F. 

THOMAS FITZGERALD: Yes, he was. 

RICHARD JOHNSON: And there had to be the other John F. first. Now, certainly he held court politically, but I imagine his conversations on sports were the equal of his observations of the local politics, too. I have to ask, was he interested in all sports, or was it really just baseball?

THOMAS FITZGERALD: No, he was interested in all sports. He kept scrapbooks of himself. [laughter] He would wear one of these long nightshirts and he would gather the Boston papers around him, and he had a box of pins. And he would cut out articles about himself and pin them on the nightshirt. [laughter] And when the nightshirt was full, then they would get put in a book.

But I remember in one of the books – most of these are at Holy Cross College now, although I happen to have one of them – he called for the world championship of football between Harvard and Dartmouth. I don't know whether the game was played, but it showed his ecumenical interest in everything. 

RICHARD JOHNSON: That's very interesting. And of course, it ties in a little bit with the history, the early history of the Park, because really for its first half-century, Fenway was truly a people's park in that anything and everything occurred there, sort of going with its status of being a very utilitarian place and not yet the shrine it was to be. 

You had events like the National High School Football Championship being contested there in 1912 and 1914 with Everett High School, who are still the kings here, having played in both of the games against Oak Park, Illinois, losing the first game and then beating Oak Park in 1914, 80 to nothing, in a year where they were unscored upon 600 to nothing. 

And Torbert Macdonald, I believe his father was the coach of that team, if I'm not mistaken. Is it Torby Macdonald, or am I … but I know it was part of the Kennedy group. There was a tie-in, there's always a tie-in to either the Fitzgeralds or the Kennedys on this. 

Let me ask this question to Peter: Certainly, the other sports helped to pick up the slack after the Red Sox started to slowly recede into obscurity. What happened to the Rooters at that point? I certainly know Prohibition had everything to do with that slide. But what exactly happened?

PETER NASH: Well, particularly with the Volstead Act, Nuf Ced had to close down the bar. So that killed that whole group right there that commiserated at McGreevy's. However, those guys were getting really old. Nuf Ced was probably in his 50s to 60s at that point. And as time marched on, these guys just were kind of like the old Rooter dinosaurs. And when Honey Fitz – Tom, when you went with your granddad, with Jim Britt pulling away the microphone, that was probably the attitude, "Aw, these old crazy Rooters."

It seems as if the sons and the daughters and the grandkids of those people, like Tom, just brought the tradition back over the years. And I think that's the resiliency of the fan base and the tradition that when Tom takes a picture of his grandson Ronan on the first baseline, and then he's able to take him to the Park and Ronan can see him throw out the first pitch, where else can you get that?

Tom, did you throw out the first pitch on the '46 game? Did your granddad let you do that? No, I didn't think so. [laughter]

THOMAS FITZGERALD: No.

PETER NASH: You've only done it twice, right?

THOMAS FITZGERALD: Twice.

RICHARD JOHNSON: Who would you say, of all the members of the family, of your extensive family, other than your granddad, was the biggest sports fan, the one who would absolutely go and get a ticket to the Red Sox?

THOMAS FITZGERALD: I think everyone would fall in that category. Can’t recall, specifically. But it's true. I mean, sports and the Fitzgerald family was simply talked about all the time. And still is with my son Tim and my grandsons, my granddaughters who live in Seattle. Should tell you I took my granddaughter Katie to a Red Sox/Seattle Mariners game a couple years ago, and she brought with her both a Mariners hat and a Red Sox hat. And whoever was ahead, she put that hat on her head. [laughter] So she has a political future, I think. [laughter]

PETER NASH: And Honey Fitz almost stopped the Kennedy/Fitzgerald union. Joe Kennedy was the batting champ, right? And Honey Fitz was not too high, I guess, on Joe, from what I did on some of my research.

THOMAS FITZGERALD: That's true.

PETER NASH: But by the time they were married, Joe Kennedy had a tie-in with PJ Kennedy, his granddad, because PJ Kennedy was also part of the Rooters as well. His name shows up on some of the original newspaper articles where the Rooters went traveling. And I think that Joe Kennedy at the time was ingrained the way that anyone would be who's the son of a Royal Rooter, or grandson, and the proof of that was in 1914 when the Braves were in the World Series, the Miracle Braves, they were married and before their trip to Sulfur Springs, West Virginia, for their honeymoon, they went with Honey Fitz and Nuf Ced McGreevy and the Rooters to Philadelphia for the World Series.  That was discovered in the scrapbooks, in Rose's scrapbooks here at the Library, they found her Royal Rooter badge and her ticket. So that is true fandom, if you're going to go to the World Series on the way to your honeymoon. [laughter]

RICHARD JOHNSON: Well, it's interesting to note that the political history of the Park is fascinating. Apart from the appearances and the random trips there just to press the flesh and everything, the events that have occurred there over the years have been fascinating. Eamon de Valera put 60,000 in the Park in 1919, advocating the Irish Free State. Then, of course, domestic politics took center stage probably – at least what I would call the greatest non-sporting event at the Park was when FDR spoke in November of 1944 in his last campaign speech ever. And from all the accounts I've read, he did politically what Ted Williams did in his last at bat competitively and gave a rousing speech. It lasted an hour. He spoke from an automobile parked on a platform over the second-base bag and hit it out of the Park.

We might ask our friends at the Library today if they can maybe work with the ball club on either getting a Presidential speech there this year, maybe under the auspices of the Library. Or, better yet, because this would break every record possible in terms of ratings, a debate at Fenway Park. [laughter/applause] Wouldn't that be great? And Honey Fitz's ghost would be in the background giving advice to Obama and you know it. [laughter] And if we added as the undercard Warren and Brown, now we're talking! People would take the day off for that one. 

But speaking about grand conclusions, there was an allusion to your being at Ted Williams's last game, and I want to hear this story. 

THOMAS FITZGERALD: Well, it was September of 1960, and I had been married August 20^th of 1960. I was teaching at the Browne and Nichols School, and my wife and I had moved to Boston, and I was going to night school at Mass State College in Boston. And that last home game, as I was driving from one school to the other, I realized I could see Williams bat for the last time. 

So I pulled up to Fenway, couldn't find a place to park, but I saw a yellow no-parking zone, which I pulled into and a big Boston cop, the biggest one I had ever seen looked at me and he said, "Move it." And I said, "Oh, I can't move it. I just want to go in the Park. Williams is coming up. I want to see him his last time at bat." "Move it!"

Then I wondered, “Why aren't you in the Park? What are you doing out here?” And with that, this roar of the crowd happened and I realized something had happened; I didn't know what. And, of course, it was Williams hitting his home run. I was fit to be tied. But I knew better not to lose my temper and lose my car and go home on the subway. 

So I went to school, came home, and just threw up my tale of woe on my wife, who was from Colorado. And she said, "What's the big deal?" [laughter] And I thought, “Oh, dear God in heaven, I haven't been married a month and my marriage is in trouble.” [laughter] Well, later on, she did become a Royal Rooter in the Red Sox stands, and I suppose it's a better story to say I was outside the Park and I was robbed. [laughter]

RICHARD JOHNSON: So that's sort of the opposite of the John Updike story. It's kind of the dark side of the moon to that one, isn't it?

PETER NASH: Why didn't you tell him you were Honey Fitz's grandson? Didn't Honey Fitz get Babe Ruth out of a couple parking tickets? I think you told me that.

THOMAS FITZGERALD: Can't recall. [laughter]

RICHARD JOHNSON: In 2004, with the resumption of Tessie, with the recreation of that and there'll be a little bit more about that as the program goes on today, we learned anew that music and fandom and that unbridled passion can become a tenth player for a team. Pete, why don't you describe a little bit how that helped the team and sort of the role it played. Because I think the ghosts came out, too. I think it wasn't just the people in the stands, but I think there were the hovering ghosts of Honey Fitz and the Rooters as a part of that chorus. 

PETER NASH: Just music in general in those days, Honey Fitz would use Sweet Adeline. Sometimes people had more interest in a good performance of a song than an actual speech, and he used that to his advantage to win over every crowd in Massachusetts. And in baseball, one of the Royal Rooters, when they went to Pittsburgh in 1903, tracked down one of the popular songs, Tessie, and in Pittsburgh just assaulted the other crowd, changing the words with derogatory comments about Honus Wagner and every player in Pittsburgh. And it turned the tide and the Red Sox went on to win the World Series, the first Series. And the Tessie tradition went on all the way into 1912, all the way even up to 1918. And Tessie died. Maybe Tessie came out in 1946 or right by the end of the season with some of the real old-timers, and I think Fitz was one of the ones who went out with the boys and went on the radio and actually sang Tessie.

But then you have 2004 and Ken Casey and the Dropkick Murphys resurrected Tessie and when they actually performed Tessie at Fenway, and every time they performed, either David Ortiz hit a walk-off home run, or Bill Mueller. It was really a recaptivation of that whole thing and it might have been total luck, but I think there was a little bit more at play with the ghosts of the Royal Rooters. You really had almost like an undefeated record of the Rooters and Tessie. Now it is odd to know that the Dropkicks didn't play at the game the other day, so who knows if they played, if it would have been a different outcome. I think we need to need to get them at the Park a little bit more to play Tessie this evening. 

RICHARD JOHNSON: Immediately. They should be warming up now. [laughter] It's interesting, I was watching one of the Sunday morning shows today and probably the only time Keith Olbermann and George Will have ever agreed on anything, and they basically agreed that the preservation of Fenway Park was a godsend and that maybe, maybe, just maybe things in the past were better. 

Isn't it great to be in a place where we celebrate politicians who would sing to their constituents? And a family who – and again I'll make a slight political statement here – use their privilege and power to volunteer for combat, not avoid it. We're in a special place here. And sports would have been a topic that, I can imagine, all the brothers and members of the family having a discussion, as animated as anything that they would have considered politically, talking about the state of the Red Sox now and about what to do, who to move, or who to put in a certain spot.

But do you recall, Tom, what the dinner table was like, and what the conversations were like during the holidays when sports would come up? How animated would it get? I would imagine it would be as much a salon as it was a saloon. 

THOMAS FITZGERALD: Probably so. You were never without conversation when it came to the Red Sox. One of the memories I have during the war years about my Dad is he dug up the backyard and had a victory garden. And one of the jobs my sister and I had would be to find enough extension cords to go from the house, out a window, to a radio in the middle of the cabbage patch so he could listen to a Red Sox game.

The other memory I have is, as my dad got older, he would not watch TV, but he would listen to games on the radio. And then you'd see him in the morning and he would be a real sourpuss with a frown on his face. And he'd say, "I didn't sleep." He said, "I replayed the game, hour after hour after hour." Which I think we all do when it comes to the Red Sox.

RICHARD JOHNSON: Well, it's interesting that the combination of politics and sports here is so current, too, because certainly the other day we saw Scott Brown at the Park, Warren was there, and any candidate of note had begged, borrowed or stolen a ticket to be there. It just is a constant here.

Is there any other city you've been to where it even comes close? And I'll ask that to both of you. It can in New York at times, certainly in 2001. And I am one of the few Red Sox fans who will not use the term Evil Empire, because in 2001 when New York and the country needed baseball the most, the Yankees delivered three home games in that World Series that were transcendent and were important to the healing of that community and the nation in general. But is there any place that compares to Boston?

PETER NASH: Well, Dick, I was born a Met fan, growing up in Queens, New York, so that really hurt over that time. But I will tell you, it really did. And I could always relate with the Red Sox fan. If I didn't bring up '86 at any point, 2004 opened the flood gates where I could actually say that out loud. But there was some common ground between the Red Sox fans and Met fans. I think that's just part of this whole tradition.

RICHARD JOHNSON: It's interesting that the national conversation about everything these days seems to have a certain unsettling contentiousness to it and that seems to have gone from politics to sports, even. I'm not sure if it's the media or not, but what's great is actually being at the ballpark. I would argue that the narrow confines of Fenway Park lend themselves to actual conversations, where you can … There'll be someone there from New York and it won't be some hostile thing, but you start to talk about things. There's an appreciation; usually people from other cities, even if they're rooting for the other team, love Fenway. So that will be the common ground you start with. Then you begin a discussion about other things. So I would certainly argue Fenway Park as being a civil oasis in a world now where we are increasingly divisive. Would you agree with that?

THOMAS FITZGERALD: Absolutely. You asked about other cities. I live in Denver. And there is, I will tell you, a passion for the Denver Broncos, the first major sports team that came to Denver. But it doesn't match the Red Sox.

And talking about family loyalty, my dad had a cousin, Ned Fitzgerald, and when Eunice Kennedy got married in New York City to Sargent Shriver, you needed a ticket to get into St. Patrick's. I mean, it was going to be a big crowd. And on the way to the wedding, Ned realized the Red Sox were in town playing the Yankees and at the next traffic light, he gave his tickets to the church to a cop and he went to the game. [laughter]

RICHARD JOHNSON: That's great! I love that. Was there ever a movement to convert suitors and in-laws and newcomers to the family who might have come from other places to join the legion of Red Sox followers?

THOMAS FITZGERALD: I just assume that's understood. [laughter]

RICHARD JOHNSON: Absolutely. Now, I've been asked to have you introduce a film clip from the Royal Rooters film.

PETER NASH: I, a couple years ago, was a producer on Rooters, about the Red Sox Nation, and in one of the segments we went through a really nice, compact, concise package of the building of Fenway Park and some reminiscences. So I'd like to introduce that segment right here.

[Film played] [applause]

RICHARD JOHNSON: That was nice, Pete. 

PETER NASH: You guys did a good part in there.

RICHARD JOHNSON: Well, it's interesting, and I don't admit this often. I will admit to having cried on Friday. That ceremony that Charles Steinberg and the club put together with the 224 players, managers and coaches was extraordinary. I don't know how many of you were there; I'm sure you've all seen it. But when Varitek and Wakefield wheeled Pesky and Doerr out onto the diamond, I challenge anyone who's a genuine Red Sox fan – in fact, this might even be the litmus test for it – if you didn't cry, you're a Yankee fan. Get out of here! [laughter/applause] So if I was a Hollywood actor and I was asked to cry on cue, I'd conjure that up and I'd cry like a baby. It was very special. 

The question I want to ask my two colleagues here is what game in club history or in Park history that you didn't see would you have wanted to be at? Have you ever thought of a historic event that you'd say, "God, I wish I'd been there"?

PETER NASH: I'd have to say the game that the Rooters were kicked out of their seats. That ruckus right there would probably be the best. I might even have been able to talk to the right people about who was going to win the next day. [laughter] So you'd have that added touch there. But that'd be my number one.

THOMAS FITZGERALD: Well, I might have liked to have been in the Park on that day that I was standing outside. [laughter] But it's really a better story having been outside.

RICHARD JOHNSON: The better story's the one that you have of what actually happened. I think I would pick any game that Tris Speaker played there. I'm the minority; I'm sort of the historical minority that says that Tris Speaker was the greatest player in club history. And Ted Williams was someone I knew and wouldn't say a close friend, but was an acquaintance and I treasure that. But I think even Ted might have said that Tris was the most complete player ever to play for the team. I would've chosen a game that he had one of his unassisted double plays from center field. How great would that have been to see? What a player.

Then, of course, I'd also ask for a bonus and that would be any of the high school football games that were played there. It's sort of interesting to note that the Park's history this year is going to mostly be cast in terms of Red Sox home games. And yeah, I'll plug my own book here because I sort of have to do that, but I've tried to tell the story of everything else that happened there as well because we know the Red Sox history so well, but imagine a year like 1932 where there were 47 high school football games played there. You were probably as apt to meet someone on the street that had dirt under their fingernails from the Park as you were someone who had been there just as a spectator to see the Red Sox.

And you know, I'd ask for a third event, too, if you'll let me, if you'll indulge me here. One of the magical things that occurs when you're working on a project, if you're working hard enough, sources find you, stuff finds you. And this happened, oh, gosh, it was about two years ago. I got a call from a colleague at the Garden – I work at the Garden, at the Sports Museum – who said, "There's a guy down on the train platform who says he knows you, that he grew up three houses away from you in Worcester. And he has some stuff he'd like you to see." I said, "Send him up." I had no idea who this guy was. He came up and he had a grocery bag with scrapbooks in it. We sat for the next three hours and looked through the scrapbooks of the Pere Marquette AC. Anyone here remember the Pere Marquette AC? The Pere Marquette AC was a sports, sort of the sports division of a Knights of Columbus Lodge in South Boston that Babe Ruth, a member of the board of directors of -- in fact, even after his sale to the Yankees. The Pere Marquettes were called Babe Ruth's Own on the stationery. 

And they played a game in November of 1927 at Fenway Park against the New Yorkfootball Giants, a regular season game for the Giants against the semi-pro team of guys from South Boston, who worked as clerks, longshoremen, graduate students; they were amateurs. And it was the audition for Boston to join the NFL, and we had a team join in 1929. But what was interesting about their story, and as we looked through the scrapbooks, a good 10 or 12 years before the Catholic Worker movement started and certainly 20-odd years before the Jimmy Fund started, these guys were playing and giving money to church-related charities. So the Laboure Center in South Boston, which was known as the Columbus Daycare Center back in the 1920s, they were writing checks for $500 for that charity back in the day. So before the Jimmy Fund started, there was a social agenda for a sports organization using Fenway as a home. That's the sort of history

I find really compelling. We all know about Ted and Yaz, but the Pere Marquettes became my heroes. So they're the third team I would have liked to have seen play a game, if I could go in that time machine.

Should we open it up to questions from the audience because this is a great audience. I've never spoken before a crowd this big. And I know you all have got some questions. So please step up to the mic here.

QUESTION: This isn't a question. You say you were robbed. I was there. I was a room service waiter at the Hotel Somerset and I waited on Teddy Williams just about every night. And it was a cold, cold day, and I went there among 10,000 fans. Now there are about 500,000 fans that said they were there. [laughter] I was also at Yaz's last game.

And I was there in 1967 with my wife when the Red Sox won the pennant over Minnesota in Detroit. So I've got many memories of Ted Williams and Fenway Park. 

I was at that Braves game in 1948 when Sain beat Feller and Feller pitched a two-hitter, and Masi was actually out at second base. And Tommy Holmes sent[?] to the third base side of Braves Field, and they won the game. That was the greatest game I ever saw, Johnny Sain beating Bob Feller. I was then a Braves fan, but of course then I became a rabid Red Sox fan when the Braves left. [applause]

RICHARD JOHNSON: I think maybe we should get a chair and have you get up here, too. [laughter] That's great. 

QUESTION: I just wanted to make sure everybody knew that Isabella Stewart Gardner, whose museum is on the Fenway, was a rabid Red Sox fan. And she shocked all of the Boston Brahmin society in 1918 by going to the Boston Symphony with a banner around her head, a headband that said, "Oh, you Red Sox." [applause]

RICHARD JOHNSON: That's a great point, because this is a city where a crowd at a ballpark isn't just sort of a sports crowd. You will have lawyers and doctors and people that work as an orderly at a hospital, or doing anything. Of course, some will be sitting in the luxury seats, others will be on the bleachers, but there's such a cross-section here.

This is unlike most other cities. 

I think it's part of what defines us as a sports town, the greatest sports city in the world, period. I will argue that until the end of time. There's no place like it. And it's not just the Red Sox, although the Red Sox are the beacon. I was once asked after the Patriots had won their third Super Bowl, "Gee, what's the difference between the two teams? Haven't the Patriots surpassed the Red Sox?" I said, "Well, I don't think so. The Red Sox play in Boston. The Patriots might as well be playing in Agawam as playing in Foxboro." [laughter] So when that changes, then maybe the tide will have turned completely. But don't hold your breath. Let's get some more questions here. Don't be shy!

QUESTION: I'm kind of curious for the three illustrious folks up there, have any of your offspring really disappointed you by perhaps – I know this is unheard of – but having some other team as their favorite? [laughter]

RICHARD JOHNSON: Well, I'll answer that question first, because I root for the Giants, too. Not the football ones, believe me, the baseball ones, and the odds of the Giants playing the Red Sox in a World Series -- even though it happened 100 years ago -- are about the chances of my being one of the heirs to the British throne. 

But here's a story I'll tell very, very briefly, which is one that we all would love to have happen to us, and it happened to me just out of the blue. I brought my son to his first game at Fenway Park when he was eight years old. It was a cold April evening. I got tickets from a friend at NECN who had some, and I was thrilled. So I grabbed him at school. We went out to dinner. We got to the Park, and about the eighth inning it was getting cold. We had only worn windbreakers to the game and I said, "You look cold, pal, you want to go?" And he looked at me very sternly and he said, "Dad, I hope it goes extra innings." [laughter] It was like, yes! A fan! [applause] You never know when that's going to happen. 

Yes, sir?

QUESTION: First of all, I'd like to ask, how the hell do you lose a nine-to-nothing lead? [laughter] 

PETER NASH: We imagine it's happened before many times.

QUESTION: That's what I thought. Just a couple of points, actually, more than questions. One of you gentlemen said that Hank Greenberg was the first player to enlist in World War II. I was always under the belief it was Hugh Mulcahy, who pitched for the Philadelphia Phillies and was from Somerville, Massachusetts. I was wondering if we can somehow look that up.

RICHARD JOHNSON: Will someone with a BlackBerry in the audience please clear that up for us, and then we'll be all set.

QUESTION: Modern technology is wonderful. And one of my recollections of Fenway Park, I think it was in 1948, somewhere around there, when Hal Peck, who was a right fielder for the Cleveland Indians, fielded a ball, threw the ball and killed a pigeon.

[laughter] I don't know if you've heard that one before.

RICHARD JOHNSON: I have heard that one. 

QUESTION: I was there. I was 12 years old, and the ball was flying. All of sudden, it fell. Check that one out with the BlackBerry. Thank you. Great panel. [applause]

RICHARD JOHNSON: It's interesting. A nine-to-nothing lead at Fenway Park, we now know, is a fragile thing indeed. [laughter]

PETER NASH: Myself being born a Met fan, I can relate to a new manager, Bobby Valentine, coming to Boston and reservations I have, pulled back and forth. And going back to whether … You're happy that your son is a Red Sox fan. My son William's five and it's pretty much coming down to whether he likes Wally the Green Monster or Mr. Met better. [laughter] And I was really hoping for him to push the Red Sox way for his own self-esteem. But let me see some championships because I know the Mets aren't winning any time soon. 

Then I see the nine-run lead blown and it seems like the Red Sox need some help in the bullpen. Who could have predicted that when Jonathan Papelbon said that Philly fans know more than Boston fans, and he was vilified, which was totally wrong. We could definitely use him back here in Boston at this point. 

So maybe my buddy Ken Casey over here can give him a call and see if he'll reconsider. [laughter] 

RICHARD JOHNSON: It's actually gotten so bad that they introduced the new special on the Legal Sea Foods menu, I think this afternoon, it's a live piranha fish in a ball. [laughter] 

Anyway, we have some more questions here.

QUESTION: I was just wondering what you gentlemen thought might happen if the, I believe, very unlikely event occurred that the Sox would leave Fenway, that they would build a new stadium, newfangled something, I would imagine like Camden Yards, but larger. If they were to, God forbid, tear down Fenway, do you think that the city would still be able to survive as a cohesive unit, or whether their wives would simply destroy the town? [laughter]

THOMAS FITZGERALD: Get his name. [laughter] You do not tear down a cathedral. [applause] 

PETER NASH: Wasn't it just designated a historic site?

RICHARD JOHNSON: Yeah, it was just designated as a historic site. But what's interesting about it is certainly we revere historic places here. This is such a great city. You can get on at the State subway stop, under the old State House, built in 1713. You could go to Harvard Stadium, built in 1903, or to Matthews Arena, built as the Boston Arena in 1910. Fenway Park's the newcomer, sort of a whippersnapper on that list. 

What the team did, which preserved the Park because it was not looking good, they solved the Rubik's Cube of how do you win a world championship in a park designed for a different game. Dead-ball era baseball was a different sport entirely. And it's why the Cubs have continued to toe the line for over 100 years and not winning a championship.

But I just don't know when we're going to get to sort of what they have in Wrigley, which is the $75 bleacher ticket. That's coming. But if the Sox deliver the goods, I think we're willing to pay whatever we need to. And we can put off getting that new car, or putting a roof on the house for another year, because we're going again. 

THOMAS FITZGERALD: I have my 1946 World Series ticket framed at home in Denver. The Sox had doubled the price of bleacher seats for the World Series, and my ticket was $1.20. [laughter] 

QUESTION: A couple quick comments. You finally mentioned Wrigley. I think if you're a baseball fan, you should really go to Wrigley, especially to see the ivy in the summertime. I was also there on Friday, and I came that close to crying; it was an amazing experience. 

My comment is with the new owners, one of the things I think is great – and I'm a huge Red Sox fan but also a huge music fan, rock-and-roll – is to be able to see concerts now at Fenway Park for the last few years has been amazing. I was just wondering if you might want to comment on that. I got to see Dropkick Murphys, amongst others. Maybe just talk a little bit about that? 

RICHARD JOHNSON: Well, what the new owners have done is they've sort of gone back to the future. They made it into a people's park once more. Because there was a time period … Gosh, the last sort of significant non-baseball event there, at least from a sporting standpoint, was when Bruno Sammartino was part of a wrestling show there in '69 or '70. They held the Newport Jazz Festival there in '73. But it was really the Red Sox right up until ten years ago. And again, the new guys have brought in soccer, hockey. I saw my alma mater, Lawrence Academy, play hockey there this January. Wow! That stuff is great. And they realize that doing that sort of thing will cement people's allegiance to the Park, and I would hope make us all a little more patient as we endure what could be a long year for the Red Sox this year. [laughter]

But ownership gets it, and certainly bringing the Dropkicks in for extended time periods …I was there at the '07 game against the Indians, game seven; you guys helped win that game. And again, that's a tie-in, again, back to the future, back to the past; the Rooters helped to win games, too. So you're one of our other home teams, Kenny. 

But we certainly, I think, enjoy seeing any performance in a context, in an environment that we love. And Fenway Park is a place we love. So we could see just about anything there. They could bring in Japanese flower arrangement there, and I think we'd probably say, “What the hell, come on, let's go!” [laughter]

QUESTION: Just wanted to thank you all for celebrating Fenway Park and writing that book. Because I think everybody in this room, no matter what age we are, have all had memories of walking in that Park for the first time. Even to this day, when I go to a game I remember when my father took me to my first game and saw them play. Walking in that room, it's a whole different world. I say anybody who wants to come to Boston to visit, they have to go to Fenway because they see it all right there – the accents, the culture, the whole feeling of Boston. If they ever tore that Park down, there would be a lot of vacancies in the city because that's what we identify with. We identify with the Red Sox, no matter how bad they were, or how great they are, we stick with them, and we don't leave. It's just kind of that whole feeling about it.

I went to that open house that they had on Thursday, and I saw little kids with their balls and young kids, six years old, all the way to 80 years old, and got autographs by Luis Tiant, and I saw Bill Monbouquette, and I saw the new pitcher, and saw the generations of all these players. And that would be a great book to write, maybe, is to do a book just on all those players and how they cross the different generations. 

But my question is did they ever consider another place to build Fenway? Besides the back of your grandfather's house, or something. [laughter] Did they ever consider another spot besides the Fens?

RICHARD JOHNSON: That's a good question. There was not a lot of land available in Boston at that point, near the downtown area, that didn't have issues connected to it. The great thing about the Fenway Park, about the parcel that they ended up buying, that the Taylors ended up with, was it had been property owned by the Dana family, the Danas of two years before the Massachusetts – his father was a member of the Continental Congress. I mean, that land had gone back to the King of England, I think, giving it to the family. 

What was unusual about it is it was one of the few parcels in the Back Bay of that size, Back Bay and the Fens, that was not partially under water. The waterline of the Charles came up to the back of the Park, about where the garage is now, where there used to be the Buck Printing sign. So it was stable property in terms of putting the pilings in to build a park that could hold an upper deck. What's interesting about the Park was even though they didn't add the upper deck in 1912, it was built to support an upper deck. So they have kind of put an upper deck on now, but they could put a full-fledged upper deck on it.

So you needed property that could hold a steel and concrete park. And that was one of the few places. I never investigated other places they might have looked at, because they worked on that pretty quickly and they decided quickly on it, because it was eight acres. And eight acres at that point, which didn't have any construction on it, was a rare find indeed in a good part of town. 

The Taylors also were building property, were building apartment blocks in the surrounding area. In fact, one of the theories is Fenway Park was given its name because the Fenway Realty Company was owned by the Taylor family, and they were trying to get folks to move into their places, too. But they chose the right spot.

QUESTION: Neither being Cliff Clavin, nor a research librarian here at the Kennedy Library, I used my iPhone, baseball in World War II, Gary Bedingfield. "Holding the distinction of being the first Major League regular to be drafted in World War II, Hugh "Losing Pitcher" Mulcahy, a veteran with the Philadelphia Phillies, was inducted on March 8, 1941, and reported to Camp Devens, Massachusetts. The 27-year-old righthander earned his nickname by losing 76 games between 1937 and 1940 [laughter] as a starter with the senior circuit's perennial baseball team." So there we are. [applause]

PETER NASH: The thing about Isabella Stewart Gardner?

QUESTION: I beg your pardon?

PETER NASH: Did you bring up the story about Isabella Stewart Gardner.

QUESTION: No, that was someone else.

PETER NASH: That was 1912/1918, so we wanted to get the right strike everywhere on the thing.

QUESTION: Just a little Ted Williams story here. After Ted Williams came home from Korea, my father had the idea to go into Fenway and see him play again after he'd come back. And my aunt, who worked for John Hancock, got us tickets and she also got us a pass to go to the clubhouse after the game. And we went down there after the game, and I was all excited about seeing Ted Williams. And when we went in, looked around and met a couple of the players that were there, and couldn't see him much. Then my father spotted him sitting on a table down a ways in the clubhouse, and he had tape all over him; he was taped on his shoulder and he had tape in various places. And that was the first thing that disappointed me about him.

But the second thing that disappointed me was he was holding a beer. I don't know if he drank it or not [laughter], but he was holding a beer, and at that time I was an absolute teetotaler and to me that was the worst thing that anybody could do, would be to drink beer or anything like that. So at the time my father says, "Well, let's go over and meet him." And I said, "No, I don't think I want to." And I was scared, so we walked out of the clubhouse. [laughter] So I never got to really meet Ted Williams, but I wish I'd taken it up. 

RICHARD JOHNSON: Well, if you hear stories about the Red Sox from that era that was probably the least strong item being drunk in that clubhouse at that point, too. [laughter] 

QUESTION: Hello, I've been to Sox games in the past 23 years; I'm 23 years old. In the past six years, I've been to almost every game. I work day-of-game staff, so I'm there. The only jeers that are constant and you can hear throughout the stadium is stuff against the Yankees. But the past week there's been constant and pretty much the entire Park coming in with "bring back Tito." And I was just curious if you have knowledge of any time, other than against the Yankees, if there has been persistent cheers going towards one thing. I just found it very interesting that it's been happening all week. And I'm wondering if it's going to continue.

PETER NASH: Initially, going back to the 1890s and even around 1912, Honey Fitz and Nuf Ced McGreevy would lead all of these different cheers, which were derogatory towards the other team, towards the other pitcher. So that is a tradition. And I'm sure that they called for another manager at some point, eEspecially when they lost Jimmy Collins, the famous third baseman before probably 1906/1907. I think there were probably a lot of fans – didn't have the opportunity to record them on videotape -- but I bet you that they had the same thing in that situation.

RICHARD JOHNSON: Yeah, that's certainly true in any number of sports, too. I remember when the New York-football Giants said goodbye to Allie Sherman, their head coach, you could actually hear the fans singing "Goodbye Allie" on the radio broadcasts of an exhibition game. It can be devastating. Even in our corporate culture of sports now where the scoreboard tends to drown out the fans, the fans still, for the price of their admission to the Park, can make their opinions known and then some. And certainly that did happen the other day. 

I'm hoping they give the new guy a chance, because this season's barely started. You've got to be fair. And what happened with Francona was certainly understandable because of the circumstances under which he was relieved of his job and the circumstances under which he came back. So you can understand how everybody would feel. If the Sox had won, it would be a different story. But they didn't, and here we are.

QUESTION: I'm from Stonington, Connecticut, which is just about dead center between

Boston and New York. There are six boys in my family, and my brother and I were Red Sox fans all our lives until my brother got tired; he just couldn't take it any longer, year after year after year and he switched over and became a Yankee fan. So in 2004, after the Yankees beat the Sox 21-to-nine, or eight, or something like that, their game with that playoff, he calls me up and tells me he's on his way over to Wal-Mart to get a broom. [laughter] And when the Sox came back and won that, I didn't know what to say to him, except, "How's your broom?" [laughter]

I wanted to do a follow-up. My hats are off to the Red Sox management because the question was, would they ever build another Fenway Park. And if you've been to JetBlue Park in Fort Myers, they did a beautiful job on that. It's got the old scoreboard that they've had in storage for 30 years. Green Monster. And it only holds 11,000, but, boy, it feels just like Fenway and hats off to the organization. [applause]

RICHARD JOHNSON: We're going to take one more question here, and then we're going to be introducing our friend Ken Casey.

QUESTION: I wonder if you can lend insight on how I might use baseball statistics to answer a question. I went to a game about 12 years ago, and Mo Vaughn hit three home runs in that game. I've been trying to date the game, using those statistics. Do you think it's going to be possible to do?

RICHARD JOHNSON: You know, I think if you went to boxscore.com, and you probably know some of the sites, too …

PETER NASH: baseballreference.

RICHARD JOHNSON: baseballreference. And then just do a Google search and

maybe even put it in parentheses and everything, I bet you'll find it. It might take a little doing, but I'm sure you will.

The other thing to do is to check the media guides, because the media guides will have a detailed description of what a player had done for every season. So if you look in the media guide – what was his last year here? '98 or '99? And if you look in there, it will say. You'll just have to look through. And it will go "on such-and-such a day he hit three home runs," and then you'll have it. But that's what I would do.

QUESTION: Thank you.

RICHARD JOHNSON: Why don't you introduce our friend?

PETER NASH: I'd like to introduce my partner over at McGreevy's Third Base Saloon and the founder of Dropkick Murphys, Kenny Casey. [applause] 

We'll have Ken tell his own story on how you guys rejuvenated Boston and fandom with the retelling of the Tessie story.

KEN CASEY: Thanks for having me. It's a great crowd, and it's an honor to be able to talk a little bit about baseball and my history and memories of baseball. I was also there the other day, and I'm going to kind of work backwards with my history and memories with Dropkick Murphy's involvement. 

I'll start with saying we did get to play a couple of concerts, real concerts, not appearances with the team, last September, two nights. And it was just an amazing honor. One of the things that happened that makes that a very memorable occasion is that after the night of the first concert, we got to park in the player parking area there. It was, I think, on Van Ness. It had been a while by the time we got done socializing with friends and family and when I came out to get my car, Van Ness had been reopened. They took the gates down and it had been reopened and my car was on the street. I came out and the valet said, "It's all set, keys are right in it." Right as he said that, my car peeled away down the street. [laughter] And I thought this has to be another valet running it up or bringing it around for me. [laughter] And he took the corner and I started to wonder what's going on here. Then when I saw the valet break into a sprint after the car, I said this can't be good. They found it the next day in Charlestown. I had left my iPod in it, and the iPod was there and everything. So they determined it was probably just a fan who needed a lift home and then realized he had stolen my car. [laughter]

I said to the Red Sox, "Did this happen to Mick? Did this happen to Bruce? Did this happen to Paul McCartney?" But they all came in limos and I came in my Chevy Suburban. So that's what happens. [laughter] The best part of the deal coming out of that was the Red Sox said, "You have parking for life here in employer parking on Van Ness." So I showed up for my first time cashing in on that on the 100^th anniversary game, and they looked very stressed out. They said, "Oh, my god, we're really full, we've got some alumni here." And I said, "Listen, it's my first time. You told me I had parking for life. You're going to tell me I can't park here?" Anyway, they took the car and I went up and I watched the game. And when I saw them bring out every living alumni, I felt so bad. They had 200 cars to park and here I am. I see a couple of alumni. Who's here? Dwight Evans? Jim Rice? What's going on, bro?

Anyway, to continue going in reverse, in 2007, Jonathan Papelbon started to use our song, Shipping Up to Boston. And it's always cool to hear the closer come out to your music. It's a little odd when people around you are dancing and clapping and you want to clap because you're happy that the team's up and the closer's coming in, but you can't clap to your own song, so you don't really know what to do. 

But that was a great season, and we got asked to play on the field before Game Seven.

The stage was in center field, and we brought all these Irish step dancers out from the Forbes School of Irish Dance in Quincy, where my daughter actually dances with them. And Dice-K was warming up in the bullpen, and here we are playing in center field and we've got, I don't know, 30 Irish step dancers and I'm just looking over at him as we're playing the song and he has this look on his face, like, "What the hell is going on here?

Get me back to Japan!" [laughter] It was so cool that we were part of that. 

By the way, I don't say this often because no one listens or wants to hear it, but we played in '07 on the field. We didn't get asked in '06. We didn't get asked in '05. And we haven't played since as part of a game since the '07 Series. But the first year we got asked to be involved with the team was '04. I got a call from Jeff Horrigan, who was at the time a Boston Herald sportswriter. He said, "The Red Sox wants you to remake their old fight song from the early days, the turn of the century." And I said, "Lifelong fan, the Red Sox, we're in." The band was on tour in Europe when he called and asked. I said, "We're in." He said, "All right, I'm going to email you the song," and he sent me an email and I listened to the song, and I immediately emailed back, "We're out." [laughter] It was this old, the original was an old, I think, Broadway song, or something. Trying to discern the lyrics, it seemed to be about a lady telling her secrets to a parrot. Am I right?

RICHARD JOHNSON: Yeah. [laughter]

KEN CASEY: And I made the mistake of telling my band mates how excited I was about the potential of doing this. But we sat down and listened to it together for the first time, and everyone's scratching their head.

So what came of that is that we decided to keep a hint of the original melody of basically the end of the chorus and rewrite the lyrics. However, I am not a historian and I went to my first baseball in 1975, so we needed to enlist the help of some people who knew more historically about it. And we sat down with Jeff Horrigan, and I don't know who he went to because I don't know how he knew all this stuff. But he's a big fan and we came up with a song that basically was about the era that they sung that song and the fans.

So we recorded the song. We did it on a CD that was to benefit the Red Sox Foundation. Johnny Damon sang on the song. Bronson Arroyo, Lenny DiNardo. The vocals are ducked very well because two of them could sing, one of them couldn't, and he took the whole thing down. But I won't mention who. Johnny Damon. [laughter] 

So we debuted the song on July 24, 2004 and as you know – that is the right day, July 24^th, the ballgame with …

RICHARD JOHNSON: A-Rod game.

KEN CASEY: A-Rod game. So we did interviews and stuff leading up to it, and I have the print to prove it that I actually said, "I guarantee a World Series." And at the time, I don't even think I believed it; I was just trying to go out on a limb. [laughter]

We debuted at the game, and we went on to play before a game in the ALDS against the Angels, and David Ortiz hit a walk-off homer and we played … That April 24^th game was one with the Bill Mueller walk-off home run. And I remember saying, so here I am telling everybody, "I guarantee it, changes the season, we're going to win the World Series." And the first game wasn't over and it was a rout, and we're getting killed by the Yankees and I'm saying "It's over before it started." 

Anyway, as you know, they went on to have the brawl with A-Rod and Varitek and came back and came back and won that with a walk-off. Then it was a David Ortiz walk-off in the ALDS. Then we played Game One of the World Series and there wasn't a walk-off, but it was their last at bat, Bill Mueller hit the Pesky Pole. Not Bill Mueller, Mark Bellhorn hit the Pesky Pole. So every game we played at in '04 had a home run in their last-at-bat to win the game.

Then they went on to the Yankees Series. By now, I was feeling good and I was really starting to tell a lot more people that my predictions were on their way to coming true. And after going down three-zip to the Yankees, my phone – I was getting death threats. [laughter] And most of them were from lifelong friends of mine saying, "If you ever get involved with another sports team," I was going to be run out of town. Being a fan that year, following the Series, it was so intensified because I felt like my life was at stake within the circles I run in. [laughter] Those are circles where you don't want people after you sometimes. [laughter] Anyway, as we all know, the rest is history, as they say. 

And as I headed up on the field out in St. Louis, Dr. Charles Steinberg was kind enough to say, "I'm going to get you on the field. You don't have a pass." You have to kind of do things a little bit sketchy, which is, like I said … Better, I'll start off by saying, most of my Red Sox games that I went to in my teens, 20, 25 of us would come over the fence at the same time in right field, and there's strength in numbers and they'd only usually be able to grab one or two of us. [laughter] I never got caught. So that's how I saw the majority of my Red Sox games.

Then I had a friend's father who was on most of the police details as well, and he would let us into most of the games. And when I think it was the Angels they beat in '86 to then go on to the World Series against the Mets. We were getting ready to jump out on the field, to start the … You know how fans used to always run on the field and rush the field? I was obsessed why that just stopped happening, and we were going to make sure it happened. His father knew well what we'd be up to and right as we're about to jump over, we just felt, bam, on the back of our shirts. We were just 16 years old, or something, at the time. They locked us in the souvenir stand, and we went from being the first to celebrate, to the only two that didn't get to celebrate that night. [laughter] 

Anyway, I've got to wrap this up. As most of us, we could talk about baseball all night. But that 2004 Series and being able to be involved, and being able to … Oh, I know where I was. I was in St. Louis and Dr. Steinberg was getting us on the field. To me and my buddy, he said, "Meet me over by the Cardinals dugout, because I'll never be able to find you over by the Red Sox dugout," because there was a lot of Red Sox fans out there. So here it is the two of us, all by ourselves, over by the Cardinals dugout and 10,000 Red Sox fans, whooping it up, celebrating. And I said, "He's going to come, he's going to come." And he eventually walked over and he walked along the dirt along the wall and said, "Follow me behind home plate," and he basically said, "I need these guys out here." And he says, "You don't have passes, so please behave yourself or you're going to get kicked out." We said, "No problem, Charles." The minute we got out there, we ran for the pitcher's mound and we tried to pull the pitcher's mound out of the dirt. [laughter] That didn't happen and I was that guy in every news broadcast on the phone with my wife, waving in the cameras and behind.

But those are just the amazing things that all really just started for us answering that email and saying we'd do that song. So it was a good year. One in 86 odds we picked a good year to get asked and to say yes to doing the song.

Anyway, we were invited down to sing this song a cappella, but I've got to tell you: I know my limitations. I don't need to sing it a cappella. You don't need to hear it a cappella. It's much better off with the whole band. We're in the studio recording right now a record, so we couldn't pull everybody out. But we're going to play. Too bad we don't have the original recording to play first. But no one needs to hear that either. [laughter]

But anyway, so this is the song Tessie, which is about those original Royal Rooters, and I guess the current fan base, as rabid as it ever was. We might not have bullhorns and be allowed onto the field, but next to the field, those pictures of them, I mean, it looks like they're a few feet from the baseline banging on bass drums and yelling in horns. And I tell you, that would be awesome if they'd let you do that still today. [laughter] But they don't. 

This was the best we could do to make it like the old days. So thanks a lot for having me. [applause]

[Dropkick Murphys perform Tessie]

TOM PUTNAM: Please join me in thanking this terrific panel. Their books are on sale in our Museum store, and feel free to come up and have them sign, if you'd like, at the end of the program. 

THE END