A pleasant evening at the lyric little bandbox

Last Thursday, my friend Amy and I attended a special event at Fenway Park that consisted of a VIP tour of all the premium event spaces (suites, Green Monster, right field deck, luxury boxes) and a swanky reception in the EMC Club that featured a Q&A with Red Sox assistant general manager Jed Hoyer.

First, there was the view from the suite on the third base side:





This was higher and a little closer than the view I had when I saw the Red Sox roar back against the Orioles a week ago.


From there, we walked around to the Green Monster Seats.


From there, we descended the stairs, and found ourselves on the center field warning track. By that I actually do mean ON the track.


Oh, I should have mentioned we were offered beer and wine, so I'm holding a glass of red wine there. Amy spotted a sunflower seed on the red clay, and picked it up. When I told her that that little seed could have been in Jacoby Ellsbury's mouth the day before, she vowed never to let it go.

Then, up to the right field roof deck, then around the park to the uberexpensive luxury boxes behind home plate. The following shot is from the "Legends Suite", where you can take in a game with a special guest, who on any given night might be Dwight Evans, Fred Lynn, Jim Rice, Dennis Eckersley, or whomever else happens to be in town that night:


Finally, we walked down the hall to the EMC Club, which boasts its own complete, dedicated kitchen, just for EMC Club guests. The club space is decorated with historic Silver Slugger, Gold Glove, Cy Young and MVP awards given to Red Sox players over the years, along with American League championship trophies and a dozen plasma and LCD TV's. The seats directly outside the EMC Club are pretty good, too.


We also got to spend a few minutes with these cool trophies they had hanging around



Jed Hoyer came by and offered some opinions on kids who will soon be ready to come up to Boston (Daniel Bard, Michael Bowden, Junichi Tazawa, Lars Anderson) as well as other topics (missing Manny, what the trading deadline philosophy will be, etc).

We were there from about 5:30 to about 9pm, and headed home, knowing the next time the sun rose on the lyric little bandbox of a ballpark, as John Updike famously called it, it would be playing host to the latest chapter of the Red Sox - Yankees rivalry. I'm sure I'll be back to Fenway again this year as a paying customer, but Thursday was a definite treat. If you have $5-10k available to spend for a once in a lifetime sporting experience, I highly recommend seeing it in style at baseball's version of the Sistine Chapel. Unless you're a Yankee fan, you won't regret it. Conversely, if you are a Yankee fan, you don't deserve it.