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Opening Day At Fenway Park

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Opening day at Fenway Park. (Megna Chakrabarti/WBUR)
Opening day at Fenway Park. (Meghna Chakrabarti/WBUR)

It's opening day at Fenway Park, which turns 100 this season. We’ll have a report from the park, and hear some Fenway trivia from the editor of MySecretBoston.com.

Guests:

  • Steve Brown, WBUR reporter
  • Jon Marcus, co-founder and editor of My Secret Boston

Little Known Boston Baseball Facts From Jon Marcus AtMy Secret Boston

You Can Still Get Into A Game

The Red Sox hold on to 300 tickets that are not sold until game day. They sell at face value starting 2.5 hours before the first pitch. For these tickets you need to line up at gate C.

The catch? Most of the 300 tickets held are in the bleachers - but some people think that's the most fun location to watch from. Technically you're not allowed to line up more than five hours before the game, but most of the time they don't enforce that rule. And you can't buy tickets for others unless they are with you.

The First World Series

Baseball's first World Series took place in Boston but not at Fenway Park. Games took place at the Huntington Avenue Grounds, now the site of Northeastern University. The nine-game series between the Boston Pilgrims and Pittsburgh started October 1, 1903. The Pilgrims won the series in eight games.

If you look behind Cabot Cage at Northeastern you'll find a piece of granite shaped like home plate, that's exactly where home plate was for those games. Right next to it is a statue of Cy Young, who pitched for the Boston Pilgrims.

The 1919 Fix

In 1919, in a room in Hotel Buckminster in Kenmore Square, a Boston bookmaker named Joe "Sport" Sullivan made a deal with White Sox first baseman Arnold "Chick" Gandil to throw the 1919 World Series. Gandil was banned from baseball and Sullivan, who lived in Sharon, got $40,000 from a New York gangster to distribute to the players. He ended up keeping most of it and fleeing to Mexico.

Boston's Other Team

Boston was once a two-team town. Braves Field was home to the Boston Braves from 1915 to 1952. The field is now Nickerson Field at Boston University.

What happened to the Brave?: Braves Field was known for having the deepest center field in the major leagues because the team owner didn't like losing balls to home runs.

More:

This segment aired on April 13, 2012.

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