Field of dreams

The Green Monster. What a sight it is. I can only imagine how intimidating it is to stand there before it and look up at it. The history that it has witnessed over its life. All the big hits that have bounced off of its face and all of those home runs that have sailed over it. Of course when I was a kid I dreamed about playing in the big leagues and going to all the historic ball parks. Yankee Stadium I am sure is on the top of most little boys list but Fenway Park always topped mine. I used to dream about stepping up to bat and slugging the game winning home run over The Green Monster.

I remember the first time I ever saw a clip of Carlton Fisk's game winning home run in the 1975 World Series. It was instantly seared into my memory and I wanted that moment for myself. When I was a kid I used to reenact that moment countless times, but instead of Fisk it was me hitting that home run. Unfortunately my dream will never come to be. Now I dream about one day going to Fenway Park to watch a baseball game. It is on my top ten list of things I want to do. I will sit in the stands with my beer and hot dog and take in the whole experience.

This is my Green Monster. It is famous in my neighbourhood. All the kids know what it is and they have all heard the legends. When i was a kid my friends and I played wiffle ball baseball. We were die hard and played at least one game nearly everyday starting in the spring and going all the way into September. If we were lucky enough to get a mild Fall we could push our season into October. We had three different ball parks around our complex and this was my home park. mostly because it is right beside my house. When we first started playing I would look up at the monster with awe and intimidation. The rules were simple you hit the ball over it's a home run. If you hit it into the monster and it gets stuck it would be a triple and any hit that would fall out was a double. I would stand at the bottom of the monster and look up thinking I would never be able to hit a wiffle ball over that. I honestly never thought any of us could. If you have ever played with a wiffle ball well then you know that they are hard to get any height or distance out of them. I would swing as hard as I could and hit the ball with everything I had only to see the monster swallow up everything I could send at it. It's funny how in the imagination of a little kid how a couple of trees could become a monster so real to me that I would try to come up with strategies to defeat it. I would try to find its weaknesses, studying all the little holes that i could maybe sneak a ball through to claim victory. A season went by with no luck, monster 576 me 0. I was sure by then that it was imposable, none of us had even come close. But then it happened, I will never forget it. I stepped up to the plate and watched the pitch come to me. It was like it was in slow motion, I swung as hard as I could and heard the pop of the bat you get when you hit the sweet spot. The ball exploded off the bat. Going......Going......Gone! Finally I had claimed victory. I was the first to hit a home run over the monster. My friends all ran over to me, high-fiving and congratulating me. That was the day I became a legend.