The Boston Red Sox and Welch's are teaming up to attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the largest toast in one venue. Fenway Park will be celebrating its 100th anniversary on April 20th, in which the Sox will play the Yankees, and the organization will commence a celebration for 37,493 fans. Welch's will serve every fan a glass of their sparkling grape juice to cheers to America's Most Beloved Ballpark and Major League Baseball's oldest operating ballpark in the United States.
Fenway Park's celebration is not only for the organization itself but for their devoted fan base; the infamous Red Sox Nation. They will be the ones creating history in the ballpark, not only while setting a new world record, but for the team as well. Fenway Park is a magical place full of history already and for the fans to make memories, not only for themselves but for their beloved Red Sox, is a rare and special occasion. When you are a baseball fan loving the team unconditionally, or attending every game, or even naming your pet after their ballpark (which I have already done!) is all you can do. You can be there to experience and witness the history in the making but as fans we do not create it ourselves. We are a different aspect of the game, a special and important part, but we just watch and cheer or cry and throw beer.
Red Sox fans, in particular, are a whole different breed of fan. For many Octobers in Fenway's past, fans suffered to witness catastrophic upsets and coming close but not close enough. They are bonded to each other, far and near, for this very reason. Come April 20th for generations of Red Sox fans and for the community of Boston, Fenway can celebrate something for the people who stood by the Sox for better or worse (and out of 100 of those years, 86 of them were World Series-less).
In Al Filreis' The Baseball Fan, he references Roger Angell's long list of New England places where fans celebrated Carlton Fisk's walk-off home run in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series. A very special time in Red Sox history. He wrote,
"all my old absent and distant Sox-afflicted friends (and all the other Red Sox fans, all over New England), and I thought of them- in Brookline, Mass., and Brooklin, Maine; in Beverly Farms and Mashpee and Presque Isle and North Conway and Damariscotta; in Pomfret, Connecticut, and Pomfret, Vermont; in Wayland and Providence and Revere and Nashua, and in both Concords and all five Manchesters; and in Raymond, New Hampshire (where Carlton Fisk lives), and Bellows Falls, Vermont (where Carlton Fisk was born), and I saw all of them dancing and shouting and kissing and leaping about like the fans at Fenway- jumping up and down in their bedrooms and kitchens and living rooms, in bars and trailers, and even in some boats here and there, I suppose, and on back-country roads (a lone driver getting the news over the radio and blowing his horn over and over, and finally pulling up and getting out and leaping up and down on the cold macadam, yelling into the night), and all of them, for once at least utterly joyful and believing in that joy- alight with it."
But, we all know the end to this story...
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