Park it here for the future

No more transparent talk of ballpark improvements. Now it's officially a full-blown renovation. This has been the obvious intention of the new ownership for three years. If they were planning to tear the old house down and start new, they wouldn't have spent the money they have spent to change and improve Fenway.

It's a major victory for the "Save Fenway" demonstrators who were mocked by the likes of me and others when they first organized their grassroots campaign. I compared them to the Japanese soldiers found in the Philippines still fighting months after World War II was over.

In those final, forgettable years of the John Harrington reign, we were told that Fenway was a moribund structure. It could not survive. It would crumble. Rust never sleeps and all that.

When the bag-job sale from Harrington to Messrs. Henry, Werner, and friends (including the New York Times) was complete, few envisioned a day when the new owners -- handpicked by Uncle Bud Selig -- would stand before us and say that Fenway is Forever.

But it is. You'll be taking your children and grandchildren to the same ballpark where your parents and grandparents took you. You'll be craning your neck around those same poles and crushing your knees into those same chairbacks for another 10, 20, 30, or more years. This Old House is going to be home to the Red Sox for a long, long time.

One of the remarkable things about Fenway in recent seasons is how few complaints it prompts from those who attend. There are many things wrong about the ballpark -- things that not even the magical Janet Marie Smith can fix. And fans are still happy. They don't complain about the prices, the lack of parking, the poles, the smells, the standing water after it rains, or the fact that every person in a row has to stand if one person gets up to go for a beer or bathroom break. They are happy just to be there, worshipping at the altar of New England's hardball cathedral. They are tangled up in green and darn happy about it.