Every New England school child knows that Fenway opened in 1912, just a few days after the Titanic sank in the North Atlantic. Boston Globe accounts of the first big-league game at the new ballpark were buried on Page One.
Religious and patriotic services, drawing as many as 20,000 people, were held at Fenway in 1916. Eamon de Valera, the future leader of Ireland, spoke to 40,000 followers in 1919.
World Wars I and II touched everything in America, and Fenway was no exception. Following the World War I armistice, a couple of months after Babe Ruth’s Red Sox won the 1918 World Series, there was a military Mass at Fenway honoring New England’s war dead. On Nov. 4, 1944, three days before his final election, President Roosevelt delivered a campaign speech in front of 40,000 supporters at Fenway, saying, “Today, in this war, our fine boys are fighting magnificently all over the world . . .’’
FDR’s warm-up acts included Orson Welles and Frank Sinatra. “Old Blue Eyes’’ (he was “Young Blue Eyes’’ back then) sang the national anthem and came back out to address the crowd after the president departed.
Roosevelt died five months later, one day after Jackie Robinson’s phony tryout at Fenway.
Long before anyone thought about playing NHL games in outdoor ballparks, Fenway served as a professional and collegiate gridiron. The NFL’s Boston Redskins played home games at Fenway for four seasons in the mid 1930s. When the Redskins moved to Washington, the Boston Yanks played at Fenway from 1944-48. (The Yanks moved to New York, Dallas, and Baltimore before they became the Indianapolis Colts.)
