Boston Ballgame



Red Sox fan (guess who...)

When walking past Fenway Park, I noticed that apparently a ballgame was set for today, and when checking the ticket office, I found out it was about to start in roughly two hours. Well, I've got nothing special to do, and it sounds like fun. Let's go! Many scalpers around here...I wonder whether very shortly before the game you can actually get a good price. But I thought I'd better go to Gate 4, where game-day tickets are sold. There at least I could see where the seat I'd buy a ticket for is going to be. There wasn't much of a queue, even though the game was more or less sold out. And indeed I got a great ticket for a bargain.

Get some stuff, get some food, get stuffed with the food, and watch the game!

I gotta say, I like Fenway Park. The whole atmosphere of the place, and it being such an old stadium. It just had its 100th anniversary!

Before the game started, however, there suddenly was Jeff Buckley's version of “Hallelujah” playing, and a very emotional ceremony started, remembering the victims of the Boston bombing and honoring the first responders, police and courageous civilian helpers. The whole group of coordinators familiar from TV news was there giving short speeches, from the governor of Massachusetts and Boston's mayor, to the police chief, FBI officer, etc. The whole stadium sang “God bless America” and the national anthem, and the stadium speaker moderated through the ceremony.



Downloaded from somewhere.

I am not quite sure what think of it all, though. On the one hand it is very emotional, gives attention and remembrance to the victims and the helpers. I myself was gripped and touched by it, and I enjoyed it. But on the other hand it also gets ever more ardent, to the point where it has the feel of some kind of mass hysteria / brain wash, especially when all of a sudden people start chanting “USA! USA!” completely out of context. Then it feels kind of weird to me. But that also might be just my perspective, since I am a bit short on patriotism anyway, and I'm from Germany, which for some understandable reasons is especially sensitive and tempered in this regard. When the soccer world cup was held in Germany in 2006, for example, newspapers where full of articles about people suddenly showing and wearing German flags, since that was something unheard of in the decades before.



"This is our fuckin' city, and nobody is gonna
dictate our freedom. Stay strong!"
- Big Papi showing some attitude

But this ceremony in Fenway Park seemed to have a healing effect on people, helping them letting out all these emotions and grapple with events, and that's probably already justification enough, no matter what it looks like to outsiders. Not that it needs justification, anyway.

Still I don't know what to think of it.