The 42 reports from Boston
OF ALL THE Harvard lore, of the past presidents and current tech demigods who called this place home, wild turkeys roaming the streets around campus were not on your correspondent’s radar.
The 42 came to see where Theodore Roosevelt spent “four formative and fruitful years” between 1876 and 1880, and to sneak a peek at Winthrop House, the former digs of John F. Kennedy and nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer.
There are flags that hang outside these 12 undergraduate residential areas and the one for Kirkland House could easily be mistaken for a crest belonging to a struggling lower-tier Argentinian football club. It’s a U shape with two banks of red at the top and bottom, split by black, with three silver stars in the middle.
Kirkland is where Mark Zuckerberg lived for brief time before he set out on a different path in life.
Of course there is an Irish pub, and the Grafton Lounge now occupies the location used for the film Good Will Hunting when that famous ‘How you like them apples?’ line was uttered by Matt Damon.
Just don’t feed the turkeys.
Turns out these birds own the streets and the green space around here. At this time of year, when you walk up Massachusetts Avenue towards Harvard Square, it is primarily filled with tourists. In the Harvard Coop, selling everything from notebooks of JFK eating an ice cream to $160 (€140) hoodies, a young girl in a USA jersey dribbles her Champions League football around the store.
Some staff members look perplexed but say nothing. The girl’s footwork is too good to worry about miscontrol.
A stroll through the famous Harvard Gates into Harvard Yard is held up as a removal van – brilliantly named Flash – is stuck at the entrance and not sure where they need to go. Students lead tours all around us, with all centred on the bronze sculpture of the university’s founder in 1638, John Harvard, below a giant American flag.
One guide explains how it is “The Statue of Three Lies” because Harvard was a benefactor not the founder, the model used for the statue was a different student, and Harvard was actually founded in 1636.
Still, this is America, a place where you can come up with your own truth and sell it for as much as possible.
Through the far gates out of Harvard Yard and onto Quincy Street is the Barker Centre, home to the Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures. Summer is a bad time for an impromptu tour. The lights are on but no one is home. Just outside, a man stops with his small Dutch shepherd dog and scrolls on his phone while the dog goes for a poo. There is not a pooper scooper in sight.
The wild turkeys have more decorum.
Leaving Cambridge and heading back into the city towards Boston Common, there is a large gathering of activists outside steps of the Massachusetts State House pleading their case for the treatment of Haitian immigrants. Further down Beacon Street there are more JFK landmarks. Former Ireland international Ronnie Whelan is stopped for selfies by some who recognise him, while just a few minutes away at a plaza on Washington Street is the Irish Famine memorial. There are benches around it and signs up asking to respect the space by not smoking.
The poignancy of these sculptures is clear. Four additional plaques detail how 37,000 Irish refugees arrived in Boston in 1847. Today, 44 million Americans claim Irish ancestry. One of them, Harvard alum John F. Kennedy, became the nation’s president in 1960.
A few more will be found at Fenway Park as the Red Sox take on the New York Yankees.
This is what really got your correspondent’s editor excited.
“You have to go!”
“Yeah, sounds good.”
“Have a few beers and enjoy it, see what you come back with.”
“Deal.”
The T Line from Boston Common to Kenmore is packed with a mix of fans from both sides. The Sox are bottom of American League East. Yankees are top. Baseball is America’s Pastime so let’s see how they’re living.
At the corner of Lansdowne Street, a stroll towards the ticket office provides two options. A club official with a map chart says The 42 can buy a reserved seat from a season ticket holder for $80 (€70).
He only takes cash or Venmo.
“Can I Revolut you instead?”
Blank stare.
Instead, a $70 (€61) ticket for right field standing room with no seat is the cheapest one going from the ticket office. This will work out well as it means free rein – of sorts – to stroll throughout the stadium.
In the Bleacher Bar, which has a large window looking out towards the diamond as the players warm up, Red Sox and Yankees fans mingle and sing together. Sex on Fire is followed by Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On.
I thought this was supposed to be a rivalry?
Two New York fans – easily identifiable in Yankee gear as well as a New York Knicks NBA winners’ t-shirt for good measure – help explain why the mood is relaxed.
“It’s not hostile because the Red Sox are pretty much dead in the water right now,” Dom Pace says.
“Yeah, they’re f***ing shit,” the superbly named Evan Diamond adds, although he does admit to the Yankees’ jealously of Red Sox’s success over the last 25 years.
Nick and Summer are from an hour south of Boston and make it clear what is expected on opening night of this three-game series.
“We have to win,” Nick says.
“We have to be better than New York,” Summer adds.
First pitch is nearing and the streets outside are clearing, but one man and his wife are making their way up Lansdown Street. Darren and Janette are from Charlotte, North Carolina. They’re not going to the game but wanted a flavour of the atmosphere.
Darren has a red Titleist golf hat, black Oakley sunglasses, and a quite striking white shirt decorated with red and blue stars, an eagle with the American flag flowing behind it, and 250th Anniversary written above the left breast.
“Stars and stripes all the way, baby,” he says.
“This is the land of the greatest opportunity. Any person you look at, you can do anything. You can advance yourself, you have freedom of liberty, of speech. We have just a wonderful country with every opportunity.”
The 42 asks is there a message about America he would like to send. “It’s the media that wants to tell people from other countries that we’re wrong. We are still the beacon of civilisation for the whole world.”
Janette jumps in. “Get out of the cities into the country, get some country air and that’s where you will find America.”
“Don’t believe messages that we are oppressive people,” Darren adds. “Everyone has opportunity to come here and make it what you want to be.”
This was not two people ranting and raving, they expressed themselves softly, even if Darren’s shirt was one of the loudest things of the night, right until a very wholesome version of Take Me Out To The Ball Game was followed by Neil Diamond’s Sweet Carolina during the eighth inning. Fans raised their $15 (€13) beers and sang.
By this point, The 42 had walked the length and breath of Fenway. “You have to do it,” our Yankee friends Evan and Dom reiterated before they took their seats behind their side’s bench. “Fenway and Wrigley [Field, in Chicago] are the two best and most historic stadiums in the country.”
Back out near left field (I think), we met a long-time steward by the name of Dan. He’s from Dorchester but his grandparents were from Clare. “I’m American first, Irish second,” he says. “My mother would roll over in her grave if she heard me say that.”
He is talking about how he moved to Dublin around 2007 to work for a book publishing company – having an Irish passport helped – and regrets returning home after the first year.
“I do wonder what might have been different in my life had I stayed. I was just getting to the point of feeling comfortable, of feeling like I belonged.”
The financial collapse was the reason for going back to Dorchester. He made some money but not enough. He’s talking as ‘Hey Yeah’ by Outkast is played for the second time tonight. Then a Yankees fan leans over a railing towards a player.
“He’s a friend of mine. Is there any way I can wait by the side for him?”
“What’s he doing?” Dan asks. “He’s playing? He’s a player?”
“Yeah, he’s one of the pitchers for the Yankees.”
“He’s working then,” Dan shoots back.
“I know, he just said to wait here.”
The Yankee makes a gesture from below.
“How many you got here?” Dan asks.
“Just two and one kid,” the fan says.
“OK, you can wait in there.”
A few more women arrive posing for selfies with the game going on.
“Come on, girls, this is a ball game not a photoshoot. Leave it for between innings, please.”
Dan is being kept busy but insists on recommending a visit to Greenhills Bakery in Dorchester. “The best soda bread.”
Down the walkway, there are three Red Sox fans in town for a friend’s wedding and making the most of the baseball schedule lining up with their plans. Allison and her husband Eric are from Maine but now live in South Carolina. Holly is joining them.
“You have to be positive. There are building years and there are thriving years,” Allison says. “We could lose for 30 years straight and I will still root for them. I always believe. You have to believe, that’s all you need in life and in baseball.”
This $15 beer almost makes that sound profound.
“But, yeah, f**k the Yankees, they’re toxic,” she says.
That’s more like it.
There are stray sighting of Norway supporters in town for their final group game with France, and Birk from just outside Oslo says he’s afraid to dream too big. “We are scared to hope because then we get cursed,” he says.
He needs a heart-to-heart with Allison.
Back up at the back of the bleachers, a fan in a Liverpool jersey catches the eye. The Red Sox and the Premier League club are, of course, owned by Fenway Sports Group (FSG), primarily John W. Henry.
“We are a terrible team right now, we have got no offence,” Brian Walsh from Eastern Massachusetts.
I ask if he can clarify which team he is talking about.
His mother is from Limerick and his father is from Mayo. He’s a Red Sox diehard but admits the New England Patriots have taken over in Boston.
“They (FSG) are being cheap, they’re too cheap.”
The Red Sox are in control of this game and the crowd is electric. Victory is incoming.
Watching from the very back is Zack from Pennsylvania, and he has his baby boy Carter strapped to him. They’re both in Red Sox gear. It’s almost 10pm but Carter is wide awake, clear to see from his beautiful brown eyes taking everything in.
“For both of us this is our first time here. All of us here are enjoying this time together.”
For the first time in a long time, Fenway did feel like fun.
The words of Darren and Janette also lingered. Is this really America, or a synthetic form of the country’s past that allows those who indulge to live out nostalgia in real time?
You’d need more than one stroll around Fenway to get to the bottom of that.
Written by David Sneyd and originally published on The 42 whose award-winning team produces original content that you won’t find anywhere else: on GAA, League of Ireland, women’s sport and boxing, as well as our game-changing rugby coverage, all with an Irish eye. Subscribe here.