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What is the Green Monster at Fenway Park?
We spoke with a former scoreboard operator who has spent more time inside of the wall and behind the scoreboard "than anywhere else on earth."
It’s big, green, and changes the game of baseball.
The Green Monster is a towering beast of a wall in Fenway Park that is known as one of baseball’s most iconic landmarks. It stands at over 37 feet tall, 231 feet wide, and is made of reinforced plastic, representing an unforgiving giant of left field in the country’s oldest ballpark. It’s one of the tallest walls in the league.
The wall’s height turns what would be home runs in other baseball stadiums into doubles. Instead of balls sailing over, they tend to bounce right off of the Green Monster.
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“You have to know how to play the wall,” said Andy Andres, a baseball expert and science professor at Boston University. “It’s such a part of Red Sox history that their mascot is a green monster.”
What is the Green Monster?
The Green Monster is the left-field wall of Fenway Park, the oldest baseball stadium in Major League Baseball. The ballpark was built in 1912, and for most of its history, the Green Monster was simply known as “The Wall.”
“The wall initially was a wooden structure and it was viewed as being a barrier that no one would ever hit a ball over it,” according to Richard Johnson, curator of The Sports Museum. The wall was originally built shorter at 25 feet. There was less of a need to block balls from escaping during the original form of baseball, known as the Dead Ball Era, which was more focused on playing close to the ground with ball scuffing and low points.
In 1926, the left side of Fenway Park was destroyed by a series of fires. After Tom Yawkey purchased the Red Sox in 1933, he embarked on reconstructing the stadium before the following season. Union workers would sometimes sleep inside of the park and rotate shifts to complete their deadline for reopening in April of 1934, according to Johnson. It became one of the largest Boston-area projects during the Depression Era.
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Yawkey removed some features like Duffy’s Cliff, and added the left-field wall along with a 23-foot high net to catch home run balls. Automobile dealers lined Lansdowne Street at the time and baseballs flying over left-field were shattering car windows, according to tour guide Rich McLaughlin.
The net was removed in 2003 after John Henry purchased the Red Sox, opting instead to expand seating. (Henry is also the publisher and owner of Boston Globe Media Partners, which includes Boston.com).
What’s inside the Green Monster?
The wall includes one of the only manually operated scoreboards left in baseball. During games three people sit inside of the wall. One person updates the score of the ongoing game at Fenway Park while the other two work on updating the National League and American League baseball games happening in other stadiums, according to McLaughlin.
For Christian Elias, a former scoreboard operator, inside of the wall is the best seat in the house. Players come inside of the wall to sign their name.
“I’ve probably spent more time inside of that wall and behind that scoreboard than anywhere else on earth,” said Elias.” For more than a quarter of a century I had the best seat in the house.”
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To operate the scoreboard inside the Green Monster, there are metal hooks that prop up sliding plates. The lights indicating strikes and outs are managed by different operators in a separate room, according to Elias.
Why is the Green Monster green?
McLaughlin says that until 1947, the left-field wall was closer to a dark blue color and was oftentimes peppered with advertisements. After an upgrade, the wall took on its current shade of green.
The Green Monster’s deep green hue is so popular that fans can purchase the exact trademarked shade for their home.
Green is a classic baseball color and was likely seen as a sensible choice to go with the grass, according to Johnson. To leave his mark on the wall, a morse code message spelling the names of Tom Yawkey and his wife, Jean, was imprinted.
Experts debate when people began calling the wall its current nickname but McLaughlin believes that the Green Monster name stuck when in the 1960s an upgrade brought the wall to its current shade we see today.
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