E2: A 37-Foot Legend: The Story of Fenway's Green Monster

A 37-foot wall shouldn’t hold this many stories, yet Fenway’s Green Monster keeps surprising us. We bring a diehard Red Sox fan into the studio to unpack the history, the hidden details, and the real people who make that left field slab feel alive. From the old days of ads and tin to the deep forest green we know now, we trace how a practical fix for rooftop freeloaders became one of baseball’s most iconic features.

We go inside the wall—literally—to explore the manual scoreboard room, the thousands of metal number plates, and the signatures layered by generations of players. You’ll hear how the crew once relied on a park phone and tickers for out-of-town scores, why a yellow number signals runs-in-progress before flipping to white, and how this analog heartbeat still thrives in a digital age. We also decode the Morse code tribute to Tom and Jean Yawkey, revisit Duffy’s Cliff and the uphill sprints it forced, and clear up the Manny Ramirez myth with someone who’s seen the inside.

On the field, the Monster reshapes strategy. Line drives that sail out elsewhere slam off the wall for doubles, and left fielders must master its angles to survive. We talk ladder caroms, Monster seats, the art of playing the bounce, and why Carl Yastrzemski set the standard for reading ricochets. Even rivals admit it: stepping into Fenway, seeing that wash of green, and hearing the crowd swell is pure awe. If you love ballpark history, baseball lore, and the little quirks that change outcomes, this one’s for you.

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Email us at fungosandfastballs@gmail.com

Transcript

Cold Open And Banter

Jerry 0:00

Hey Brooke, we have a special guest today to talk about an iconic feature in Major League Baseball's oldest park. But there's one problem.

Brooke 0:14

Ahh, what's that?

Jerry 0:14

We only have two microphones.

Brooke 0:14

I think I'll live.

Jerry 0:15

But I love you chiming in. Maybe I should buy another microphone.

Brooke 0:19

Uh another microphone? We'll have more microphones than we have listeners.

Jerry 0:23

Hey, we need to think big.

Brooke 0:25

All right, we're getting off base here. Let's just start the episode.

Show Intro And Guest Setup

Jerry 0:36

Hello and welcome to Fungos and Fastballs, the podcast of baseball history and trivia. I'm your host, Jerry Dynes, and each episode will be a 15-minute snapshot into America's pastime. Maybe it'll be a player, a tradition, a stadium, a rule, or some random fun aspect of the game. So let's get on to today's topic. Welcome, listener. Jerry here, joined by my producer and usual interloper, Brooke. Mike less today, though, because we have a special guest, my friend and Uber Red Sox fan, Mike Walsh from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Mike, thanks for uh joining us here today. Glad to do it. Thank you for having me. It seems odd, Mike, for me as a Yankees fan to use the term friend and Red Sox in the same sentence, but uh hey, kumbaya, right?

Mike Walsh 1:27

Hey, my best friend and roommate in college was a as diehard a Yankee fan as I am a Red Sox fan, so I I've been through this before.

Jerry 1:36

Well, Mike, I want to start with your Red Sox story. How is a guy down here in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a Sox fan?

Mike Walsh 1:43

I was born and raised in New Bedford, Massachusetts, which is the southeast part of the state. I was a Red Sox nation before there was a Red Sox nation in the mid-60s. Graduated from BC in 78, came down here to Baton

Mike’s Red Sox Origin And Heroes

Mike Walsh 1:59

Rouge to go to grad school at LSU. Some people say I came down here to get away from the memories of the recently completed 78 baseball season, but uh we can talk more about that some other time.

Jerry 2:13

I and I hope to. We got to cover all that in future podcasts.

Mike Walsh 2:16

You have a favorite player growing up? Oh, Yastrzemski by far. Yeah, I my my youth was his prime.

Jerry 2:23

So Yeah, Hall of Famer, fantastic. Brooke, we should do an episode of him too. Have Mike back.

Brooke 2:30

Are you writing that down?

Jerry 2:32

I will, I will. It's a running gag, Mike. We keep coming up with new podcast ideas all the time. Well, thanks for that.

Fenway And The Green Monster Basics

Jerry 2:39

Today's episode ships us up to Boston and the oldest active Major League Baseball Park, Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox. And of course, one can't picture this ballpark without thinking of the Green Monster, the historic 37-foot two-inch left field wall. Fenway was built in 1912, and the Green Monster has been there from the start, a towering structure compared with the right field wall, which ranges from about three to five feet. And let's get some history and trivia out of the way. So the Green Monster was a name that didn't appear around 1956, but it's the highest wall in Major League Baseball. Briefly in 2001-2002, during construction in Cincinnati of the Great American Ballpark, seats were removed from the existing Riverfront Stadium, and a 40-foot black wall called the Black Monster was erected until Riverfront was demolished in 2002. There is a taller wall in Pennsylvania's Wellspan Park, home of the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball Team, the York Revolution. That's 37 feet eight inches. But again, 37 feet 2 inches, you got the green monster there. Back in 1912, the wall was made of wood and eventually covered in tin and concrete in 1934, and then in 1976 covered in hard plastic. Mike, we had a question from one of our listeners. Actually, my producer Brooke wanted to know. But it sounds cooler if it's from a listener. About when the Green Monster was built way back

Why The Wall Is So High

Jerry 4:16

in 1912, why was it built so high when other stadiums weren't?

Mike Walsh 4:20

The reasoning, and Cubs fans will appreciate this, is that apparently there were too many people watching the game for free outside the stadium. So that was a I guess an ownership move to to stop that from happening and make those people pay to go see the game. It brings to mind what happened with the with all the high seats behind Wrigley Field that are now you have to pay for to go see the games.

Jerry 4:47

Right. Yeah, apparently right there on left field was Lansdown Street, and that's where a lot of bars and restaurants were, and people could just sit there and check out the game for free. So they decide to build it high.

Colors, Ads, And Rebuilds

Jerry 5:02

You might wonder, has the Green Monster always been green? And the answer would be no. Prior to 1947, it was covered in advertisements simply called The Wall. And then in 1934, a fire led to it being rebuilt in concrete and tin. And later in 1947, ads were removed in the wall, and the wall was painted its current forest green color.

Touring Inside The Monster

Jerry 5:28

So, Mike, have you ever watched a game from On Top of the Green Monster?

Mike Walsh 5:33

Sadly, no. And I was very frustrated because uh my son was up there several years ago and told me afterward that he had actually sat sat in those seats, so he did that before his old man did, which I didn't take kindly.

Jerry 5:46

So you still haven't, but he has.

Mike Walsh 5:48

Exactly. I still have not.

Jerry 5:49

See, you know, we give our children better lives and and we suffer from it, right?

Mike Walsh 5:54

Yeah.

Jerry 5:54

You've actually taken the uh the Fenway Tour, behind the scenes Fenway tour, got a kind of a inside view of the Green Wall. Tell me about how that tour happened.

Mike Walsh 6:06

Yeah, I don't know how long ago they started. When I was young, I don't remember them having Fenway Park tours, but they started it maybe the late 90s or I'm not sure when. But anyhow, when my son was in high school age, he and I and a friend of his went up there and for a couple games, and we also did the tour. Got to s you know, it was it's uh it's really good. It takes you all over the ballpark and on the field, and you got to get a little behind the scenes look of inside the Green Monster, which was pretty cool because all these years it was such a mystery as to what goes on back there, and to see it finally was was fun.

Jerry 6:41

Inside that left field scoreboard, Mike, I mean, there's like low concrete ceilings, and did you get it to go inside the wall?

Mike Walsh 6:49

Yes. Yeah, it's like a long, narrow, almost kind of like a dugout kind of. I don't think it has benches. It has a few chairs back there because typically there's three, maybe four people back there during a game, so it's not a lot of activity going on. The thing I remember the most about it was just the thousands of number plates that they use on the scoreboard and the thousands of signatures all over the walls that are, I believe it's only players. I don't think they let some people that have gone in there may have surreptitiously put their name on there, but I think it's mostly for players over the years. And there's they even let Yankee players sign in there. I know there's a big Mariano Rivera signature on there. But really, really cool to see it all.

Jerry 7:38

Yes, you know, if you don't you do the premier $1,000 behind the scenes tour, they're not gonna let you sign it with a Sharpie, you don't think? I don't think so. I know that

Scoreboard Crew And Traditions

Jerry 7:49

there's no phone in there. I think there's there is Wi-Fi because you have to get the scores from other games because it right in the Green Monster Mike, there's a scoreboard, right? Correct.

Mike Walsh 8:02

Yeah. So I think for years there was a there was only a an a phone system within the park itself. So they had a phone that went up to somewhere behind the home plate, probably w kind of where the broadcasters were, and that and the ticker, you know, they gave you scores from every the rest of the country. That's how they did it originally. And I th I would say I think they told us maybe early 2000 or 2001 when they finally got a you know computer access in the in the wall and they were getting scores quicker that way.

Jerry 8:37

The there's apparently no air conditioner or heat in the wall. But that was my understanding. But when a job opens up, the list is through the roof.

Mike Walsh 8:48

Oh yeah. Matter of fact, the guy when we were there, the guy had and I he had been there for maybe ten or twelve years already. He he he actually worked it for twenty five years, I think. In 2016, he left. His name was Christian Elias. And actually, he actually told us that although he grew up in Boston, he actually grew up a Yankee fan. I guess that maybe was from his dad or something. But I don't know if he if he changed alliances after all these years. Probably not. I mean, you know, if you are who you are as a fan probably became more of a Red Sox fan when they when they weren't playing the Yankees. But I thought that was funny that a guy that grew up a Yankee fan was the guy putting up the scores and behind the Green Monster.

Jerry 9:32

That is crazy. It seems like a plum job. It's like one of those jobs like uh Venetian gondola worker you once you get, you never give up.

Mike Walsh 9:39

Yeah, I I think most people that once they get that job, they're they're there for a long, long time. And I think for a lot of those people, it's it's not their primary job. They have other jobs, and they they go from their other job to the you know to Fenway because they love it so much.

Jerry 9:54

Well, three people change the scores on the scoreboard. One for the Fenway score, right? One for American League game scores, and one for National League scores. Correct. And uh confirm this if you know it, Mike. I read that while the American League guy and the Fenway score are inside, can change it from inside the wall, does the National League score have to actually go outside between innings and change it? Is that still going on?

Mike Walsh 10:22

See, I don't that's a good question as to whether that happens now, but that was the way it was. Yeah, as far as I knew.

Jerry 10:29

Every commercial break, they would have to go out and and change the National League inning scores from outside.

Mike Walsh 10:34

Yeah.

Playing The Wall And Odd Bounces

Jerry 10:36

Well, with the height of the Green Monster, there's far less homers from left field. As again, as a Yankee fan, I can attest to that. I'm keenly aware of that. But it leads to more wall ball doubles, and left fielders who play for the Red Sox and other teams have to get skilled at at handling balls off the wall. Right.

Mike Walsh 10:59

Yeah, it gives and it it gives and takes away. I mean, the line drives that would be homers in a lot of places are doubles or whatever off the wall. But there are those pop-ups, some more famous than others, that happen to fall into the net that would fall into somebody's gloves in another stadium. But yeah, I mean the learning to play the wall is is a great art, and there's very, very few that have done it. Again, Yastrzemski playing there so long, because there are, you know, a lot of the line drives will just hit and come right back, but there are creases and little different edges in the Green Monster that it can it can hit that, especially something hit hard and can ricochet who knows where. Yeah, it's had kind of a knack out over the years of kind of knowing how to play those. But it can but for guys who were there for the first time, they've had some guys that have had some problems.

Jerry 11:52

You mentioned the the net to capture the ball. And I know now there's seats. Since 2003, there's seats above the monster, but before then there was a a net there, obviously, because you know, to catch balls so that it didn't go outside the park

Ladder Lore And Monster Seats

Jerry 12:07

and n into the neighborhood.

Mike Walsh 12:10

Right. And then you know, if you will notice that there is there's actually a ladder on the Green Monster, which is pretty much useless now since the stands or the the monster seats are up there, but that ladder was to to get the balls out of the screen, the home runs that hit the screen and then would stay there up top and I guess once a night or once a day. The next day they would go up and grab any home run balls that were still up there.

Jerry 12:36

Yeah, they didn't need the net as much anymore because the seats there, but they still kept the ladder there and it's painted green. Right. So you can if you look, you can see it, but it kind of blends in there. And so what happens if a ball hits the ladder? Ladder's in play. The ladder's in play. The ladder is in play. I know, so it can lead to some weird bounces, yeah.

Mike Walsh 12:57

Yeah, for sure. The do you have any favorite green monster memories? Well,

Awe, Memories, And 1975

Mike Walsh 13:05

I will say this, and it's from myself from when I was a kid, and anybody that I have brought there for the first time, is that that green monster, when you come up out of, you know, from behind where the concessions are and you walk into the Fenway for the first time, the green of the of the grass, of course, but that the green monster is really just striking for most people. And it's in the the whole park is pretty much very bright green, you know. So everybody gets really kind of taken aback when they come in there and see that green for the first time. But I don't think anything the only thing that the thing I remember the most, and this probably isn't necessarily green monster, uh semi-green monster, I guess, was in the 75, this game six of 75, early in the game when Freddie Lynn went back to catch a ball and hit the wall and kind of crumpled to the ground, and he was just like laying there up against the wall, and people thought he was really hurt bad, but I guess he had just got the wind knocked out of him, and then he he he stayed in the game. But it was it was kind of a it's a kind of an iconic sight for Red Sox fan, that picture of him laying there when he missed the ball and and Geez, 1975? That was game six, that was the the big game seventy-six. This was

Morse Code, Inning Numbers, And Myths

Mike Walsh 14:19

early in the game. Somebody had had hit one off the wall, he just missed it, crashed against it, and kind of crumpled down. And he laid there in that position for like, I don't know, uh 30 seconds a minute, and everybody thought he was like hurt really bad, but he ended up staying in the game.

Jerry 14:34

You're right about the the awe, the speechlessness. I try to go to as many parks as I can. We're going around with my family trying to hit a lot of the parks, and even as a diehard Yankee fan, you just you just want to go to Fenway and be unimpressed, but you walk out, you see the greengrass, and then you're right. Everything is green, and that green monster it is. It's awe-inspiring. And and we found ourselves, again, despite being Yankee fans, caught up in the history and even singing along to Neil Diamond. Yep, right. So we mentioned the wall, we mentioned the scoreboard, uh, we mentioned the ladder. There's something that a lot of fans may not realize there. Morse code.

Mike Walsh 15:19

Right. There's there are Morse there are three, I guess Morse code for three letters, and uh three letters on one side, three letters on another side, and they stand for the initials of Tom and Gene Yawkey, who were the longtime owners of the socks.

Jerry 15:38

Tom Yawkey died in 76, and Gene continued on until 92. But you're right, I I missed it. I didn't know about this when I went to Fenway, but you're right. There's, you know, three letters each of Morse code and T-A-Y for Tom Austin Yawkey, and then J R Y for Gene Remington Yawkey. And again, these were the owners. Um Tom was the owner from 1933, and then again, he died in 76. Gene continued on after his death until 92. And so

Duffy’s Cliff And Final Thanks

Jerry 16:10

it's a pretty cool fun fact there.

Mike Walsh 16:12

The other thing, just people may be of interest to people that have never been there or don't follow the Red Sox, is that during the inning when the game scores, a yellow number is placed in the, you know, like if somebody leads off and hits a home run, they'll put a yellow one up there. And if somebody hits a two-run home or in an inning, they'll put a two or a three, whatever, yellow. And then when the inning ends, it changes to white to signal, you know, the inning's over now. So I didn't know that.

Jerry 16:40

Is that both teams?

Mike Walsh 16:41

Yeah.

Jerry 16:42

Yeah. So kind of a temporary, hey, there's a this score.

Mike Walsh 16:45

It's one in this inning, but there could be more. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Jerry 16:48

Because a lot of scoreboards obviously wait for the inning to be over and then put that final run total. Finally, I want to go over a great bit of past Fenway history talking about Duffy's Cliff, which, you know, Mike, you and I are older, but I think this is even before your time. Duffy's Cliff was a 10 feet high mount forming an incline in the front of the left field wall from 1912 until 1933. Originally it was put there for standing room only crowds because it was the dead ball era and balls didn't go out there, so they could pack more people into the into the stadium there, and people could stand on the hill and and watch the game. Of course, left fielders had to run up the hill to play the ball. You know of this? Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. The reason it's called Duffy's Cliff is because there was a Red Sox outfielder from 1910 to 1917, Duffy Lewis. And he was apparently a pro at navigating this this uh mound. But but that was a long time ago when Tom Yawkey bought the club, he basically flattened the left field into what it is today. But the Green Monster remains. Again, I think that's a great thing about baseball. A lot of sports standardize their stadium, their distances in their outfield, and each stadium has its own history and nuance.

Mike Walsh 18:11

And just to dispel rumors, vicious rumors against Manny Ramirez that I think most Red Sox fans know this now, but for several years there was there was a theory out there that Manny would go into the behind the s the scoreboard to relieve himself. I've heard that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, apparently there's nowhere to relieve yourself behind the scoreboard. But he did used to go back there and just take a seat when there were pitching changes. And one time he actually got caught when he thought they were changing pic pitchers and they really didn't do it, and they were getting ready to start the game up again, and he was still still behind the in the scoreboard, and uh the crowd started laughing and roaring, and he realized he better get back out there. He ran out the door and got it got a cheer.

Jerry 18:52

Now, now how how do we know this rumor is dispelled? Did the uh did the guy on the tour say, hey, that's not true?

Mike Walsh 18:58

Yeah, the guy on the guy said there's no there's really nowhere to do it, which begs the question of what those people in there that work it do. I guess maybe they sprint in between innings if they maybe there's something nearby. I don't know.

Jerry 19:09

Yeah, I feel bad during extra inning games. Especially if you've got a big gulp there or something. Yeah, that's you gotta be careful. You gotta parse out your your hydration. Well, so many stories, so much history and tradition, and and in baseball, tradition is oh so important compared to other other sports. So, but thanks for uh joining us today, Mike, for coming and chatting about your Sox. Yeah, thank you so much. This was fun. Uh,

Closing And Subscribe CTA

Jerry 19:35

thanks to you too. I'd like to thank especially my barber Jamie, who's listening. I hope you enjoy. Hope you'll keep listening. And don't forget to like us and subscribe on your podcast platform. This is Jerry Dynes, Fungos and Fastballs.