Why do we care about Fenway?

Personally, I don’t care that Fenway Park is 100 years old. I’ve never been there, and I don’t feel a particular urge to.  Clearly the LBS staff (not to mention the sports community generally) will differ with me on this. Major sports outlets at the moment are filled with stories praising the glory of standing in a place which was once home to Ted Williams and Babe Ruth, where the strength of generations of baseball history brings an inescapable communion with those who have gone before which immeasurably enhances the baseball experience.  This article, published on Yahoo, is an almost too perfect example of this kind of adulatory journalism, as it extols the virtues of Fenway from the perspective of someone who has never even been there. I have also never been to Fenway, but for me that provokes not a driving urge to go there, but the feeling that I should not judge what I have never sampled.  It could be a nice place, but probably not much nicer than other ballparks. So what’s all the hype?

For a while I thought most people just cared about Fenway because they were “supposed” to care about Fenway. When you hear the sports media and friends who you find knowledgeable hyperbolizing about a place all the time, there is a huge amount of peer pressure to act as if you feel the same way. Though I still feel this is part of the reason people love places like Fenway so much, there must be more to the story. Talking with certain people, it is clear they actually feel that the history of Fenway, though not tangible, gives it an almost infinite value.

It turns out it is normal for people to judge things not on actual attributes, but on history.  Psychologists see this as a part of essentialism, the idea that things have essences beyond their mere characteristics.  Two objects might be physically the same, but we see them as essentially different because they have different histories.  This leads us to take more pleasure from things with certain pasts.  For example, people will pay more for an authentic painting by a famous artist than for a perfect imitation painted by someone who is not famous.  If a park exactly like Fenway were built today, it would have little value, especially as it seems generally agreed that some of Fenway’s seating configurations are less than ideal.  However, because Fenway’s history leads people to regard it as a field of dreams, it becomes one for them in fact.

So it seems my lackadaisical attitude towards Fenway is in fact somewhat abnormal.  I’m not sure why I don’t buy into the Fenway myth.  Maybe I simply don’t know enough or care enough about the history, not being a Red Sox fan.  I’m also not saying my attitude is necessarily a good thing. I’m sure people are happier believing that Fenway is some sort of perfect magical land.  Sadly, I just can’t seem to see it.