by One of the Ten Angry Men

The Red Sox announced once and for all that they'll be staying at Fenway Park. Of course, because this is Boston, there are those who vehemently disagree with this decision, because now we won't have a Camden Yards-style ballpark here in Boston.

We agree. We need a bigger, 70,000 seat ballpark...

So we can discover that only 41,000 fans want to go to a game on any given day of the season.

So that the seats behind home plate can be now elevated 10 feet off the ground.

So the fans from Maine, Vermont, and across the country who come to Boston every year to see a game at Fenway can now find something else to do with their time. Like traveling to Chicago to see a game at Wrigley.

So we can take our kids to see the Sox play at Zipcar.com Stadium.

So we can completely rope off the entire lower area of the Park for the benefit of wealthy ticket holders who want to sit in "Club Seats" and have their croissants and authentic Zipcar.com stadium veggie dogs and 8 oz bottles of low carb lite beers delivered by pleasant waiters and waitresses.

So the Red Sox can find creative new ways to pay off their monstrous new debt, such as introducing new uniforms every three years and charging $38 for standing room only seats.

So the Red sox can stop such nonsense as putting seats on top of the Green Monster, and barbecuing on top of the Right Field roof. Really, who would ever want to see a game that way?

So that the Red Sox, freed from the handicap of playing in the smallest ballpark in the majors, can at last have the resources they need to finally win a World Series.

Wait, scratch that last one. Moving on .

So that fans can now have adequate parking for the game and, more importantly, can share in the same wonderful bonding experience after the game known as the 4-hour exodus out of the parking lot, just like Pats fans have enjoyed for decades.

So that Boston can expand upon its national reputation for building safe, sturdy, and watertight structures.

So that the experience of going to see a MLB game at Fenway will become about as unique and distinctive as visiting a Things Remembered at your local shopping mall.

Because, really, why have an actual historic ballpark in the middle of Boston when you can build a plastic replica of an historic ballpark in South Boston? The new Fenway can even have some min-replica of the Zakim Bridge- Bunker Hill Monument- lighthouse thing installed in the middle of center field. Now THAT'S character, not some stupid green wall or a yellow foul pole.

Yeah, the seats are too small and the place floods when it rains and the bathrooms are small and filthy and it sucks that we can't get beers brought to our seats - but that is a small price to pay for the Fenway experience.

(If a new park is built, the closest we'd ever come to replicating the Fenway experience would not be in a new ballpark, but most likely would be when Jordan's furniture opens their inevitable Fenway Park Motion Odyssey Movie ride.)

The Red Sox did the right thing by staying with Fenway. A new ballpark would have been a disaster for this team.

Let's go back to a time not too long ago, September of 1995. The long-awaited successor to the Boston Garden was about to open, signaling a new era in Boston sports. People were thrilled to see the new, state-of-the-art FleetCenter ("It has escalators!"), except for a few stuck-in-the- past diehards who never wanted to leave the old Garden.

Flash forward to 2002, when the FleetCenter had to paint every other seat in the Loge Sections black, because the sea of empty yellow seats at every Bruins and Celtics game was too distracting to the TV audiences.
In 1995, I took a job at the new FleetCenter. We were brought in for an orientation the month before it opened. Leading the tour were reps from other Delaware North Companies. Among them was a guy who ran concessions at the newly- opened Jacobs Field in Cleveland.

The following quote is taken from him as he ended his tour.

"Just you wait. With a new building comes new money. People will come to see the new arena. With all that money coming in the Bruins will be able to bring in superstar players. 5 years from now, the Bruins and Celtics will be on top in each of their leagues. Don't believe me? Just look at the Indians, with their new Jacobs Field. They'll be a great team for years."