Batter Up – Fenway Park April 9, 1912
One hundred and nine years ago today, Fenway Park hosted its first game, an exhibition that the Red Sox won 2-0 over Harvard University.
It was a cold April day with snow flurries, brutual weather that was more suited for the Boston Patriots playing football at Fenway Park. The Patriots played six seasons at Fenway starting in 1963. Around 3000 fans attended and battled the elements, they had expected 10,000.
Batter up, and the dapper Harvard sophmore and third baseman, Dana Joseph Paine Wingate moved into the batters box and made history as Fenway’s first batter. He faced pitcher Kurt “Casey” Hageman, who had beaned an opposing player (Charles Pinkney) in the minors in the 1909 season and killed him. Wingate survived the at-bat, but went down swinging, thus recording the first out at Fenway, also.
Dana Joseph Paine Wingate went on to play shortstop and was a Harvard captain in the 1913 and 1914 seasons. He was awarded the Wendell Cup for excellence in baseball for three years in a row. He was also a member of Hasty Pudding.
There were offers to play professional baseball for Wingate, including from the Chicago Cubs, but instead he put away his glove and bat and took a job with New England Coal and Coke. He married and they soon had a dearly loved daughter Diane.
In the dark year of 1918, first Diane died in February and then in May, Dana. Dana was being treated for tuberculosis at the sanitarium in Saranac Lake, NY. After the 1918 season the Boston Red Sox’s would not win a World Series until 2004.
