Jim Rice at Fenway

[scooter729]

The past few years, the Red Sox have hosted a "Christmas at Fenway" event, as a way to hype ticket sales for the coming year. Since the team has been better of late, they haven't had to do a lot of hyping in the past.

On the heels of a 69-win season though, the team has been pulling out all stops to keep fans interested, including a cool event last month for season ticket holders (like me!), who got to take batting practice at Fenway (I just missed putting one off the Wall - warning track power for me!).

Last night and today is the "Christmas at Fenway" event - in the past when I have gone, there have been a few random players in attendance (Jon Lester was there last year). But this year, there were a ton of players past and present in attendance, including Luis Tiant, and an old favorite of mine, Jim Ed Rice, and autographs are all free of charge!

The strangest thing about seeing Rice at an event like this is remembering how surly he could be to fans when he was a player. He was polite and acknowledging to fans while he was signing at the event, even though many of the kids were more excited to see Jerry Remy than Rice.

Here's a photo I snapped of Rice signing my Red Sox coffee table book - events like this certainly are a small step in the right direction to turn things around after the horrific past season!

[Republicaninmass]

Great to hear Scott, I was there on Wednesday and they had the Green Monster covered with Christmas lights and retired numbers! It was really neat to see!