Parking at Fenway: Being Creative

Chip Ainsworth writes a sports column for the Recorder in Greenfield, MA. He still manages to avoid the high price of parking at the now-very cool Fenway Park.

"Parking without paying at a Red Sox game is always an adventure. In the '70s, my favorite spot was along a narrow dirt road wedged between several Boston University dormitories and behind a Howard Johnson Motor Lodge on Commonwealth Avenue. The spot served me well until the day I arrived back from a game to find only an oil stain where my car had been.

In the lot where my car had been towed, the dispatcher was busy screaming at one of his drivers. He was about 6-foot-5 and weighed 250 pounds, a Shrek-Hulk Hogan sort of hybrid. He looked at me, eyes wide, face red and veins bulging, and I politely asked if he took VISA."

Fast forward to a recent Sox-Yankees game in Boston.

"To avoid paying $30 to park, I pulled off Storrow Drive onto Commonwealth Ave and went back over the BU bridge to an empty lot owned by MIT in Cambridge. From there I hoofed it back over the bridge, across Comm Ave onto Montfort St. and on toward the light standards that towered over the ballpark." No word on whether he was towed again in 2007.

"I was with my son Mat, who told of an interesting experience he had had in Amsterdam last March. Celebrating St. Patrick's day, he'd lost his passport and had to get a duplicate at the American embassy. At the airport, a customs official noted the passport had been issued outside the country and told him to step into another room. "It was me and about 30 Middle Easterners," said Mat.