Fenway Park

From the city that brought you the rained-out NBA game, now comes the major-league homestand cut short by gravity. Officials announced yesterday that six American League games would not be played in Seattle's Kingdome because of the possibility that more ceiling insulation tiles could fall on unsuspecting fans or players. Four tiles dropped Tuesday, prompting postponement of a Mariners game against the Baltimore Orioles. Unwilling to risk more tiles crashing down, officials postponed yesterday's Seattle-Baltimore doubleheader, including a makeup of Tuesday's game.

B.J. Upton and the Tampa Bay Rays played the bumbling Boston Red Sox at the perfect time. Upton capped a five-run third inning with a three-run homer and visiting Tampa Bay completed a four-game sweep of the Red Sox at Fenway Park with an 8-2 victory yesterday in the annual Patriots Day game. The Rays won their seventh in a row, all on the road, and matched the team record for the longest winning streak away from Tropicana Field in one season. Tampa Bay (10-3) completed its first sweep at Fenway Park in a series of three or more games.

Beware of the Conventional Wisdom. And yet we accept the Conventional Wisdom as though it were handed down on a tablet from on high. We would be wise to look closer. But that would be unconventional. To touch first on fun and baseball games, consider what the Conventional Wisdom says about 79-year-old Fenway Park, hallowed home of the Boston Red Sox. Intellectuals worship the place. Sports writers rhapsodize about it. They keep telling us that Fenway is the most noble, the most glorious venue in which to watch the national pastime.

In ancient Fenway Park, where change is as welcome as oral surgery, some Red Sox fans are moaning about more than just the general state of their team. The objects of their disaffection are a trio of 25-foot fiberglass Coca-Cola bottles attached to a light tower that rises above the park's storied left-field wall. Local traditionalists - a somewhat redundant term - find the new advertising, for which Coke will pay the Red Sox $1 million a year, an affront to the pristine elegance of an edifice that has withstood 85 years of baseball, two fires and Bucky Dent.

Thunk! Those who have been here will recognize it: the sound of a ball bouncing off the left-field wall at Fenway Park. There is no sound like it elsewhere in baseball. Certainly, no other ballpark has, or ever will have, this sunbaked expanse of green sheet metal, 37 feet tall, enclosing a sweltering confine in which two grounds-crew members manually slip numbered placards into the scoreboard, just as the old-timers did when the wall first went up. Fans come to watch the white ball fly off the bat and arc in flight before slamming against the wall lovingly called the Green Monster.

The Boston Red Sox' new home will be an open-air ballpark modeled after 87-year-old Fenway Park, and will preserve historic pieces of the legendary stadium as well, team officials said. The new park will re-create the dimensions of the current stadium while providing better views and seats, and will have more concessions and rest rooms, the team said in unveiling preliminary plans. Fenway Park has the smallest seating capacity in the major leagues, 33,871. The new stadium may open by the 2003 season.

A bronze statue of Ted Williams - a tribute to the "Splendid Splinter's" devotion to children with cancer - was unveiled yesterday outside Fenway Park. Williams, who died in 2002, made hundreds of trips to local hospitals to visit sick children during his playing career. His support was critical to the founding and continued success of the Jimmy Fund, which raises money for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The team unveiled the statue hours before the Red Sox and Yankees opened a highly anticipated four-game series at Fenway Park.

Outside Fenway Park underneath a billboard with a picture of Manny Ramirez that said, "Keep the faith," Boston fans gathered as a lunar eclipse turned the moon red. Moments after the Red Sox had won the World Series, T-shirts were already for sale. The message on the front: "Believe in Boston" over a picture of a four-leaf clover. "The moon had a lunar eclipse, the planets are aligned and the moon is now red," said David Forney, 23, an MIT student. "All that had to fall into place for the Red Sox to win. " In the top of the eighth inning, when it became clear that the previously unthinkable might happen, police in riot gear began walking through the bars surrounding Fenway Park.

Normally, Jimy Williams' answers are as pointed as a baseball. "Managerial decision" is one of his favorites. But Yankees owner George Steinbrenner's nationally-televised comments that the Red Sox manager incited the Fenway Park crowd to unruliness Sunday night clearly touched a nerve. "When Georgie Porgie speaks, I don't listen," said Williams, whose ninth-inning ejection preceded the debris-tossing by Boston fans. "I didn't incite them. I'm a manager of a major-league team.

The fans came out to Fenway Park to praise Cal Ripken, but also got in a few shots at Boston Red Sox general manager Dan Duquette. Before the Baltimore Orioles defeated the Red Sox, 4-2, last night, Ripken was honored for his final game at Fenway Park. He announced his retirement in June. Fans gave him a standing ovation during the 15-minute pregame ceremony, and also before each at-bat. But fans booed Duquette during the pregame ceremony, and one fan yelled, "Shut up, Dan. " Anti-Duquette feelings intensified after he fired manager Jimy Williams on Aug. 16 with the Red Sox trailing Oakland by two games in the wild-card race at 65-53.

Albert Pujols' first week as the Los Angeles Angels' cleanup hitter did not go as well as expected for a slugger with a $240 million contract. At the end of Friday's game against the New York Yankees in their home opener, Pujols was hitting .222 with 2 RBIs and 2 runs scored in 27 at-bats. But he's not worried. "I'm a human," he told the Associated Press. "Sometimes you want to press a little bit and try to do too much. " Fans in Anaheim, Calif., may be the ones who are worried as they've seen their team - which is expected to compete with the Texas Rangers for the AL West - get off to a 2-5 start.

BILL CARRIGAN and Terry Francona are the only managers to lead the Red Sox to multiple world championships in all the glorious years the Beaneaters have been playing baseball. Yet neither will be in attendance when the Red Sox celebrate the 100th anniversary of venerable Fenway Park on April 20. Carrigan, who led the BoSox to titles in 1915 and 1916, has been dead for 42 years. For Francona, a piece of himself died after the Red Sox fired him after last season. Not just because he was let go, mind you. But the aftermath looked like something you might see when an animal strays onto the Atlantic City Expressway.

Still ticked off about the way his tenure as the Boston Red Sox' skipper ended, Terry Francona says he will not be a part of next week's team festivities celebrating the 100th anniversary of Fenway Park. On Wednesday, Francona, now a baseball analyst for ESPN, told the Boston Globe: "I'm sure they'll have a great event and I was part of a lot of that stuff there, but I just can't go back there and start hugging people and stuff without feeling a little bit hypocritical. " He's not kidding.

Nine more men accused a now-dead Boston Red Sox clubhouse manager of sexual abuse, including assaults at Fenway Park and Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Attorney Mitchell Garabedian said 11 men have now come forward to claim abuse by Donald Fitzpatrick between the 1960s and early 1990s. Fitzpatrick, who died in 2005, resigned from the Red Sox in 1991 after the first of the charges against him. In 2002, he pleaded guilty to attempted sexual battery on a child under 12. The Red Sox have also settled a lawsuit by seven Florida men who claimed Fitzpatrick abused them.

BOSTON RED SOX manager Bobby Valentine yesterday denied that his clubhouse alcohol ban was a public-relations move, and pitcher Josh Beckett blamed "snitches" for leaking the story about players drinking beer and eating fried chicken during games while the team was plummeting to an unprecedented September collapse. Valentine instituted the ban in response to postseason reports that Red Sox pitchers, including Beckett, hung out in the clubhouse on their off-nights eating and drinking instead of sitting in the dugout with their teammates.

CLEARWATER, Fla. - The last pitch Jonathan Papelbon threw was a 90 m.p.h. splitter in Baltimore, and like so many that have come from his right hand before, it carried promise. Promise that the Boston Red Sox could avoid the ignominy of a historic collapse. Promise that Papelbon's team would live another day. Almost 700 miles south in Atlanta, the Phillies watched Papelbon's windup on a big-screen TV in the visitors clubhouse at Turner Field. They reveled in the chaos. When Robert Andino dropped Papelbon's splitter into shallow left field for a game-winning single, some Phillies shouted, others sprinted from the showers, and a few just stared in disbelief.

THE BOSTON Red Sox think their lyric little bandbox deserves a great big birthday party. The ballclub will celebrate the 100th anniversary of Fenway Park's first game next season with a yearlong celebration that will be heavy on history and filled with special events to usher the oldest ballpark in major league history into its second century. "We are going to be the first to do that and, pardon me, but we are going to do it in a major, big-time way," Red Sox president and chief executive officer Larry Lucchino said yesterday.

A MAN who worked as a teenager in the Boston Red Sox clubhouse with big-name players such as Roger Clemens and Wade Boggs said his "dream job" ended abruptly when the clubhouse manager sexually assaulted him. Charles Crawford and another Massachusetts man are now accusing Donald Fitzpatrick, who died in 2005, of abusing them in the early 1990s. The statute of limitations has expired for filing lawsuits, but the men are seeking $5 million settlements from the team. During a news conference yesterday, Crawford said Fitzpatrick assaulted him twice inside the clubhouse at Fenway Park - once in an equipment room and once in a restroom.

Bobby Valentine took over as manager of the Boston Red Sox on Thursday, promising to be hardworking, open-minded, and even humble as he tries to help the franchise return to the playoffs and forget the disappointment of this season's unprecedented September collapse. "It's more than a special day. It's the beginning of a life that's going to extend beyond anything I thought of doing," Valentine said. "The talent level of the players we have in this organization is a gift to anyone, and I think I'm a receiver of this gift.

A person familiar with the negotiations says the Boston Red Sox have agreed to terms with Bobby Valentine on a contract that will make him the team's new manager. Valentine is expected to be introduced at Fenway Park on Thursday. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. Valentine, 61, formerly managed the New York Mets and Texas Rangers. He replaces Terry Francona.   DeJesus signs with Cubs Outfielder David DeJesus and the Chicago Cubs agreed to a $10 million, two-year contract.