State of the Art

Take me out to the (virtual) ball game

by Carly Carioli

You can watch it on television. You can watch it on television with lots of other people next to a replica of the Big Green Monster. But amid reports of even the bleacher seats going for as much as $1200, the vast majority of us just aren't going to get to attend the last major-league All-Star Game of the century, which is all but guaranteed to be the final All-Star Game at historic Fenway Park. Yeah, the ol' national pastime may feel a bit distant and pricy this week, but to combat precisely these frustrations, Major League Baseball has gifted us with its premiere doodad extravaganza, the John Hancock All*Star FanFest ("Where Baseball Is Everything").

Even the tickets for peripheral Fenway events -- Sunday's celebrity home-run derby; All-Star Workout Monday -- are long gone. In a nice gesture, the league gave half the door profits from the Workout to a "community project" chosen by the city, the Sox, and a Roxbury/South End neighborhood group. And how did these folks decide to use their share of the estimated $1 million? New school? Improved housing? Season tickets? Heck no, even better -- they're building an "All-Star Legacy Baseball Field, resembling Fenway" in Roxbury. For this, the residents of Roxbury must be extremely grateful: the next time the All-Star Game comes to Boston, they'll have their own authentic replica from which to watch the game on television.

For now, though, they'll have to make like the rest of us and march on down to the Hynes Convention Center, where for what MLB acknowledges is the "unusually affordable" price of $14 ($8 for children and seniors), they can partake in the All-Star FanFest, described in a glossy brochure alternately as "baseball heaven on earth" or, by Senior Vice President of Domestic and International Properties for Major League Baseball Tim Brosnan, as "Major League Baseball's way of saying `thank you' to the fans."

For what it's worth, the FanFest is a pretty good deal -- once you set foot inside the doors, just about everything's free, including autographs with such legends of the game as Yaz, Goose Gossage, George Brett, Lefty Carlton, and Rollie Fingers. The fest takes up a quarter-million square feet, and kids can participate in clinics with the pros on a replica ballfield, take swings at the batting cages, make karaoke-style play-by-play calls of famous baseball moments, or check out exhibits on loan from Cooperstown. And there's tons of free loot to be snapped up, from baseball cards to videotapes.

The idea is to give the fan the illusion of being injected into the game: through computer technology you can make your own baseball card or have your picture taken with the Red Sox; in a "Spring Training" exhibit, you can take swings at balls pitched by Pedro Martinez; in "The Bullpen" you can try to sneak one by Mark McGuire. Not the actual players, mind you, but their virtual video-screen doubles. There is even a bit of virtual voyeurism -- a fake wooden wall with pine-knot holes, through which (as kids once did at the turn of the century) you can watch video-broadcast All-Star moments.

Even the Mayor's Office got in on the virtual act. Realizing that most of Boston will be shut out of Fenway, it's building a replica on City Hall Plaza -- complete with Green Monster, scoreboard, bleachers, and authentic ballpark-food vendors -- with a giant two-sided video screen where you can enjoy the game for free on Tuesday along with an estimated 60,000 to 80,000 other fans. But after all is (virtually) said and done, is any of this a substitute for a real ballpark? It's ironic that just around the corner from all of FanFest's virtual fetishization -- replica dugouts, replica outfield walls -- the Red Sox are planning to take down one of the last real great baseball parks in the country.

That's hyperrealism for you. It's easier to get people to come to a historical re-creation of old-time baseball than to preserve old-time baseball itself. By late June, the FanFest engagement was already more than halfway sold out, prompting Major League Baseball Properties to announce that "given the scarcity of tickets to All-Star activities at Fenway Park, these may be the hottest tickets in town come All-Star Week."

The John Hancock All*Star FanFest runs Friday through Tuesday, July 9 through 13, at the Hynes Convention Center, Boylston Street, Boston. Tickets are $14, $8 for children and seniors. Call (800) 449-3267.