Good morning! In case you didn’t already know, the magic is officially back at Fenway Park. Jake’s piece about the buzz at the ballpark comes just one day after Anthony Rizzo said this about playing here in the 2021 Wild Card game:
Traditionally, home field advantage isn’t that important in baseball. In fact, it barely exists at all, as the historic home win rate across baseball sits at around 53%. Moreover, as we all know, the Sox were terrible at Fenway for large chunks of this season. So from a purely
analytical persepective, I understand that leapfrogging the Yankees to get homefield advantage in the first round of the postseason isn’t that big of a deal.
And yet I am dying for the Sox to do just that. I’m not dying for it so that the Sox get those few extra percentage points, I’m dying for it because I desperately want to experience October Fenway again. (And, of course, that whole “leapfrogging the Yankees” thing helps a lot. This is something I want for aesthetic reasons, not baseball reasons. How important is it for you?
Talk about October Fenway and whatever else you want in this space and, as always, be good to one another.
