(Newser)
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Baseball's "Sistine Chapel" turns 100 today, a century to the day after its first regular-season game. As the oldest major-league stadium, Fenway Park has seen the Boston Red Sox through a turbulent century, hosting heroes from Babe Ruth to Ted Williams to Hank Aaron, the Boston Globe notes. Today, you can feel the stadium's age, columnist Dan Shaughnessy tells USA Today: "The seats between the aisles were built for people 5-foot-6 in 1912," and "some of the things that don't work are never going to work."
"But overall, it is the jewel of baseball and the best place to watch a baseball game," he concludes. The stadium was the product of a $120,000 purchase of 8 acres of land in Boston. Nearly a century later, the park seemed old-fashioned and small compared to others, and it faced a shutdown. But new owners invested $285 million to bring it up to date, and it's expected to stay in business another 40 years. "We think of Fenway as the 'Little Engine that Could,' and it just keeps chugging along," Red Sox co-owner Tom Werner says. Today, the Sox celebrate the anniversary with a game against—who else?—the New York Yankees.
