Shipping Up To Boston
Boston Herald Sox Coverage: How Sweep It Is! A Win For Humanity! And no, that isn’t quite as ridiculous as it sounds. It’s about the John Lester cancer part. New King of October. Simply The Most Valuable.
Then of course there’s the news side:
Thousands of fans spilled out of the dark around Fenway Park [map] early this morning, setting off fireworks and facing arrest moments after the Red Sox [team stats] swept the Colorado Rockies to win the World Series.
While hundreds of fans kept it clean in sharing the joy of victory, cops moved quickly to quell transgressors but let everyone else revel in the moment. One fan was seen being pulled out of the mob on Beacon Street, cuffed and arrested, the first of 37 arrests, mainly for disorderly conduct, by the time the crowds thinned out after more than two hours of stunts and vandalism in the streets leading away from Fenway.
Delirious fans cheered, chanted and crowd-surfed, spraying cans of beer on each other. One climbed a roof on Beacon Street and did a Jonathan Papelbon jig.
“I feel like I own the world. It’s the greatest city in the world,” said Brian Sewell, 18, of Portland, Maine, a student at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
“Two World Series in four years is pure heaven,” said Andrew Dumas, 20, a Boston University student from West Boylston.
“It was sweet bliss,” Dan Brown, 26, of New Hampshire, said about the last pitch that clinched last night’s 4-0 Series sweep.
Trouble soon erupted at Boylston and Ispwich, where the sounds of “Dirty Water” echoed from nearby buildings. A Teletubby dressed in Red Sox gear and a man naked but for a giant red, plastic beer cup costume were part of a procession that included a large number of kids in BU and Northeastern gear.
One man climbed a streetlight to photograph the crowd, inspiring more than a dozen other youths to scale poles. They started jumping into the crowd while others tore down street signs.
One person climbed high onto a streetlight and was dangling at least 25 feet over Boylston until he dropped into the crowd. It was unclear as he disappeared into in the throng whether anyone was hurt.
Cops wielding batons struggled to control the crowd until a mounted unit galloped up and sent the crowd stampeding in the other direction. The cops then began moving the crowd more slowly to prevent anyone from being trampled.
Emergency radio chatter indicated at least one vehicle on fire. In some areas police began using pepper spray on rowdy revelers. Meanwhile, a crowd was seen flipping a car on Boylston Street.
The wild incidents raised fears of a repeat of riots that marred the Red Sox 2004 pennant win, when Emerson College student Victoria Snelgrove was killed by a police pepper pellet near Fenway Park. But after the crowds broke up around 2:30 a.m., police spokeswoman Elaine Driscoll said later there were no immediate reports of serious injury.
Fans chanting “Let’s go Red Sox” were rushing into Kenmore Square even before the win, only to meet phalanxes of Boston riot cops.
Firefighters had placed cops on the roofs of a bar and a souvenir shop around Fenway using a ladder truck to keep fans from climbing up. The bars around the park were packed and the streets came alive with restless fans.
The lines outside the bars – from the Cask ’n Flagon to Boston Beer Works – were long early in the night, but didn’t last as fans were pushed out of the area by cops, unwilling to let any crowd amass around the park. Boston police started brooming fans from the area around Fenway Park at the start of the sixth inning.
Last week, 17 revelers were arrested after the Sox won the American League pennant, and several were ordered by a Roxbury judge to write essays on why they shamed the city.
Topics: Boston
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 11:14 am Comments (2) on Monday, October 29, 2007
2 Responses to “Shipping Up To Boston”
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October 29th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Congratulations to the Red Sox.
Note to Boston sports fans. You can stop whining and po-facing now. Your city is well represented by a rich successful baseball team and the most successful team in the NFL.
P.S. watch out for the Yankees next year — A-Rod just went over the wall and every team that has seen his backside has gotten better.
Cosmic sports justice now demands a Cubs-Indians world series in 2008 followed by a Browns-Bears Superbowl in 2009.
Go Tribe.
October 29th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
Yes, Go TRIBE!