Photo of the visiting team's bullpen at Fenway Park. Home of the Boston Red Sox.

Image Credit: Eric Savage (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Fenway Park is one of the most intimate ballparks in Major League Baseball. However, its intimacy was a little too much to bear for Rick Honeycutt, pitching coach for the Los Angeles Dodgers. When conversing with Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci after Game 1 of the World Series, Honeycutt expressed his anger over the verbal abuse Los Angeles Dodgers pitchers received from Boston Red Sox fans. As Honeycutt put it, the verbal abuse was "brutal". Honeycutt also wonders why Major League Baseball allows fans to get so close to pitchers in the bullpen, period. Fans are only three feet from the visiting team’s bullpen at Fenway Park.

 

Clayton Kershaw was the Los Angeles Dodgers starting pitcher for Game 1, who you can guarantee catches hell from fans in every city he visits. The game was Kershaw’s first time pitching at Fenway Park. Rick Honeycutt had not visited Fenway Park in nearly a decade but the dimensions of the bleacher seats in the outfield were the same as his last visit. Safeco Field, home of the Seattle Mariners, has perhaps the most intimate bullpen experience in Major League Baseball aside from Fenway Park.

Nevertheless, the Boston Red Sox fan base are the same fan base accused of shouting racial slurs at Adam Jones of the Baltimore Orioles a few seasons back. The worst part? If the World Series returns to Fenway Park for game 6, expect Boston Red Sox fans to be even more discourteous to Los Angeles Dodgers pitchers after learning of Rick Honeycutt’s remarks.

 

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