Together with Chicago's Wrigley Field and New York's Yankee Stadium, Boston's Fenway Park is one of the archetypal American baseball facilities. Called "a lyric little bandbox" by no less an eminence than John Updike, the park's idiosyncratic design is as legendary among baseball aficionados as is the futility endured by its home team, the Boston Red Sox. Together, team and park have suffered all manner of near-miss and could-have-been finishes since the stadium's triumphal opening in 1912.

The ballpark derived its name from the Fenway Realty Company, the business that owned the plot of marshland on which the ballpark was constructed. The Osborne Engineering Company of Cleveland designed the concrete and steel structure, which was modeled in part on Philadelphia's Shibe Park. The famous wall in left field, known popularly as the "Green Monster," was not part of the original ballpark. Fenway's asymmetrical configuration was largely a...