Overview
Part of the original ballpark construction of 1912, the wall is made of wood, but was covered in tin and concrete in 1934, and then hard plastic in 1976. A manual scoreboard is set into the wall. Despite the name, the Green Monster was not painted green until 1947; before that it was covered with advertisements. The Monster designation is relatively new. For most of its history it was simply called the Wall.
The wall is the highest among current Major League Baseball fields, and is the second highest among all professional baseball fields (including minor leagues), falling approximately six inches short of the left field wall at the Sovereign Bank Stadium in York, Pennsylvania.
Ballparks occupied by professional baseball teams have often featured high fences hiding the field from external viewers, particularly behind open areas of the outfield where bleacher seating is low-lying or non-existent. The wall might also reduce the number of "cheap" home runs due to the barrier's relatively close distance from home plate. Fenway's wall serves both purposes. Past ballparks of Fenway's era or even later which featured high fences in-play included Baker Bowl, Washington Park, Ebbets Field, League Park, Griffith Stadium, Shibe Park, and more recently, Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Fenway is the last of the exceptionally high-walled major league ballparks. Relatively high walls in modern ballparks have been constructed for their novelty rather than by necessity, as Fenway's wall had been.
The Green Monster is famous for preventing home runs on many line drives that would clear the walls of other ballparks. A side effect of this is to increase the prevalence of doubles, since this is the most common result when the ball is hit off the wall (often referred to as a "wallball double"). Some left fielders, predominantly those with vast Fenway experience, have become adept at fielding caroms off the wall to throw runners out at second base or hold the batter to a single. Compared with other current major league parks, the wall's placement creates a comparatively shallow left field; the wall falls approximately 304 - 310 feet (94 m) from the plate along the left-field foul line. With this short distance, many deep fly balls that could be caught by the fielder in a deeper park rebound off the wall for base hits. And while the wall turns many would-be line-drive homers into doubles it also allows some high yet shallow fly balls to clear the field of play for a home run.
During 2001 and 2002, the Green Monster's height record was temporarily beaten by the center field wall at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati, Ohio. During the construction of Great American Ball Park, located right next to Riverfront Stadium, a large section of seats was removed from the center field area to make room and a 40-foot (12 m) black wall was erected as a temporary batter's eye. The entire wall was in play, too. This new wall was often called "The Black Monster." When Riverfront Stadium was demolished in 2002, the Green Monster reclaimed the record.
In honor of the famed wall, the Red Sox mascot is a furry green monster, named Wally.
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