A handful of red clay scooped from the warning track along the Green Monster resides in my back pocket as I type this post. The Red Sox ownership opened Fenway Park to the fans today as part of a tribute to the late Ted Williams, who will be commemorated in a ceremony at the ballpark tonight. How many chances do you get to actually walk around on the field at Fenway Park? On my lunch hour I snuck off to Kenmore Square and joined the thousands, young and old, who turned out to stroll the Fenway greensward. The outfield was turned into a shrine to the late No. 9, with historic pictures and his Hall of Fame plaque hung on the green walls, and parents pushing babies in strollers posing for photos with Marine honor guards. Visitors jostled to touch the scoreboard, to take a seat in the third-base dugout, to perch for snaps atop the bullpen fence, to crane their necks and peer to the top of the Green Monster. It was like being allowed inside the sanctuary of a baseball cathedral, and it was magnificent.

Sox play to clinch the American League pennant, September 1967.