Fenway Park tour takes Las Vegas photographer inside Green Monster
Erik Kabik is a famed rock photographer who is based in Las Vegas. But over the weekend, he focused on a legendary baseball park — and it was an impromptu jam session.
Kabik is among the photography team shooting select dates on the summerlong Journey/Def Leppard U.S. tour, which stopped at Fenway Park in Boston on Friday night. The show also featured Cheap Trick, and sold out with a crowd of 34,000 on hand.
Kabik and fellow photogs Steve Rose and Mike Savoia arrived early for a walk-through of the park, famous for the 37-foot-tall wall in left field. The Green Monster also serves as Fenway’s scoreboard, which houses a seating area for the scoreboard operator and a storage area for the big letters and numbers.
As Kabik says, “As we were doing our walk-through, we saw a woman standing by the door to the Green Monster and asked her if we could peek inside. She said she happened to have a key to open it up. She let us in and asked us to please just not sign the walls, which we were happy to respect.”
Among the signatures are such oldies as Jimmy Piersall’s from 1946. A few quotes from Tom Petty songs have been stenciled inside the Green Monster’s enclave, as former scoreboard operator Henry Santoro was a serious fan of Petty.
The adventure was so unexpected that Kabik was not lugging his pro equipment, but took some quick pics on his trusty iPhone 7 Plus. As Kabik said, “It’s a place many people get to see from the outside, but very few get to see on the inside.” To use a baseball term, he parked it.
John Katsilometes’ column runs daily in the A section. Contact him at jkatsilometes@reviewjournal.com. Follow @johnnykats on Twitter, @JohnnyKats1 on Instagram.
