Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox baseball club, celebrated its 100th anniversary in April 2012. To mark the occasion, I am taking a tour of the ballpark just a few weeks after the anniversary.

Fenway Park's most distinguishing feature, of course, is the Green Monster, the left field fence that is extra-tall to make up for the rather shallow left field. There is a street just beyond, hence a need for this unusual feature.

An overview of Green Monster, showing its ladder and manual scoreboards.

The ladder starts at 14 feet above the field and goes up. Between games, a worker would bring up a ladder to the start of that ladder, and climb up to the top of the Green Monster, to retrieve trapped balls in the area. With the 2002 addition of new seats on top of the Green Monster, that ladder access is no longer necessary, but the ladder remains as a historical relic; moreover, the ladder is defined as fair territory, which means a long line drive that bounces off the ladder could fly off in an unexpected direction and confound the outfielders. If the ball ends up out of bounds after the ladder bounce, it is ruled a ground rule double.