Talk:Green Monster
From SoSH
Has anyone ever seen a picture that shows Duffy's cliff going up to ten feet high? I always hear it talked about as 10 feet high but have never seen a good picture of it (not that I doubt it's true, just curious). The picture here definitely doesn't show it as ten feet high. If you use the height of the monster (37') as perspective, the hill appears only 2 or 3 feet high. Or am I just misunderstanding it, and the 10' applies to the length of the hill and not the height?
According to redsox.com Duffy's cliff actually had people seated on it:
Fenway History "In left field, there was a steep 10-foot embankment that ran in front of the wall where fans were allowed to sit. The Sox' Duffy Lewis was so skilled at playing balls hit to the ledge that it became known as Duffy's Cliff."
This picture seems to back that up:
jayhoz
Cool pic. Is this the right place to add in a reference regarding signatures inside the green monster and the morse code on the scoreboard with the initials for Mr and Mrs Yawkey? - WK
--- That picture is cool, but it does not look like Fenway AT ALL. Look at Centerfield. It is lower than it should be.
Remember, when Duffy's Cliff was in Play, the Wall was not 37' feet high. The Was was expanded up in 1933, and the cliff went away.
More from Wikipedia:
--- The incline served two purposes:
1. it was a support for a high wall; and 2. it was built to compensate for the difference in grades between the field and Lansdowne Street on the other side of that wall.
It also served as a spectator-friendly seating area during the dead-ball era when overflow crowds would sit on the incline behind ropes. It is often compared to the infamous left field "terrace" at Cincinnati's Crosley Field, but, in truth, the 15-degree all-grass incline there served an entirely different purpose: as an alternative to an all dirt warning track found in most other ballparks. It was a natural feature of the site on which Crosley Field and its predecessors were located; slightly less severe inclines were deliberately built in center and right fields to compensate. ---
So, yeah, that pick isn't of Fenway.
-Cuzittt
Duffys Cliff
The pic in the article was the best I could find showing the incline. The one that had the best view was actually some religous ceremony, but you can see people sitting on Duffy's Cliff, its a better angle. It may well be that it was scaled down in the 20's when the article pic was taken.
Great picture. Using the people as a scale there, it looks pretty darn close to 10'. Also, check out dead centerfield. That's a mile deep.
-Cuzittt
The Boston Public Library begs to differ: BPL
jayhoz
Cuzittt, you're looking at it wrong, its the stands along the 3rd base line, the 25 foot 'monster' is to the far right with the signage. Remember, this before the fire and the Yawkey remodel, the grandstand area looked quite different prior to '34.- MH
Also, if the year on this picture: BPL is correct (1934), then it would appear that there was still a small hill/embankment even after the 1933 renovations. -ndyaz
I have to conclude that the article 'Duffy's Cliff' pic:
must have been taken in 1933, after the Yawkey remodel, but prior to the 1934 fire which forced more extensive changes. Though I haven't been able to find a reference, the Yawkey remodel must have included a 'scaling down' of Duffy's cliff which is more in line with what the photographs shows. This picture, taken in 1931, shows a very similar Duffy's Cliff to that in the ceremony pic. -MH
MH- Thanks. I see it now. My bad jayhoz. Angles can be very deceiving, and I was thinking that the stands were of the seats on the Cliff. So, yeah, very cool picture... even better than I thought. -Cuzittt
