Fenway Park is an original. Boston prides itself on originals. The historic home of the Red Sox, Fenway Park--commissioned in 1912 before World War I--is an artifact that makes Boston baseball unique. A new stadium in the Fens changes forever the meaning of "Red Sox nation." A new culture of Boston Red Sox baseball will emerge. Will Back Bay become the Manhattan of Boston? Who is getting rich from attempts by Harrington and Menino to make Back Bay and the Fens more like Manhattan and Central Park?

The personal--and the corporate. Major League Baseball has become very corporate. Yet the game of baseball played in Fenway Park is very personal. Old Fenway is the game at the park. A new Fenway Park will be a stadium at the mall. The uniqueness of Fenway makes it what it is. And with Red Sox pitching the way it is, obstructed views have meaning.

The limits of the MBTA. Even if the Harrington-Menino team agrees to an upper deck for the 1912 infrastructure, another 10,000 fans jamming the Kenmore Square area 81 times per season places significantly greater burdens on transportation and police services. Government, including the MBTA, services will be tested by still larger crowds as thousands more fans flock to a larger copy of a copy of a copy of other stadiums.

Saving Fenway Park is moral. Drucker is correct. A new world of Major League Baseball is emerging. Boston society is rearranging itself. But morality implies rightness and wrongness. Saving Fenway Park is moral. Boston might gain the corporate world of MLB, yet lose its very soul. Fenway Park is as Boston as Faneuil Hall. Saving Fenway Park is a family value.

It is immoral for the Harrington-Menino corporate gorilla to bring pain, to cause mental distress, and to inflict permanent damage to millions of Red Sox fans by destroying a sacred place of perpetual goodness and occasional joy.

John Rouse is professor of political science at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind. He has been a fan of the Red Sox and Fenway Park for 51 years.