Things wouldn’t go as smoothly for Harvard, which finished 12-10-1. But the Crimson would continue improving in the years to come and would go 22-3-1—including its first win over the Red Sox—four years later.

***

Today, the Harvard baseball team is set to return to Fenway Park and take batting practice where its predecessors were defeated amidst the snow 100 years earlier.

“All the guys are really excited about it,” junior Robert Wineski says. “It’s not every day that you get to have batting practice in a major league ballpark.”

“It’s really an honor to be able to do something like this,” senior Brent Suter adds. “To represent Harvard’s program while out there will be quite special—there’s not a better ballpark in the country than Fenway.”

In the century following its initial game, the stadium has undergone a number of transformations.  The corner of the right field pavilion that edged onto the field became today’s section six, the wide space along the third-base foul line evolved into today’s sections 28-33, and the left-field wall would not be painted green for another 35 years.

“If someone from today were to be magically transported onto the pitcher’s mound in Fenway Park [in 1912], I don’t think they would recognize the place,” Stout says.

But despite those changes, the awe the initial spectators felt upon entering Fenway—now the oldest Major League stadium still in use—was the same as the wonder felt by the millions of people who attend a game there during a season today.

“It’s great that it’s been able to last 100 years because of the significance—what it means to fans and players who can still come in and think about Babe Ruth and Ted Williams and Carl Yastrzemski,” Bresciani says.

Though names like Felton, Wingate, and Wigglesworth don’t hold the same weight in baseball lore, the Harvard trio did do one thing those Hall of Famers never did—christen the ballpark that would become a national landmark.

“Our tours are so successful throughout the year with people all over the country and even foreign lands,” Bresciani says. “Fenway has gotten to be an icon around the country.”

And though the park’s first game was to the players more a burden than a blessing, the Boston Globe put it best the following day: “But it was an opening, and that was something.”

—Staff writer Scott A. Sherman can be reached at ssherman13@college.harvard.edu.