The Fenway Park Red Seat: A Tribute to Home Run History

As a lifelong Boston sports fan, I’ve sat in my share of unforgettable stadium seats. Fenway Park’s Field Box 81, Row C, Seat 1—along the oddball juncture of the left-field wall and third-base line—might be my favorite, since it makes me feel I could actually touch a fair ball.

But I’ve never sat in the seat in Boston sports, which is distinguished among Fenway Park’s forest of green bleacher seats by its flash of Red Sox red. Located 502 feet from home plate, the “Ted Williams seat”—Section 42, Row 37, Seat 21—was painted red in 1984 to memorialize the mighty bomb that Williams launched on June 9, 1946, still the longest home run at Fenway.

We don’t have to guess where that first-inning homer landed, because it thunked off the noggin of ticket holder Joseph Boucher. The Boston Globe published a photo the next day showing the hole the ball had made in Boucher’s fine straw boater, and quoted the exasperated Fenway first-timer saying, “How far away must one sit to be safe in this park?”

Today, many fans make pilgrimages to the Ted Williams seat, both with tickets and without. My friend John, a season ticket holder with seats elsewhere in the park, went through the turnstiles extra-early one game to sit in the fabled chair. His first thought, he says, was, How the hell did he hit it this far?!

He’s not alone in thinking that. Some are skeptical that Williams’s ball actually did travel 502 feet, and even Red Sox home run bashers like Mo Vaughn and Big Papi have expressed doubt. (It’s said that Big Papi tried to hit the seat in batting practice using an aluminum bat—to no avail.)

Last year an MLB stats analyst named Mike Petriello published an exhaustive report that evaluated launch angles, exit velocity, and jet stream behavior before and after the Fenway Park redesign. In 1946, winds of 20-plus mph were blowing to right field. His judgment? Not only was the distance possible, but Teddy Ballgame probably hit it even farther.