Getting along, and stuff

 So, I have been to Fenway Park now.

I have sat in those ancient slatted seats beneath the overhang in right field, and thanked the good Lord I ignored my impulse to hit every Dunkin in B-town.

I have watched the sky go purple and orange as the sun went down beyond the Coca-Cola sign and the Green Monster.

I have stood sweating in a snake line of Bogaerts jerseys and Yaz jerseys and Ortiz jerseys - even a faded Garciaparra jersey or two, God love him - to pay 26 bucks for a couple of Bud Lights. And I’ve eaten freshly-shucked oysters in a place across the street from the ballpark, and watched the aforementioned jerseys bend an elbow with Jeter jerseys and Judge jerseys and even Ruth jerseys.

Remember the old line, too often repeated with a mocking lilt and a smirk? 

“Can’t we all just get along?”

Well … what I discovered in Fenway last week is we can. Sort of.

I don’t know what I expected when the Yankees and Red Sox had at it that night - knife fights, Sharks vs. Jets style? - but civility was way down the list. Maybe the latter happened because there were so many Yankees fans in attendance, and a lot of them seemed almost to be regulars. In our section, anyway, they seemed to know at least some of the Red Sox fans around them.

So, no duels of the blade. No drunken brawls, even though the well-oiled were well represented. When the Yankees fans sent up thunderous chants of “Let’s go, Yankees!” - and they were thunderous, odd as it was to hear - the Red Sox fans would respond with “Let’s go, Red Sox!”

The Yankees fans won that one this night, mainly because the Pinstripes were slapping the home team around in a 12-5 laugher. And of course they got pretty obnoxious about it, Yankees fans being the front runners they are.

OK. So that is not the tone I want to set here.

Because, see, I’m remembering the two young boys who sat in front of us, one in a Red Sox jersey and one in a Yankees jersey. And how the only adversarial incident between them was seeing who could cram the most popcorn in his mouth at one time.

I don’t know how you score such things. But I think they tied.

I’ll remember that, from our night in Fenway. And I’ll remember the family Julie and I met on the Kenmore train platform after the game, a man and his wife and two boys from Albany, N.Y.

Yankees fans, of course. But the dad said he actually enjoyed Fenway’s rust-flecked ambience more than Yankee Stadium, because when they tore down the old place and built the new Yankee Stadium, something went out of it that Fenway retained.

“It’s a very nice stadium,” Dad said of his home park. “All the amenities, every convenience. But it’s just really  … something.”

“Sterile?” I said.

He smiled.

“Sterile. Exactly.”

Fenway, on the other hand, is certainly not that, especially on a Yankees night. It looks like a place that opened 110 years ago, a handful of days after the Titanic sideswiped that iceberg. The concourses are dimly lit, the lines at the concession stands snarl foot traffic along them, and no breezes reach you under that overhang on a sultry summer night.

But then the sun goes down.

And the lights come up.

And this place you’ve seen a million times on TV glows like a green jewel.

And when Trevor Story and Bobby Dalbec go deep over the Green Monster back-to-back in the home fourth …

The roar, man. The roar.