From the top of the Green Monster to the depths of the grandstand, Fenway Park seats 37,755 fans. For more than a century, they’ve arrived every summer in their caps and jerseys, taking the green line to meet old friends, or flying cross-country to see the place for the first time. They’ve called out to hot dog vendors in the stands and booed visiting players in the bullpen. They’ve cheered when the game was on the line, gasped when a ball was in the air, and erupted when it went over the fence. They’ve been an orchestra building a ballpark symphony.
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And as of now, all 37,755 of those fans are in the hands – quite literally – of the most powerful Red Sox fan in franchise history.
That’s not hyperbole. Unless protocols change and a few fans are allowed through the gates, all crowd noise at Fenway Park this summer will come from an iPad, connected to the stadium sound system and controlled by a lone individual who, for the time being, would like to stay anonymous.
Can you blame them?
The next few intrasquad games will be test runs of a digital crowd noise machine. While the players prepare on the field, a Red Sox employee will be tucked inside the stadium, mastering a device that’s part computer and part instrument.
“It’s definitely interesting,” senior vice president of fan services and entertainment Sarah McKenna said. “But I also think it’s a lot of responsibility to be the individual who is…”
She paused for nine seconds trying to find the right words.
“… The individual who is responsible for the emotions of an entire fan base?”
The product itself is basically an iPad preloaded with ballpark sounds. There’s a third party involved, but the device came to the Red Sox from Major League Baseball, and it’s McKenna’s understanding that the sounds came from a video game before being refined by the league office. The Red Sox got a professional demonstration during an intrasquad game on Friday, but now it’s all theirs to be controlled by one person.
It turns out, building a stadium soundtrack starts with a bed of crowd noise; the kind of drone that fills the ballpark. The team’s new device offers three options – low, medium and high – and when that bed of noise is played on massive stadium speakers, the place gets loud in a hurry.
“When you start getting into the high bed, like the high emotion, you’re like, ‘Wow, this sounds like a really exciting game!’” McKenna said. “But the low bed sounds, to me, much more like the ballpark is just opening up and we’re getting underway.”
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On top of that bed, the operator can add flourishes. Cheers, obviously, but also gasps of anticipation, sighs of disappointment, and shouts of surprise. When the product representative came to Fenway Park for last week’s demonstration, members of the organization asked him to quite literally play the hits, requesting that he simulate things like a Red Sox double or a bases-loaded walk.
“There are all these different emotions,” McKenna said. “You can have a moderate excitement, a mild excitement, big-time excitement. You can add in, like, ‘Ohhhhhh, YAY!!!’ and it all depends on how you push the different buttons in sequence.”
And yes, there are negative emotions as well. McKenna said she didn’t hear any boos in the mix, but she did hear the unmistakable disappointment of a fly ball that didn’t quite leave the yard. She heard moments of tension, surges of anticipation and bursts of euphoria. Which emotion goes with which situation is all in the hands of the operator.
“You need to (press buttons) in a very specific order, so we’re very lucky that it’s user friendly,” McKenna said. “But the person who is running it really needs to be dialed in and watching every single pitch, because I mean, if you have a high, inside pitch that your batter gets (near his head), are you going to do the, ‘OOOooooo?’ Because you can! It’s there!”
The trial run on Friday seemed to be a hit with the Red Sox players. It’s not a substitute for the real thing, but it sure beats silence and echo. It also might help drown out typical in-game conversations on the mound or keep a batter from hearing the shuffle of a catcher setting up outside behind the plate.
“I kind of just realized how loud the speakers actually get when there aren’t fans underneath the speakers,” Matt Barnes said. “It definitely is loud, but I thought it worked well. I think having some white noise in the background is definitely good. That’s kind of what we’re accustomed to… I think trying to make it as realistic as possible and kind of give that feel is definitely important.”
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McKenna’s understanding is that sounds can be added to the program so that an empty Fenway Park might chant “Let’s go Red Sox!” or “Xan-der! Bo-gaerts!” But the team just got its own copy of the device, so it might take some time to work out all the possibilities. It’s crucial that all sounds fit seamlessly into the mix, so adding team-specific flourishes might not be as simple as recording an old NESN broadcast.
And creating the ballpark soundscape won’t be as simple as hitting a “home run” button when a Red Sox player goes deep. The sounds of baseball are more nuanced than that. Not every 3-2 pitch gets the crowd on its feet, not every strikeout makes them groan with frustration, and not every deep fly ball is cause for breathless anticipation.
It’s entirely possible the Red Sox will hear some unusual reactions this summer, especially early. There might be a burst of excitement at the wrong time, or muted response in a pivotal moment. One good thing, McKenna said: she’s pretty sure the negative reaction buttons are kept far away from the positive buttons.
“The individual who has to run it has to be really locked in,” McKenna said. “Like, living and dying with every pitch.”
Wouldn’t it be fun – just once – to give this anonymous voice of Red Sox Nation a six-pack at first pitch, just to really get the effect of a crowd gradually enjoying all the ballpark has to offer? That might be graduate-level crowd noise production.
For right now, the voice of an entire fan base has enough to deal with just figuring out the basics and determining what kind of crowd he or she is going to be on a given night.
“Truth be told, this person’s plate was already full,” McKenna said. “I don’t know that the person is dying to be named… Would you want everyone to know that you’re the one? I don’t know.”
For the time being, maybe not. But a month from now, if this goes well, the team is into it, and the public agrees? At that point, the voice of Red Sox Nation just might want his or her name on the video board for a curtain call.
And the crowd will go wild.
(Photo: Charles Krupa / AP)
Chad Jennings is a staff writer for The Athletic covering the Boston Red Sox and Major League Baseball. He was on the Red Sox beat previously for the Boston Herald, and before moving to Boston, he covered the New York Yankees for The Journal News and contributed regularly to USA Today. Follow Chad on Twitter @chadjennings22
