Fly Ball Crashed Through Fenway Park’s Green Monster Scoreboard Light

Baseball keeps giving fans things they’ve never seen before.
Fly Ball Crashed Through Fenway Park’s Green Monster Scoreboard Light
Fly Ball Crashed Through Fenway Park’s Green Monster Scoreboard Light /

The Green Monster at Fenway Park has produced plenty of funky plays over its more than 110 years of history, but one particularly strange play Wednesday night might have been a first.

In the second inning, Royals center fielder Kyle Isbel drilled a line drive to left field, over the head of Red Sox outfielder Masataka Yoshida. Instead of bouncing off of the Green Monster, the ball smashed through one of the built-in lights in the wall used for counting outs. Yoshida was baffled as he looked to retrieve the ball off the wall before eventually spotting it inside the light. The ball going out of play meant it was scored as a ground-rule double, sending Matt Duffy back to third after he had crossed home plate amidst the hunt for the ball. Maikel Garcia flied out on the next at-bat to strand Duffy and end the inning.

Here’s a look at the mind-bending play. 

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While it’s hard to know for sure whether Duffy would have scored had the ball bounced normally off the wall, the play had a significant impact on the game. The Red Sox wound up winning 4–3, so one run could have made all the difference.

Boston manager Alex Cora joked postgame that it was nice for something to finally go the struggling Red Sox’ way.

“I’ve never seen that. Not even in BP,” Cora said, per NESN. “We go over the rules and they always talk about if the ball gets stuck in the Monster. And I’m like, ‘That’s not going to happen.’ But it did.”

It was a reminder of the lovable quirks of Fenway, which is somehow still finding ways to surprise fans. 

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Kevin Sweeney
KEVIN SWEENEY

Kevin Sweeney is a staff writer at Sports Illustrated covering college basketball and the NBA draft. He joined the SI staff in July 2021 and also serves host and analyst for The Field of 68. Sweeney is a Naismith Trophy voter and ia member of the U.S. Basketball Writers Association. He is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.