It was the hottest, stickiest day of the summer that I've been forced to commute through thus far. Also: a game day—for the Red Sox that is. Every day, I take deep pleasure in walking by Fenway Park on my way to work and normally, I consider myself very lucky to live near it; like in some small way, I have some part of this incredible and historic ballpark to myself because I live in the nieghborhood. But the downside of that is that several nights a week during the summer, thirty thousand other people also come to take their own part of it.

A good number of these people get there via the T, aka the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, which is also, incidentally, how I get home from work.

These Red Sox people, these T riders, they are not your typical T commuters. They do not obey the no-eye-contact, no-talking, move-to-the-rear rules. They clump in large groups, wearing Nomar and Pedro jerseys. They are never prepared for which side the doors will open on. They comment, loudly, on how crowded the train is, how hard it is to avoid falling, and which stop is it again?

They often get confused, staying on past the Kenmore stop to the stop labeled Fenway because it does seem logical, but in fact, the Fenway stop is for The Fenway, not Fenway Park. It's only a few minutes walk, but I often see them, looking confused in the Bed and Bath parking lot, wondering where exactly the turnstyles are.

On this particular day, I had managed to get squeezed into a car next to a very talkative family, including their grandmother, who repeatedly commented how "This is just like those Japanese subways you hear about! Remember how he was saying they pack them in like sardines? Tokyo subway!" The father felt the need to make his son (who was about three) talk to everyone in the car. "Say 'My name is Adam.'" "Say 'This is my first baseball game.'" "Say 'I grew up a Cubs fan.'" Then, the man takes a moment to let everyone know that though he is from out of town, he did, in fact, cry for the Red Sox in '86.

The mother is holding one of those claw grabber things—the kind with some sort of head at one end of a stick, and at the other, there's a handle. When you grab the handle, the head has some sort of mouth that opens and closes? (I tried to find a picture of this online, but apparently, I am not using the correct technical term. Sadly, I can't describe it very well, so either you get me or you don't. Sorry.) Every time my arm was jostled, it would bump the handle, making a dinosaur's jaws snap open and shut in my face. I did my best to maintain my steely commuter face, making it clear to everyone that though I was getting off at the same stop as these Red Sox people who crowd our T's, I was most surely not one of them.

It was hot and sticky and though it was crowded, the father made things feel unnecessarily more crowded by placing himself at an angle that made it impossible for me to avoid quasi-hugging him if I was to remain holding onto the handle—which was very necessary as I was teetering on the edge of the stairs. I held my head up high—so as to get a whiff of the slightly less-breathed air, and did my best to avoid laughing.