Of course, the primary reason I chose Boston for my vacation destination is that I could get to see a few Red Sox games at Fenway Park. Dating back to 1912, it’s the oldest MLB stadium still in active use. It’s been tweaked and upgraded and expanded over the decades, but let’s face it – the place is showing its age.

Given the oddly shaped plot of land it’s on, and the need to fit in that tiny space, there’s not much you can really do with it.

The seats are small (compared to the average size of the bottom of a 21^st Century American), the aisles are cramped, and the stairways are steep and narrow.

And don’t forget columns that don’t show up on the seating charts….

Great seats, eh, buddy?

The concourses, such as they are, are narrow, dark, and confusing. While it is true that Lansdowne Street at the east side of the stadium serves as a “main concourse” with its bars, food carts, and souvenir vendors, the selection is still very limited.

To brag about the selection at Citi Field, you can get some sort of soft-serve ice cream at every stadium. At Citi Field, they also have a couple of “WOWfulls” booths / carts. You’ve heard of waffle cones, right? How about a freshly-made Hong Kong style egg waffle, rolled into a cone, and then filled with an ice cream sundae?

Not my photo, but WOULD EAT.

One should also point out Vegan City, way off in the right field corner. They’re just one of the places where vegan food is available. In fact, most displayed menus have indicators for their vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free options.

You kind of have to excuse all that, given that they can’t really do much with the place. They (and Wrigley Field, for that matter) would need a complete teardown-and-rebuild-in-place, as was done with Yankee Stadium in the early 1970s. There’s no way that fans would stand for that. A fresh coat of paint – perhaps something in a lighter color – in the “under the stands” concourses every Spring, plus some better lighting and signage down there, would be a huge help. But there’s no reason they can’t upgrade the “fan experience”.

I went to a few games at Citi Field this year to see the Mets. There, the interactive fan activities included:

• Trivia quizzes – and not just the Q&A put on the scoreboard, but two people asking specific fans the questions.

• T-shirt cannons firing into the stands – and one where a chosen fan got a chance to launch a t-shirt into the “Home Run Apple” in centerfield.

• Pull a truck over a line in so many seconds.

• For the kids, a chance to be on the field and “steal” a base: run, grab it, and carry it back over a Finish Line in 15 seconds.

• Also for the kids, a chance to see how many T-ball “home runs” a lucky kid can hit in a certain amount of time.

There were prizes (mostly gift cards) for just being chosen, with bigger prizes for actually winning the contest. They all had corporate sponsors, by the way.

The only things I noticed at Fenway were their “50/50” fundraising raffle for the Jimmy Fund (a worthy cause, to be sure, but boring in execution) and a “Dance Off” thing for fans where the “best” “dancer” on the video board (as chosen by fan applause) got a certificate for a pair of shoes. Yawn.

Fenway has their thing where they play and sing “Sweet Caroline” in the middle of the eighth inning.

Sorry, but I’ll take Citi Field’s “Lazy Mary” by Lou Monte any day….

By the way, if the Red Sox insist on continuing to wear those yellow and blue uniforms, they should change their name to the Boston Marathoners.

Fun Fact: Some scoreboard numbers are changed from the outside.