High-definition heroes

RANDOLPH - Kim Herget settled into a reclining, padded seat in a nearly sold-out movie theater last night and watched the Red Sox take the field.

It wasn't Fenway Park, she conceded, but there were advantages to catching the game at the Showcase Cinemas.

"The only thing that it's missing is the bright lights and the green field," said Herget, 25, who traveled to the cinema from her home in Marshfield, about 20 miles away.

Even in a theater with dimmed lights, there was a touch of Fenway: vendors roaming the aisles, for example, with the familiar call, "Hot dogs he-ah!"

"The beer is colder, and you don't have to get up when someone passes you," Herget said. "There's really comfortable seats and a good crowd. There's even a rowdy group of young guys up back, just like in the bleachers."

Last night was the first of seven games being broadcast live this summer in movie theaters with high-definition screens. The $5 ticket cost less than the cheapest seat at Fenway and was cheaper, too, than "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" in the next theater over.

Red Sox fans nearly filled the 400-seat theater in Randolph, one of four cinemas to broadcast last night's game. Hundreds of others watched in widescreen high-definition on movie screens in Providence, West Springfield, and Worcester.

At 58 feet by 25 feet, the screen dwarfed the average television set. Fans couldn't smell the grass, but they could nearly count the blades. In closeup, Pedro Martinez's hair spanned several hundred square feet.

Inside the air-conditioned cinema, away from the heat of an early summer night, a concession cart hawked the staples: beer and hot dogs, minus peanuts and Cracker Jack, though an employee said the theater wasn't ruling them out for future games. Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs filled in for Fenway Franks, and Budweiser was on tap. And the beer stopped flowing at the end of the seventh inning, just like at Fenway.

The crowd grew increasingly boisterous in the sixth inning, launching chants of "Here we go Manny," and "Let's go Red Sox." Fans jumped to their feet and cheered after Johnny Damon, drove in the night's only run in the bottom of the seventh inning.

With the aroma of spilled beer and popcorn hanging in the air, Dan Jameson, 17, of Holbrook, led the night's final chant in the top of the ninth: "It's all over." Jameson, who left the game in the middle to make a snack run at a nearby supermarket, said that other than the food, the night was perfect. "It was air conditioned and cheap," he said. "I can't wait to see the Yankees here. They're going to need several theaters for that."

Chuck Steedman, senior director of business affairs for the Red Sox, said the team worked with Showcase Cinemas, New England Sports Network, and cable companies Comcast, Cox Communications, and Charter Communications to plan the logistics of showing the games.

"We know that tickets are fairly scarce this year, and we wanted to give people the opportunity to see something that, while you're not at the ball park, it's as close as you could ever hope," Steedman said.

Last fall, as part of a contest, Showcase Cinemas received more than 25,000 ticket requests at the Randolph theater for a sold-out Sept. 5 Red Sox-Yankees game, according to Jennifer Hanson, a spokeswoman for National Amusements, which runs the four theaters broadcasting the Red Sox games. That success led to this summer's program, she said.

Jenn Abelson can be reached at abelson@globe.com.