A lyric little icebox of a park
At Fenway, aging legends and little dreamers take to skates
The new ice gleamed like silver spread over the carefully manicured outfield turf. The frosty scraping of skates echoed off the grandstands. Bobby Orr, a black and gold blur, whizzed along a background of Monster green.
It was a sports fantasy any Boston fan could appreciate, as Bruins legends climbed onto the ice yesterday for the first skate on the newly built rink in Fenway Park, on a sparkling day as cold as the Red Sox bats in the 2009 playoffs.
Arguably the best spots in this extraordinary confluence of two storied franchises were occupied by Julia Johnson, 8, and her brother, Aidan, 6, stalwarts of the Somerville Mites hockey team. Clad in their team’s red and blue, they skated around the rink as Orr, the Hall of Fame defenseman, playfully pushed them along. Their mother, Karen, cheered them on from behind the glass.
As Aidan skated up to his mother at the end of this once-in-a-lifetime dream, he waxed effusive, not of skating with hockey greats on sacred baseball ground, but of something more immediate. “Mom,’’ the boy shivered. “I’m too cold!’’
OK, so maybe the significance of the moment will hit Aidan in a few more years. It was Orr who seemed as awestruck as a child, standing on ice where second base should be, at the foot of a Green Monster seemingly too high for any slap shot to clear.
“This is something I never thought we’d be doing, skating in the middle of the field at Fenway,’’ he said. “Many of the players out here really learned to play the game outdoors, and to be here in Fenway Park is a phenomenal sight.’’
It was that kind of morning as the Bruins opened the rink that on New Years Day will host the National Hockey League’s Winter Classic matchup between Boston and the Philadelphia Flyers.
The Somerville parents recognized the names on the black and gold sweaters - Bourque, Neely, O’Reilly, Middleton - and the hockey feats they stood for.
For Karen Johnson, 43, a lifelong Bruins fan, suddenly rubbing elbow pads with her childhood heroes was living a dream come true.
“I keep trying to tell them that this is the most exciting day of their life,’’ she said of her shuddering children. “Maybe it’s the most exciting day of my life.’’
The Bruins chose the Somerville team when they found out that Karen Johnson’s husband, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Johnson, is commanding the Lexington-based 211th Military Police Battalion, which is deployed in Iraq.
“If he were home, he’d be here instead of me,’’ Johnson said of her husband. Instead he would have to make do with pictures and a promise from Orr to get together for dinner with the family when he comes home.
“Make sure he calls me,’’ said Orr, leaning toward the Johnson children.
By now, the children had warmed up to the kindly old men in the black and yellow sweaters.
A couple of hours earlier, Orr and other Bruins greats had made a less than notable impression as they waited outside TD Garden for trolleys that would carry them to Fenway.
“Hi, I’m Bob,’’ Orr said to a group of Mites.
“I’m Bob, too!’’ spoke up one.
Blades, the Bruins ursine mascot, was much more exciting. He got squeals of delight as he handed out high fives. Somewhere along the route to Fenway, cheers of “Bruins, Bruins, Bruins’’ faded to cries of, “Are we there yet?’’
Ron Bonney, 44, the coach and sponsor of the Somerville team and a veteran of the first Gulf War, said he had anticipated this sort of reaction from his son, Chris, 6.
“I don’t think he understands the magnitude and the quality of the people who will be on the ice,’’ smiled Bonney, who still cherishes the hockey stick once owned by Orr that he got in 1973. “One day it will sink in.’’
The excitement built as team officials and the Bruins alumni led the children into Fenway, across the territory once patrolled by Ted, Yaz, Rice, and Manny.
The juxtaposition of Sox and pucks peaked when Jason Varitek donned a pair of loaners for a brief twirl around the rink with Orr.
Asked how the ice might affect Fenway’s notoriously treacherous infield, the Red Sox captain opined: “Maybe it will make it better.’’
A nasty crack opened up in the ice at the outfield edge of the rink, drawing mutters of concern from Bruins officials.
“Hey, it’s second base,’’ cracked Jay Miller, a Bruins forward in the 1980s.
As the pros yakked it up and as the parents watched from behind the glass, the little skaters finally ran out of gas.
Even if the magnitude of the event eluded them, they understood, in one case, quite literally, that they were watching history in the making.
“He’s a really good player,’’ Nikki Merkel, an 8-year-old center on the Mites, said of Orr. “I watched the History Channel about him.’’
