Each afternoon since what would have been opening day, the Fenway Park organist has been livestreaming concerts of ballpark music and other fan requests.
BOSTON (AP) — It’s 3 o’clock, about the time they’d be getting ready for the seventh-inning stretch at an afternoon Red Sox game. Josh Kantor settles onto the bench of the Yamaha Electone organ in his living room and clicks on his wife’s iPhone to begin another show.
Each afternoon since what would have been opening day, the Fenway Park organist has been livestreaming concerts of ballpark music and other fan requests on Facebook in an attempt to recreate the community feeling baseball fans might be missing during the sport’s shutdown.
“Part of the experience of going to a ballgame is chatting with your neighbors. And we’re in a time right now where there aren’t necessarily opportunities for people to have that,” Kantor said. “For half an hour a day, ideally people can just forget all their stresses and be a little bit refortified to then go face those stresses afterwards.”
A 47-year-old part-time library assistant and gig musician, Kantor has been playing the organ at Red Sox games since 2003, filling the Fenway air with players’ walk-up music and keeping things light during replay reviews and rain delays. After this year’s baseball season was put on hold because of the coronavirus outbreak, a friend suggested that Kantor put on a livestream concert to mark what would have been the Red Sox opener on March 26.
