Fenway Park Celebration Stirs Memories of Red Sox Winning Leave it to Jose Canseco, the new slugger for the Worcester (Mass.) Tornadoes, to speak for the hundreds of former Boston Red Sox gathered Friday on the diamond of their primes. "Wish I could take batting practice just one more time here in fenway," Canseco wrote on Twitter, and here you could look past his antics and say, yes, that makes sense. Who wouldn't want to swing from the same batter's box as Babe Ruth and Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemski and Jim Rice? Who wouldn't want the party to last forever? "I've been to a lot of different events teams have put on," said Reggie Smith, the center fielder for the Impossible Dream Red Sox of 1967. This is the most fun. Now the party is over, or at least suspended indefinitely, at the Fenway Park museum. The Red Sox started their second century here with a 6-2 loss to the Yankees, and they were never really into it. It was their 29th loss in 40 games, dating to last September's collapse, a flop that rivaled any from the franchise's colorful past. This was a day to celebrate all the history, the wonderful and the wrenching. The fans cheered for Bobby Sprowl and Bill Buckner, the ghosts of 1978 and 1986 long buried. There is less affection for the current players, the way things are going. "It's still a very talented team," Manager Bobby Valentine said. Good group of guys. The best group of all, for achievement and personality, was the 2004 team, which grows more fabled and beloved with each passing disappointment. Two of its heroes, Tim Wakefield and Jason Varitek, were here to wheel two legends, Bobby Doerr and Johnny Pesky, out to second base, with David Ortiz in tow. It was a touching scene, like Williams in the golf cart at the 1999 All-Star Game, surrounded by awestruck peers. "Johnny is an icon," said Bruce Hurst, the stalwart left-hander of the 1980s. Bobby Doerr might be the finest gentleman I've ever met in the game. I have very high regard for both of them. Smith spoke reverentially of Pumpsie Green, the second baseman who integrated the Red Sox in 1959 - shamefully late - and got a warm ovation. The cheers were even louder for Terry Francona, Valentine's predecessor, and for Pesky, the grand old man of the franchise and a steady, feisty presence for generations of players. Kevin Millar, the ringleader of 2004, said he was touched to see his old coach. "Full uniform every day," Millar said. "Those days you would be 1 for 15 and the papers are blasting you and you feel terrible, Pesky had a way of coming up to you, putting his arm around you and going, "Son, Ted Williams - you would have been his favorite!" And he'd give you a nice story. To see him and shake his hand again, he's awesome. Millar and Pedro Martinez raised a toast to the park from the dugout roof. It was the only clunky part of the ceremony, Millar lingering up there without knowing quite what to do. I kept saying, 1-5, vamanos! Martinez said, calling Millar by his jersey number. There was no way I could get him to come down. It wasn't 2004. You weren't going to have shots on top of the dugout. Martinez and Millar sat beside each other in the interview room a few minutes later, Millar going full-scale zany. He joked that he was there to announce a comeback for Martinez, because he still has long fingers to manipulate his changeup. Martinez played off Millar, asking for a show of hands, but he really has no desire to pitch. He came back in 2009 to help the Phillies reach the World Series, but there is nothing else to play for. Martinez, now 40, gave his reason with typical elegance. "You know, I went to the first game with my son, my 12-year-old, and it really ticked me to see my son throw the ball wrong," Martinez said. Because if there is something I know, it's how to throw a ball, and when I didn't see my son throwing the ball right, it really hit me hard. It bothered me to see that my son didn't know how to throw a ball because I wasn't home to teach him how to do it. So I decided, let me put it on a balance and see what's heavier, and I think my family took the edge. Martinez called himself a Bostonian and said, perceptively, that he might be the only player to leave the Red Sox as a free agent and still be embraced by the fans. So many others - like the absent Roger Clemens and Johnny Damon - left acrimony behind, but not Martinez. Whenever he returns, he said, it feels like a parade. He reminisced with Millar about the victorious Duck Boat ride on the Charles River after the World Series, how it was still dark out when the players arrived that morning, but they simply could not wait. Millar remembered tending bar, in full uniform and spikes, at a Yawkey Way tavern after the Red Sox clinched a playoff spot in 2003. "The fans were running behind us like we were Rocky Balboa," Millar said. It was like we were running - click, click, click, click - and there was this entire Fenway Park following us. Now you tell me: where can you get that? Fans connect with players at other ballparks, too, but the question was rhetorical. There is only one Fenway, only one franchise with a legacy quite like this. The old days grow more comforting with each passing loss.