Good news for Bill Mueller, John Valentin, Roger Clemens and Jason Varitek: In about 200 years, their numbers will grace the façade at Fenway Park.
Bad news for Carl Yastrzemski, Ted Williams, Jim Rice, Carlton Fisk and Pedro Martinez: Their numbers apparently no longer will be retired. Also, the world will be trapped in a post-apocalyptic nuclear winter.
Eh, can’t win them all.
As you probably heard by now, the new video game “Fallout 4” is set in futuristic Boston — albeit with some liberties taken with the landscape and the fact that it’s all, you know, a wasteland. A decimated Friendly Fenway is a key piece of the story, too, as a place called Diamond City.
The Boston Globe played through the game and gave its impressions, but buried within a photo gallery of screenshots from the game, Boston Red Sox diehards will discover a glaring mistake.
Image via The Boston Globe/Bethesda Game Studios
That’s the right-field façade above, complete with the numbers retired by the Red Sox franchise.
There’s Bobby Doerr’s No. 1, of course, and Joe Cronin’s No. 4, followed by the more recently (to 2015, anyway) retired No. 6 of Johnny Pesky. Then, naturally, there’s No. 11 for — wait, what?
The rest of the plaques, some of which are hard to make out, are Nos. 11, 13, 21 and 33. Those numbers weren’t retired as of fall 2015.
Does the mistake ruin the game? Probably not. But it is strange Bethesda Game Studios would go to the lengths of adding such detail yet not do a quick Google search to make sure it used the right numbers. Or maybe it’s a plot twist that Pedro, Fisk and Yaz had some role in causing the end of the world and the Red Sox responded by taking down their numbers.
In that case, we’d support their decision.
