Phillies have found it tough to win at Fenway Park in recent years

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Fenway Park during Red Sox 4-1 series victory over Phillies in 1915 World Series

Major League Baseball has been doing this Inter-league stuff in the regular season for just over two decades now. The Phillies and American League’s Boston Red Sox will face off as a pair of first place teams over the next two nights at Fenway Park in Boston.

Fenway Park is particularly famous to opposing fans due to its huge left field wall. The “Green Monster” stands 37.2 feet tall and is just 310 feet from home plate. For the Phillies, it has been the stuff of nightmares.

The Phillies have visited Fenway Park on 10 separate occasions over the last 21 seasons prior to this one. Those visits have seen the two club square off in 28 regular season games in Boston. The Phillies have walked out a winner just nine times. That’s a miserable .321 winning percentage.

Things weren’t so bad in the early years of Inter-league play. The host Bosox swept the Phillies in the first-ever three game series at Fenway Park back in 1997.

But over the next seven seasons between 1998-2004, the Phillies captured six of the 11 games spanning four series. In one memorable game on June 9, 2001 the Phillies beat Boston’s Hall of Fame ace Pedro Martinez 5-2 behind the pitching of Omar Daal.

However, since the Red Sox ended their “Curse of the Bambino” by winning the 2004 World Series, things have not been good for the Phillies. The Red Sox swept a three-game series between the two clubs in 2006 and have gone 11-2 against the Phillies under the backdrop of their Green Monster over the last five series between the teams in Boston.

A year ago, the Red Sox pulled off a pair of dramatic walkoff victories against the Phillies at Fenway. That gives Boston five straight victories over the Phillies at Fenway Park entering tonight’s contest.

After losing three of four to the last-place Cincinnati Reds over this past weekend, the Phillies cannot afford to get swept in Boston. A loss tonight would make it four defeats in a row, something that the team has experienced just twice all season in pushing to the top of the NL East. They have yet to drop five in a row.

If the Phillies are going to come back home for their big Alumni Weekend still in first place, they are likely going to have to figure out a way to beat the Boston Red Sox in front of the Green Monster. That will be even tougher this year. Boston’s record of 74-33 is the best in baseball.

Originally published at Phillies Nation as "Fenway's Green Monster has been the stuff of Phillies nightmares"

World Series 2013: The Best in Baseball

If over the next 2-3 days someone tries to tell you that they have some kind of special insight into who is going to win the 2013 World Series, then they are simply lying. These are clearly the two best teams in baseball, and you'd do well to simply toss a coin to pick a winner.

Most pundits and talking heads, as well as tons of amateurs and partisans, will indeed try to pick a winner. Some will inevitably end up correct. But going into it, these two teams are so evenly matched that legitimate arguments can be made for either.

The 109th MLB World Series will feature the best team, based on regular season record, from both the National League and the American League for the first time since 1999. Both the Boston Red Sox and the Saint Louis Cardinals won 97 games to pace their respective leagues.

Also, each of the two teams will have reached the Fall Classic after having battled through similar paths, first vanquishing divisional rivals, and then arguably the 2nd best teams in their respective leagues. Saint Louis beat the Pittsburgh Pirates and then the LA Dodgers, while Boston beat the Tampa Bay Rays and then the Detroit Tigers.

This will also mark not only the 2nd World Series meeting between the NL's Cardinals and the AL's Red Sox in the last decade, but will be a matchup between a pair of franchise's that have each won two World Series titles within this past decade.