If you watch the Red Sox on NESN with any regularity, you know this man.
His name is Dennis Drinkwater, and he has the best seat in Fenway Park for every game.
He is the guy with the blond hair who sits directly behind home plate, one seat off center, looking over the catcher’s right shoulder.
Night in and night out, he gets more face time on TV than any of the players.
So how did he get this seat, and what’s it like to be the envy of Red Sox Nation?
We tried to find out.
We e-mailed.
No reply.
We called his people and asked if they would have him call us. They said they would.
He didn’t call.
So we called his people back again. They said he got the message. We asked his people again to ask him to call us, pretty please.
He didn’t call back.
So we did some Googling.
Dennis Drinkwater is the president of Giant Glass, an auto glass replacement and repair company with five locations throughout Massachusetts.
Giant Glass is also responsible for the jingle:
1-800-54-Giant.
1-800-54-Giant.
1-800-54-Giant.
So ubiquitous is this little ditty that it was even featured in a Stephen King novel called “The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.”
The following information is from a 2005 Boston Globe article:
Drinkwater has had his seat – actually seats, four of them – since they were added to the ballpark in 2003.
People often come up to him and say, “Hey, you’re the guy behind home plate.”
His seat puts him closer to the catcher than the pitcher is.
He doesn’t take vacations during the baseball season.
He does not like people who use cellphones during the game.
People who sit near him call him “eight and two-thirds” because he usually leaves with two out in the bottom of the ninth to get a jump on the traffic.
He is often accompanied by his wife, children or grandchildren.
For a game in 2005, his guest was Robert Redford.
When the season is over, Drinkwater goes to a lot of Giants and Patriots football games.
Exactly what he pays for his four Fenway seats is hard to pin down because his company does a lot of advertising with the Red Sox, and he may or may not get a break.
However, according to the Red Sox website, a single-game seat in the “Dugout Box Infield” section – the most expensive in the park – has a base price of $312.
If you multiply that times four seats, times 81 regular season games, times the increased prices for playoff games, you are playing in the $100,000 ballpark.
That’s a lot of windshields.
Contact Jim Shea at shea@courant.com.
