Sense of Place: Meet the man soundtracking game day at Fenway Park

At 112 years old, Fenway Park is the oldest Major League Baseball stadium in the U.S. While the Boston Red Sox are the main attraction, there’s another performance happening on game day.

For our Sense of Place: Boston series, we sat down with Josh Kantor, the organist at Fenway Park since 2003.

Nestled in a corner of the stadium’s luxury clubhouse, Kantor plays his double-decker electric organ. He has a perfect view of the action on the field — which he needs to seamlessly weave music into the flow of the game.

Josh Kantor at Fenway Park | photo by Corwin Wickersham

“It goes a long way if you can anticipate when there’s going to be a pinch hitter, see a double play unfolding, or recognize an infield fly rule or you know when a pitching change is about to happen. All of those little things that come from watching a lot of baseball,” he says.

Kantor explains how he tackles the unpredictability of gameday, how he auditioned for the job, and how he handles song requests from the crowd.

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Miguel Perez. Our senior producer is Kimberly Junod and our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.