Green Monster

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

O, beware, my lord, of jealousy
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on.
--William Shakespeare, OTHELLO.

   Carlton Fisk was recently elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.  His greatest moment was certainly game six of the 1975 World Series (PLEASE SAY THAT WASN'T TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO!!) against the Cincinnati Reds, when he hit a twelfth-inning home run over the left field wall of Fenway Park.
  Fenway Park may be torn down soon, but the Wall will be kept in place as a landmark.  It was painted green in 1947.  When was it first called the Green Monster?
  Dickson's BASEBALL DICTIONARY doesn't give a date.  The RHHDAS (not handy as I write this; Columbia librarian quits at 5 p.m. and locks up special reference works) I believe had 1982.
  I did some checking.

22 October 1975, NEW YORK TIMES, pg. 31, cols. 1-2--Red Smith, "The Great Green Wall of Boston."  (Article says "Fisk lifted a fly ball into the screen above the Great Wall of Boston"--ed.)

22 October 1975, ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, pg. 1F, col. 3--The ball smacks into the yellow screen inside the left field foul pole and drops into the net behind the Green Monster.  And Boston erupts like a match tossed into gasoline.
   ("Tin on Green Monster May Have Saved Lynn" is the article on page 3F, cols. 3-4.)

13 July 1999, PALM BEACH POST, pg. 1C--Then came summer of '67.  I landed a job as a parking lot attendant at Fenway.  Job heaven, almost right under The Wall.  We never called the left-field wall the Green Monster.  I think a national TV commentator must have coined that phrase.  It was always The Wall--37 feet high, a batter's dream, fielder's terror.