HERRIMAN, Utah -- There is, unsurprisingly, plenty of immaculately manicured grass between Ipswitch Way and Yawkey Way. That is, of course, where you’ll also find Pedroia, Varitek and Eovaldi.
But this isn’t Boston. Not even close.
Try the very edge of civilization in the deep suburbia of Herriman, Utah, of all places. Instead of an imposing Green Monster, there are only the looming Oquirrh Mountains (fun fact: from the neighborhood, you can see the edge of the largest open-pit copper mine in the world).
There’s also this gentleman, briefly encountered at his top step on Pedroia Street.
“Do you know that your neighborhood is getting a lot of attention right now?”
He nods vigorously.
That’s because, on Sept. 12, a user on social media made a now-viral post about touring houses and finding this subdivision with streets named only for noteworthy Red Sox figures of the past, where Ipswitch Way and Yawkey Way surround the following streets: Fisk Drive, Remy Road, Pesky Lane, Eovaldi Avenue, Pedroia Street, Xander Lane, Varitek Drive and Boggs Way.
That’s all thanks to a project manager named Brandon Parr, who was baffled when he was called into his manager’s office at EDGEhomes, a Utah-based home building company, on Monday morning, as all this started to take off.
He wasn’t in trouble; he needed to field media requests, thanks to the power of the Internet.
“It's so wild,” Parr said. “It's funny because we started this project in like 2021 and recorded the first phase in 2022, so it's been out there for three or four years now.”
Parr is in his 40s and has lived in Utah his entire life, but there might not be a bigger Red Sox fan anywhere in the Salt Lake Valley. Without a local MLB team, a 7-year-old Parr was enraptured by Wade Boggs’ hitting, so he started following the Red Sox with a passion. Four decades later, he carries a Red Sox water bottle and wears a Red Sox cap into work every day.
He started with EDGE in 2020, and this subdivision in Herriman -- a quickly growing community with picture-perfect developments and brand-new houses springing up as far as the eye can see -- was his first assignment as a project manager in 2021.
It turns out that the builder is responsible for naming any new streets in a proposed project.
“I'm like, 'Really? I get to choose what they are?'” Parr said. “'I’m doing Red Sox.'”
He drafted a list of roughly 25 Red Sox names, then narrowed those down to 10.
But any Red Sox fan will probably be baffled at some of the omissions here. Given 10 streets to name, why on earth isn’t there a David Ortiz, or a Pedro Martinez, or a Ted Williams?
Don’t blame Parr for that; blame municipal policy. For help with that, let’s turn to Jon La Follette, the communications manager for the city of Herriman.
“Talking to MLB.com today, it’s not terribly often that we get to do fun stories like this,” La Follette said with a laugh.
In order for a new group of street names to be approved, he says, the proposed list is first sent by the developer to the city, which examines it and typically approves it unless they find any egregious causes for objection. The city then sends the list to Salt Lake County, which has to cross-check all of the street names to ensure there aren’t any duplicates to any other streets in the county.
So that, then, is the problem with “Ortiz” or “Martinez” or “Williams.” Too common, and too likely to conflict with existing street names -- a particular issue in Salt Lake County, by far the most populous in the state.
“I'm sure there's a ton of Williams Streets or Williams Lanes or Williams Circles,” Parr said. “I'd still like to get one in there. Maybe, like, Teddy Ballgame Court or something.”
Legendary announcer Jerry Remy had just died in October 2021, so he made it on the list as a tribute. Carlton Fisk and Johnny Pesky made the cut as a nod to the foul poles. (Amusingly, the only feedback Parr has ever received from a resident is a story of one who called the city to get Pesky Lane renamed because they felt the word “pesky” had a negative connotation. Supposedly, a city employee explained Johnny Pesky and the pole to that resident, who stood down.)
Xander Bogaerts is one of Parr’s favorite players, and the street had to be named “Xander Lane” and not “Bogaerts Lane” because the latter was too long. Nathan Eovaldi made the cut specifically for his heroics in the 2018 World Series.
But all this leads to the natural follow-up question: If there had been a diehard Yankee fan somewhere along the chain of approval, could they have shot down the proposed Red Sox neighborhood, simply out of spite?
“That's a great question,” La Follette said. “I don't know that they would have that much discretion on whether to approve something or not. I'm sure it would get talked about in their office, but I don't know if that would be, even to a Yankees fan, offensive enough to prevent it from being a street name.”
Parr said he actually does have several diehard Yankees fans on his team, but they would need to take it upon themselves to build any Bronx-themed sub-developments.
EDGE encourages naming creativity in their project managers, and Parr noted that they’ve done themed neighborhoods with streets named for characters and actors from the Marvel Comics Universe, as well as nods to "Seinfeld." Elsewhere in Herriman, there’s a neighborhood with streets named for arches in Arches National Park.
But Parr himself isn’t slowing down in his Red Sox push. He’s responsible for several more active developments in the Salt Lake Valley, and he wants to do another Boston-themed one.
He already snuck Rafael Devers (Devers Drive) and Trevor Story (Story Lane) onto neighboring streets in another development in nearby Riverton, two streets down from a Hanley Ramirez nod (Hanley Lane) -- then put Devers and Story together again a few miles south, in Lehi.
MLB’s official X account posted in the aftermath of Payton Tolle’s immaculate inning on Sunday that a “Tolle Terrace” might be coming soon to a Utah neighborhood near you -- and that might be prescient: Parr cited Tolle, Ceddanne Rafaela and Roman Anthony as his current favorite players.
“Wish I lived out [in Boston] so I could go to more games, but you know, happy living here in Utah, and I'll just keep following the Sox until I die,” Parr said.
“Following the Sox” would be an understatement; he is, quite literally, putting them on the map.