Moment #99: The Green Monster is Painted Green | MLB's ALL-TIME MOMENTS

This MLB offseason, we are starting a countdown of the 100 greatest moments in baseball history. These moments helped make the game what it is today. They all had an impact in the short or long term and endure to this day in the hearts and minds of baseball fans everywhere. We continue with #99: when the Green Monster got its color, setting the stage for its place in baseball lore.

The Green Monster is one of the most recognizable venue features in professional sports, but for the first 35 years of Fenway Park's existence, its name wouldn't have been fitting. After opening in 1912, Fenway Park featured tons of advertisements on it's gigantic left field wall, known simply as "The Wall" for most of its existence.

Fans could sit in seats in front of the wall, hardly helping the feature have an effect on the game. This embankment known as "Duffy's Cliff" helped mark the outermost region of the park spanning from left to center field. In 1947, though, shortly after the end World War II, the Red Sox decided they wanted to give their unique ballpark feature a makeover.

As Dan Roche of Boston's WBZ-TV reports, a man named Emil Disario was commissioned to come up with the color they would paint the wall. As the head colorist for theCalifornia Paint Company, it supposedly took Disario just hours to come up with the winning concoction. Once officials saw his creation, they loved it and a legend was born.

Surprisingly, Disario has never been to Fenway Park since they painted the wall his color of green. When he tells people he created the distinct color, they often don't believe him. Luckily for him, he has a certificate of authenticity from the Red Sox and California Paint saying he is the one who literally put the "green" in Green Monster.

That 1947 offseason was a pivotal one in baseball's history as one of the sports' longest-standing and most recognizable landmarks was made mostly into what it still is more than 70 years later. Of course, more improvements have been made on the wall since, but the color has remained the same.

In 1976, the wall was switched over to hard plastic. That's a far cry from the evolution it went through from wood to concrete and tin. You can hear that hard plastic whenever a ball is hit off the wall and makes a loud "ping" sound. It wasn't until 1996 that seats were actually added to the top of the wall, some of the coolest and most prime seats now featured at Fenway Park.

Even the Red Sox's mascot is named and designed after the existence of the Green Monster. His name is literally, "Wally the Green Monster" and is green just like the left field fence at the ballpark. Try to think of another professional sports mascot that is directly named after a feature of a stadium.

If it weren't for a fire in 1933, the wall, green or not, likely wouldn't be what it is today. As you might imagine, a wall made of wood, as "The Wall" was during the fire in 1933 is prone to fire damage. Concrete and tin replaced the wood in 1934, but that wasn't the most significant aspect of the rebuild. "Duffy's Cliff" was leveled, making what would eventually be known as The Green Monster a feature that would actually have an impact on games.

In addition to moving the seats from out in front of the wall, the base of the wall took its modern form. Many players and other people connected with the Red Sox have signed their names on the inside of that base over the years, making it one of the wall's most unique features.

The fire got the ball rolling on what was the beginning of the birth of our modern-day Green Monster, but without the decision in 1947 to redesign its look, we might now be calling it "The Ad Monster". Luckily for baseball fans everywhere, that didn't happen and Fenway Park's historic wall got its color.

It's become so famous among Red Sox and baseball fans that you can now purchase Benjamin Moore paint that is the exact color of the wall. One would imagine that color, which was created by Disario more than 70 years ago, is used in more than a couple man caves in Boston and throughout the country.