With Fenway retrofit, players get taste of luxury (boxes)

BOSTON (AP) — A pitching mound in a picnic area. Exercise bicycles in the concourse. Lockers in the luxury suites.

Banished from their spring training complex in COVID 19-ravaged Florida to their historic but cozy home, the Red Sox are squeezing any space they can out of Fenway Park for the reboot of spring training that baseball is calling summer camp.

When players arrived last week, they found their lockers set up not in the traditional home clubhouse used since the days of Ted Williams and Carl Yastrzemski but in the upper-deck luxury suites along the first-base line.

“It’s pretty cool eating breakfast in the suite looking out into the field,” first baseman Mitch Moreland said on Monday. “I don’t know if we’ll move back.”

Major league teams, including the Red Sox, have elaborate complexes at their spring training homes to help them prepare for the season, with enough lockers for everyone still trying to make the team and extra fields for them all to get their work in.

But the century-old Fenway Park never had space for too many modern conveniences, let alone the social distancing demands of the coronavirus pandemic. So the Red Sox have had to find the room in unusual places.

The area under the first-base stands became a workout room, with artificial turf over the cement walkway usually trod by fans and a batting cage blocking the concession stands. A mound for pitchers to warm up is under the bleachers in what the team calls the “Big Concourse.”

Part of the players’ parking lot is being used for intake testing.

According to manager Ron Roenicke, no players will be using the clubhouse to store their gear or change into and out of their uniforms. Coaches also needed to find a new space, because the room that traditionally accommodates the...

source https://www.chron.com/sports/article/With-Fenway-retrofit-players-get-taste-of-luxury-15389521.php