The Boston Red Sox Tuesday, March 30, 2021 * The Boston Globe At Fenway this year, players will abandon the suite life and get back in the clubhouse Alex Speier Anxiety engulfed the Red Sox in the wake of reliever Matt Barnes’s recent positive COVID-19 test, a reminder of the vulnerability within the shared space of a clubhouse during a pandemic. Ultimately, the unease proved temporary, as Barnes tested negative several times over the next 48 hours, resulting in his clearance (along with eight other players who’d been isolated as a result of contact tracing) to return to the team. Yet it served as a reminder of what baseball teams may confront in the year to come — and that the Red Sox have a very different clubhouse setup to contain the spread of the virus this year. A year ago, Red Sox players had the most luxurious accommodations in the history of Fenway Park. With a need to implement social distancing and other safety protocols, the Red Sox abandoned their clubhouse and got creative, relocating players and coaches to luxury suites. The suites, which housed two players each, proved effective in keeping the players safe, healthy, and comfortable. When players reported for the summer training period in July, they were dazzled by the setup. But the suites came with a drawback. Player interactions dwindled. Familiar rituals such as conversations over meals were lost. For coaches and front office staff, the dispersal made it difficult to locate players and thus to coach and help them. By contrast, on road trips, the team was together in visiting clubhouses large enough to maintain social distancing. Those trips remained safe — no Red Sox players were infected with COVID-19 — and reinforced the sense that something had been lost in the suite setup. It’s impossible to say whether the setup played a role in the Sox’ poor performance at Fenway Park, where they went 11-20 for a .355 winning percentage that was their third-worst since the park’s opening in 1912. (They were 13-16 on the road.) But a consensus formed among team members that the configuration certainly didn’t help. “The player response was appreciative that the team was looking out for them and went to great lengths to make them as comfortable as possible,” said assistant general manager Eddie Romero. “[But] there was definitely something missing in the team-building environment. “It was nobody’s fault. It was all done with the best of health intentions. But over the course of the season, it did have an effect on the overall camaraderie and chemistry of the team, just because you found yourself isolated in the suites a lot.” That won’t be the case this year — both out of preference and necessity. With the return of fans to Fenway, suites weren’t an option. But even if they had been, the team had already determined to return to shared spaces, with an understanding that diligence with protocols — masking, testing, congregating in open air at the ballpark, safe behavior away from it — could allow that. A group of team officials — including executive vice president Jonathan Gilula, assistant GMs Romero and Raquel Ferreira, medical director Larry Ronan, trainer Brad Pearson, senior VP of ballpark operations Pete Nesbit, the facilities operation team of Jon Lister, Donnie Gardiner, and Alex Spader, and senior VP of fan services Sarah McKenna — worked to balance health, safety, and team needs. Some of the alterations that were introduced in 2020 — a batting cage and strength and conditioning facilities in the concourse down the right-field line, for instance — will remain in place, at least while Fenway’s capacity remains capped at 12 percent. “That will need to be revisited down the road as more fans are welcomed back to Fenway, hopefully in the not-too-distant future,” said Gilula. The main clubhouse will once again be the primary player hub, but with a reduced capacity. About one out of every three lockers will be used, with plexiglass dividers installed between players. With fewer players in the main clubhouse, the Sox will have auxiliary locker areas. The training room will be converted for player lockers, and the area typically used for media interviews (rendered unnecessary for now by the shift to Zoom) will be transformed into the training room. “We can’t really increase the footprint of the clubhouse,” Ferreira said, “so we tried to do our best that we can with the space we had, just sort of reimagining different areas.” The question of who goes where carries unexpected complexity. For instance, whereas pitchers are usually clustered on one side of the clubhouse and position players on another, the team didn’t want to put all of one player group together out of concern that a single COVID-19 infection could result in an entire segment of the team being lost. Likewise, the manager and the bench coach will be separated. “Alex Cora and Will Venable are like the Vice President and President,” Ferreira said. “We keep them in separate locations.” Just outside the main clubhouse, the Sox will turn their player parking area into a tented, open -air space that will serve as a dining and lounging area as well as a meeting space. There, they hope restore a greater sense of team unity. “We felt [the design] checked all boxes for us in terms of functionality in this environment and adherence to the various health and safety guidelines,” said Gilula. The current configuration of Fenway likely won’t be the final one for 2021. The ballpark is likely to be subject to ongoing revisions, assuming that capacity caps are boosted as vaccinations become more widespread. Eventually, the Sox imagine, the batting cages and strength facilities will move out of the concourse and back into clubhouse space, at which point some of the auxiliary locker areas will be lost. But the Sox insist they’re ready, having seen evidence over the last year of the adaptability of their 109-year-old home. “The intimacy, some of the tight quarters that are synonymous with Fenway, we’ve been able to reinvent some of these areas and make them functional for baseball,” said Gilula. “Equally important, we’re really pleased and humbled with the opportunity to open up Fenway to serve as a mass vaccination site over the last couple months, to open our doors in the middle of a pandemic to accommodate early voting. “In the height of a pandemic, we’ve been able to sort of continuously reinvent Fenway and the space.” A safe call at Fenway: Red Sox do some remodeling to welcome fans back Stan Grossfeld Finally, it’s time to return to the ballpark in person, albeit in smaller numbers, and Red Sox Nation can breathe a socially distant sigh of relief. Since Feb. 1, New Englanders have loved to get vaccinated under the grandstand at Fenway Park. They scooped up a free “I got vaccinated at Fenway Park” souvenir button and then walked up a ramp to a tented area in left field to take a selfie. Bob Jump of Lowell didn’t even blink when he got one of the last of the 56,214 shots that were administered last Saturday. That’s two thousand more shots than there are seats at the home of the Evil Empire at Yankee Stadium. “It’s great to get it at Fenway Park,” says Jump. “I haven’t been here since I was a teenager during Yastrzemski games. I’d love to go to a game here. I’d take my granddaughter.” Now he has that chance. For the season opener scheduled for Thursday, state officials will allow Fenway Park to be at 12 percent of capacity, or about 4,500 people. Fans won’t have to have their temperature taken entering the ballpark, but they will have to fill out a health questionnaire on the MLB ballpark app that asks general questions about their health and any symptoms they may be having. They will enter the park through “neighborhood zones” near their seats. Seating will be in socially distant pods of two or four seats. There is plexiglass and hand sanitizer at all the concession stands and throughout the park. The ballpark is sparkling clean. And groundskeeper Dave Mellor has done his magic; the field is perfectly manicured. Things are slowly returning to normal. Gone are the green-tented auxiliary dugouts that housed players in lower box seats last year. Luxury suites will no longer house players. The right field concourse has been partitioned off to allow for a batting cage and strength and conditioning area. There’s also something new to aim for. Players can take a shot at hitting the new Moderna ad on the Green Monster in left-center. Fan interaction with players will be limited, though. According to MLB safety protocols, there will be no autographs signed or balls flipped into the stands. For social distancing reasons, the Sox will now occupy two clubhouses. The original clubhouse has been remodeled so that each player will have three stalls, surrounded by sheets of plexiglass. The trainer’s room has been converted into more locker room space. The media room will be used for the trainer’s room. Outside the ballpark between Van Ness St. and Gate D, the jigsaw puzzle that was the players’ parking lot is being converted into a tented, open-air players dining area and lounge for players. Family rooms have been converted to COVID testing rooms. “Last year, we had free rein of the place with no fans,” says Red Sox chief operating officer Jonathan Gilula.