09:01 AM EST on Thursday, March 24, 2005

BOSTON -- What a difference a few years makes.

It wasn't too long ago that Red Sox owners were claiming Fenway Park -- which opened its doors five days after the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 -- was nearing the end of its natural life. It can't be saved, they insisted, and has to be replaced . . . with, preferably, a state-of-the-art facility financed partly by the team and partly by the government.

Yesterday, Red Sox owners -- and, granted, these are different folks -- announced with great fanfare that the team would be playing at Fenway Park, in the words of president/CEO Larry Lucchino, "hopefully for generations to come."

And all that late 1990s talk about Fenway being on death's door?

"We've had two structural analyses done," said Janet Marie Smith, the Red Sox' vice president for planning and development, "and both concluded the facility is safe. It needs upkeep, same as any home needs upkeep . . . [But] we believe that with love, care and investment, Fenway Park can survive for several generations."

Thus ends a bizarre chapter in Red Sox history, which began in May 1999, when John Harrington, head of the Yawkey Trust -- which ran the team after the 1976 death of longtime owner Tom Yawkey and the 1992 passing of his widow, Jean -- unveiled plans to build a new park (on land the organization didn't own) across the street from Fenway. The team was already for sale by then, and a new park would be a fitting legacy for Yawkey ownership. Not to mention that a new park would raise the sale price of the team, and the land under the old park could be sold for further profit.

It's not hard to make a case that renovating a 90-year-old facility was cost-prohibitive, and make it the Yawkey Trust did. Any talk of saving Fenway Park, and there was plenty, was dismissed as the unrealistic yearnings of stuck-in-the-mud sentimentalists. And it gained some public traction, since there was a decent amount of support for a new park from people who felt Old Fenway: a) could no longer generate the amount of revenue the Red Sox needed to remain consistent contenders in the modern era and, b) could never provide the creature comforts expected by 21st-century Americans.

Journal photo / Bob Thayer

Mason Chris Cummings, of Beverly, Mass., adds cement to a ledge where a capstone will be placed along a new patio as part of major renovations on the first-base side of Fenway Park.

But plans for New Fenway never got off the ground. The Sox couldn't appropriate the land. The government couldn't provide adequate financial help. Alternate sites were either too expensive or too unrealistic. The project was dead in the water when the Sox, and Fenway Park, were sold in December 2001, to a group headed by Lucchino, John Henry and Tom Werner.

According to Henry and Lucchino, it was Werner who first stepped in front of the we-need-a-new-park train.

"Tom Werner was the one voice out there who said Fenway should be saved," said Henry, who is the Sox' principal owner. "This is a great victory for him. He was the one who said it was feasible to be here long-term."

According to Werner, the choice simply was never properly articulated.

"Since the opening of Camden Yards [in Baltimore in 1992, the first new stadium to combine old-style elements with modern amenities], people have been saying, 'Can we make it like Fenway Park?' when building new facilities," said Werner, the team's chairman. "So the idea of building another Fenway Park [to replace the original] seemed odd.

"The question wasn't, 'Fenway Park or new park?' The question was, 'Could we make improvements to Fenway Park that would make it comparable to, or better than, a new park?' "

When Werner joined forces with Henry and Lucchino to form the group that purchased the team, he set about to answer that question. The person the group turned to was Smith, who had worked with Lucchino in building Camden Yards during Lucchino's days with the Orioles and also helped plan and develop Turner Field in Atlanta.

"Support [for staying at Fenway] improved as people have seen Janet's vision," said Werner.

That vision helped lead to construction of seats atop the left-field wall in 2003, and on the right-field roof in 2004. It also included the opening of a giant concourse beneath the right-field grandstand seats in '03, and another behind the left-field grandstand in '04.

Cynics will say the Sox had little choice but to stay put . . . and they may be right. There's still no viable site for a new stadium in Boston, and the owners -- having spent nearly $700 million on the team and the park in '01 -- are in no position to finance a modern facility on their own.

But in the last three years, they've proven adept at mining revenue out of Fenway from places -- like the top of the left-field wall -- where no revenue was thought to exist. And there's no question they understand the emotional hold Fenway Park has on the fan base.

"After we won the World Series last fall," recalled Werner, "we received so many e-mails from fans that didn't say, 'I remember my first Red Sox game,' but said, 'I remember when my father took me to Fenway Park for the first time.'

"The fact that we can actually now plant our flag here and remain here for the future is something that is exciting for all of us."

Art Martone is the sports editor of the Journal. He can be reached via e-mail at amartone [at] projo.com