In a renovated ballpark, New England's beloved Red Sox celebrate their home opener in style -- beating the Blue Jays and welcoming back players from the 1946 pennant-winning team.

01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, April 12, 2006

BY SCOTT MacKAY
Journal Staff Writer

BOSTON -- Even if your grandfather died during the Kennedy administration, if he somehow were allowed to walk the streets again, he would recognize Fenway Park in its traditional glory on the most informal holiday in New England, Opening Day.

Up in the stands, the ballpark looked better than ever yesterday as it celebrated its 95th opener; off-season renovations have removed the ugly glass bubble known as the .406 club.

New seats and pavilions have given fans better sight lines and Fenway an appearance closer to what your granddad saw, when Ted Williams played left field and the corporate swells and conspicuous consumption celebs stuck to yachting or golf.

Out on the field yesterday was one of New England's favorite all-time players, Hall of Famer Bobby Doerr, the second baseman from the 1946 team that went all the way to the World Series, only to lose in seven games to St. Louis.

Doerr was one of six living members of the 1946 team honored yesterday by the team on the 60th anniversary of their American League pennant-winning season.

And so what if Opening Day has become a bit like everything else in a money-and-media-drenched society and some of the fancy new seats cost as much as Nantucket real estate. On a sun-washed spring day, in the season of Easter and Passover, yesterday's Red Sox home opener was a reminder that Opening Day in Boston isn't like anywhere else.

In a world of change, Fenway is that rare constant. "I can see it right now," Doerr told a clutch of reporters after he completed the first-pitch ceremony. He put his hand to his head and said it was 1937 all over again and he was an awestruck rookie seeing Fenway for the first time.

"I think what they've done is just beautiful . . . all the new additions," said Doerr, a view that was heartily seconded by interviews with about two dozen fans.

The glassed-in .406 club was behind home plate and served up baseball with piped-in sounds and such un-Fenway-like accommodations as air conditioning. It had many critics; third baseman Wade Boggs claimed it changed the wind patterns in the park and made it harder to hit home runs. Fans said it made the experience of watching a live game akin to watching it at the local cineplex.

John Kichler, a Philadelphia restaurant manager who grew up in Hull, Mass., and learned his trade at Providence's Johnson & Wales, traveled to Boston yesterday especially to see the Fenway renovations on Opening Day.

"I was in the .406 Club and I didn't like the piped-in music and sounds," said Kichler. "Now it's wide open and the seats have great views."

And what a game it was for the 35,491 on hand. Fans were treated to a 5-3 Red Sox victory over the Toronto Blue Jays that featured strong pitching by newcomer Josh Beckett, a towering homer by David Ortiz and a four-hit performance by third-baseman Mike Lowell, another new player acquired in the offseason.

A few years back, under different ownership, Fenway was destined for the wrecking ball. It was dubbed old, unsafe, rundown. With baseball's smallest seating capacity, it was also deemed an economic anachronism.

But the new owners, a group led by investment guru John Henry and Hollywood maven Tom Werner, brought both a World Series to Boston and a new view of the old ballyard.

Werner and Henry have stuffed more seats into Fenway -- by Opening Day next, capacity will have grown to almost 40,000, up from about 34,000 or 35,000, depending on how many standing-room-only tickets were sold.

The park has been renvoated within its historical footprint and Dartmouth green hue. But the new ownership has also raised ticket prices and installed restaurants and bars for well-heeled fans who pay $275 per game for seats in the new luxury seating areas that carry corporate names.

But fans are aware that it costs money to pay the multimillion-dollar salaries needed to keep the team competitive.

Doerr made $16,000 in 1946 and never earned more than $35,000 a year in his career. Pitcher Boo Ferris, another member of the '46 team, said yesterday he signed with the Sox for $700 a month after serving in the Army in World War II and thought he had "robbed Fort Knox."

Fenway has long made grown men weak in the knees and led to some of the nation's best writers' arguably worst work. Does every literary man (and a few women: hello Doris Kearns Goodwin) have to write about Fenway Park?

Among those who have are, of course, John Updike, who turned Ted Williams' last at-bat into a famous New Yorker story; Roger Angell, poet Donald Hall, John Cheever, Bart Giamatti and Harvard professors too numerous to name.

To Updike, Fenway represented "a compromise between Man's Euclidean determinations and Nature's beguiling irregularities."

But former House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill Jr. probably put it in words fans could better understand: "One of the reasons Sox fans are so good is the chumminess of the ballpark. It's like being in an English theater. You're right on top of the stage. It's intimate, it's homey, it's chummy."

Among yesterday's attendees were banker Chad Gifford, and former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, quarterback Doug Flutie, the usual gang of pols, led by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. Among the Rhode Island elected officials spotted were Senate President Joseph Montalbano, D-North Providence, Sen. John McBurney, D-Pawtucket, Sen. William Walaska, D-Warwick, and Edward Fogarty, the state Senate's legal counsel, who said it was the 52nd consecutive year he has attended a game at Fenway.

"I was seven years old. It was a double-header against the Detroit Tigers and Ike DeLock was pitching," said Fogarty.

Yesterday, not 100 feet from Fogarty was Jillian Faber, a 2-year-old from Topsham, Maine. She wore a Red Sox shirt, blue jeans and sneakers. Her father, Todd Faber, held her in his arms and said he took photos to show her when she grows up what she looked like at her first Fenway opener.

"I'm two years old," she said, waving two fingers in the air at her dad.

smackay@projo.com / (401) 277-7321