Fenway Day A Return To Familiar Place For Some Firebirds

BOSTON – For some participating players, the Cape Cod Baseball League’s Fenway Day on June 2 constituted their first ever visits to the historic ballpark.

Others had certainly previously attended games at the park as fans. At least a few — from schools like Boston College, Northeastern, Virginia Tech and Miami — had even played actual collegiate games on the field.

For a pair of Orleans Firebirds though, the day of workouts and live reps in front of major league scouts was more than a unique trip to a stadium they either had or hadn’t been to before. For Adrian Beltre Jr. (San Diego) and assistant coach Ryan Hanigan, this was a return to a familiar place that for both had once been home.

The former (who goes by AJ) was not even 4 years old when his father, Adrian, joined the Boston Red Sox in 2010. Adrian spent just one season at third base for Boston, then signed with the Texas Rangers, where he played out the rest of his 21-year career. He retired as a four-time All-Star with 3,166 hits, five Gold Gloves, four Silver Sluggers and two Platinum Gloves. He was a first-ballot Hall of Famer.

Given he was a toddler, AJ has no memories of the season with the Red Sox, but he was there in that Fenway clubhouse and on that field, upon which he worked out last week and played in a scrimmage game as a member of the Firebirds. 

Adrian, who hit 28 home runs and 49 doubles as a member of the Red Sox, sat and watched from about a dozen rows back behind home plate. 

“It's cool to see him,” Adrian said. “He's happy. He’s doing what he loves.”

As AJ took batting practice and fielded grounders on the Fenway dirt, large packs of ballpark tour-takers coursed right past Adrian in the seats, not knowing that one of the game’s greatest third basemen was right there with them. 

Adrian recalled how, upon arriving at the ballpark in 2010, AJ would go to Red Sox manager Terry Francona’s office. “Hi, Mr. Francona,” his son would say. “How are you?”

“He was so excited to be in the clubhouse,” Adrian said.

AJ is now a two-way player — an infielder and a pitcher — at San Diego, where he’s a rising junior. He’s pitched five innings for Orleans in addition to 45 plate appearances, most of them as a second baseman, in which he’s putting up a .797 on-base plus slugging percentage.

When AJ is hitting at Eldredge Park, Adrian sits behind home plate — just like he did at Fenway last week — so he can take video and truly see the at-bat.

“It’s a cool ballpark,” Adrian said. “I really like the atmosphere, and I think it’s really enjoyable.”

AJ wasn’t the only Firebird at Fenway Park who could say he’d spent time inside the Red Sox clubhouse. Assistant coach Ryan Hanigan played parts of two seasons as a catcher for Boston from 2015 to 2016. Just as he’s done all summer, Hanigan manned third base as Orleans played through a scrimmage game against a scout team.

But unlike the 50 career games Hanigan played at Fenway, this evening just a couple hundred spectators at most — nearly all of them family or scouts — filled the field-level seats during those practice innings. Major League Baseball’s oldest stadium fell peculiarly, beautifully hushed. The sound of a fastball colliding with a catcher’s mitt cracked out like a bolt-action rifle.

“Never gets old,” Hanigan said. “It's always an awesome thing to go to Fenway, any big league stadium. When you walk out there, you have memories, and just the feel, the vibe, everything — it’s just always a good day to be in a big league stadium.”

Hanigan had actually been to other Cape League days at Fenway in the past, before he joined Orleans this summer. The annual event serves as a showcase for the players on the Cape’s 10 teams, with scouts from every single Major League Baseball team in attendance. 

While each club took batting practice and ran infield/outfield, only the Firebirds got the chance to play the scrimmage with the scout team. They won the practice game, 4-1. 

Hanigan saw a squad that played strong defense and racked up a bunch of hits from good at-bats (scout team players pitched for both sides). The hope was that the performance served as a momentum-builder for Orleans, currently sitting outside of a playoff spot in the East Division.

“What I saw from Fenway was a little bit of spark,” Hanigan said back at Eldredge Park the next night. “Guys were loose because it was a relaxed day, and I think they brought that looseness here.”

Indeed, the Firebirds followed their evening at Fenway with a 10-9 walk-off win against Chatham. They had responded to the good day in Boston with another on the Lower Cape. Hanigan was pumped about a ballclub that was starting to come together, a group of guys that’d be up in Orleans for a good bit of time. 

Because once you play well at Fenway, why can’t you play well anywhere else?

“Sometimes that alone can just get you going and build and keep rolling in the right direction, so that's what I took from the day,” Hanigan said. “And I think our coaching staff kind of talked about it as well. Just feeling good about the experience, and it was all positive. Everyone was having fun.”

AJ played second base during the scrimmage. Partway through, he hooked an RBI double down the left field line into the corner of the Monster. From that same batter’s box, his dad had also once ripped balls into the angular recesses of Fenway Park. Maybe AJ greeted Francona in the clubhouse office those same days too.

“It's really cool seeing him here, and he knows what he needs to do,” Adrian said. “It’s not his first rodeo.”