THERE ARE OFFICES, and then there’s Alex Spader’s office, which makes him the envy of history and baseball fans everywhere.
Spader’s office is Fenway Park in Boston, aka John Updike’s “lyric little bandbox,’’ the oldest and probably most-beloved ballfield in the country.
PHOTOS BY BRIAN SMITH
Spader’s job as facilities manager for the Red Sox is a labor of love—the place where the Wentworth alumnus happily goes to work each day for 10- and oftentimes 12-hour shifts, occasionally for weeks at a stretch without a day off. His job entails “everything but the field,” putting Spader amid all that history and giving him a bird’s-eye view to some great baseball, when he’s able to catch a half-inning or two.
The job’s demanding, but Spader says he wouldn’t trade places with anyone. “I absolutely love coming to work every day.”
During a regular season homestand, 70- or 80-hour work weeks are not unheard of for Spader, who started at Fenway five years ago doing whatever his supervisors needed, including sometimes fixing fussy toilets. A friend a year ahead of him at Wentworth initially
helped to get Spader a foot in the door at Fenway when Spader was in his junior year at the Institute.
“You lose track of time here,” says Spader, 25, who walks on average 10 miles a day in Fenway to do his job, which includes supervising events and game-day staffs—a cell phone stuck to his ear. He’s sometimes responsible for 15 workers at a time when he’s dealing with set-ups for mini-events and special occasions of one kind or another.
“There is something going on here every day,” he says.
Fenway is located little more than a mile from Wentworth, where Spader earned a bachelor’s degree in facility management in 2015. His education has served him well.
“Everything I do here I can relate back to one of the classes I had at Wentworth,” says Spader, who shares a house locally with three college buddies who also graduated from the university.
—Dennis Nealon
Spader inside the Green Monster wall in left field
