The Red Sox have added 200 new seats above the right-field roof.

BOSTON (AP) – Red Sox right-fielder Trot Nixon is getting some new neighbors, just like Manny Ramirez did in left last year.

The Red Sox are adding 200 seats to Fenway Park’s right-field roof, an area overlooking the retired numbers that hang from the facade. The expansion bookends the construction of the much-heralded Monster Seats above the ballpark’s famous left-field wall last year.

“It’s going to be another distinctive Fenway neighborhood with its own character,” team president Larry Lucchino said Monday. “We’re hopeful it’s going to be as popular as the Green Monster seats. It’s going to be a different flavor of ice cream; you can like both, but they will be different.”

Fenway is baseball’s oldest and smallest ballpark, a “lyric little bandbox” celebrated by John Updike but cursed by fans who wait in long lines for inadequate bathrooms and concession stands and sit in cramped seats – or don’t get in at all.

Since buying the team in 2002, Lucchino and the Red Sox owners have tried to squeeze as much revenue out of the ballpark as possible while deciding whether to replace it or put it through a complete renovation. Originally, they expected to make a decision within six months, but no decision has been made yet and the timetable remains flexible.

“We’re probably moving ever closer to the decision point,” spokesman Charles Steinberg said.

In the meantime, the Red Sox are making small-scale fixes that make the ballpark, which opened in 1912, more livable. They have already added seats behind home plate and above The Wall and opened up a new concourse behind the right-field stands.

The new section will have 50 tables, each shaped like home plate, surrounded by four seats. A railing in back will provide standing room for 150.

The area also has its own beer and wine bar that’s 60 feet, 6 inches long – the same distance as the pitcher’s rubber is from the plate. There will also be restrooms and something even more in demand at Fenway: a place to just mill around.

“It’s a little of what Fenway was missing,” Lucchino said. “Those folks that have been kind of crowded are going to get relief.”

The Red Sox had been thinking about putting more seats in the area for at least a year. It constructed temporary bleachers there last year during the playoffs.

Although the section is expected to be ready by the team’s home opener on April 9, it was far from complete on Monday.

The roof had been reinforced, the concrete had been poured and unpainted steel beams supported the corrugated metal roof above the bar. But railings weren’t yet in place, nor were the tables or chairs; the bar was framed but not finished.

The area will have its own menu, including barbecued ribs, fish and chips and cheese steaks.

The new section is also the testing ground for a two-tiered pricing plan that will vary ticket costs according to the team’s opponent.

Tickets for the “Red Games,” which include Opening Day and dates against the Yankees, Dodgers and Phillies, will be $100; “Blue Games” are everything else, and they will be $75. The prices include $100 worth of food and drinks per table.

An even more variable pricing plan is being developed for the Monster Seats unveiled last year. Those prices are expected to be announced this week.

Even before putting those seats on sale, the Red Sox had already sold 2.3 million of the 2.7 million tickets available for the 2004 season.

As it did last year, the team is keeping capacity the same by selling fewer standing room tickets. The result will be to ease the congestion in aisles by moving fans to previously unused areas of the ballpark.

The Red Sox are also opening up the area under the third-base grandstand. The ballpark’s main souvenir store was taken out, and the area was turned into concourse. A bowling alley under the ballpark will be the new home of the team’s baseball operations department.

Steinberg said there may be more changes that Lucchino can “pull out of his hat.”

“But I don’t know what they are at this point,” Steinberg said, “and I’d imagine the hat doesn’t have to be that big.”

AP-ES-03-15-04 1820EST