The Red Sox celebrate their new “Big Concourse.”

BOSTON (AP) – Himself a Red Sox treasure that is getting along in years, Johnny Pesky has taken quite a liking to Fenway Park.

“Sixty-one years ago, I walked into this ballpark as a young ballplayer,” the 82-year-old former shortstop said, planting a kiss on the cheek of the architect who helped design Fenway’s new picnic area. “When I look at it today, it looks brand new.”

The Red Sox cut the ribbon Monday on their new “Big Concourse.” It’s a name retro enough to suit the oldest ballpark in the majors, yet descriptive enough to differentiate it from every other cramped nook and cranny in the “lyric little bandbox” described by John Updike.

Long hampered by their cozy ballpark – opened in 1912, the week the Titanic sank, Fenway has the smallest capacity in the majors – the Red Sox have been trying to squeeze every last dollar and square foot out of it.

Cutting the space out of a warehouse and a service area beyond the right-field bleachers, the team added 15,766 square feet of space for fans to eat, drink and gaze up at the pennants commemorating the team’s increasingly distant World Series titles. The Red Sox also doubled the number of concession stands in the area and tripled the number of restrooms, even adding rooms where parents can change their children’s diapers in private.

The Big Concourse has a wide array of foods: four kinds of sausage, fruit cups and “malternative” drinks as well as french fries, garlic french fries, fried chicken and fried dough. In what could be the most fan-friendly move of all, the team has put in six water fountains to save fans from having to buy it bottled on sweltering days; also, people will be allowed to bring their own water bottles into the park.

“We’ve given Fenway Park some breathing room, the fans some breathing room – some milling around room,” team president Larry Lucchino said.

“These kinds of improvements, even though they take place below the radar, will have an impact on the fan’s experience. To the extent that this makes Fenway more livable, more comfortable, it obviously helps with the ultimate decision,” he added.

Although the Red Sox haven’t decided whether to replace Fenway or renovate it for the long term, they are taking on smaller tasks to spruce the place up while they make up their minds. The most celebrated of the changes was the addition of 280 seats above the Green Monster in left field, which sold out in minutes.

The next phase includes adding seats on the right-field roof and finding even more room inside the ballpark for fans to move around; expanding the Boston clubhouse is also being considered.

“The Green Monster seats show we can make substantial changes without doing damage to Fenway,” Lucchino said. “We have a vision for what Fenway should and, I believe, can be. What we don’t know is whether we can get there from here.”

Red Sox owner John Henry said he had always been attached to Fenway Park, but conceded he might not be if he weren’t sitting in the best seats in the house. No matter how much the team fixes it up, though, the structure won’t last forever.

“Someday, maybe after I’m gone, there needs to be a new ballpark. The question is: ‘When?”‘ Henry said. “We’re trying to push that date back as far as possible.”

They’re doing it by “Camdenizing” the ballpark, a term that hearkens back to the days when Lucchino and architect Janet Marie Smith were in Baltimore working on Camden Yards.

“We looked at Fenway and parks of its generation for inspiration,” Smith said.

Now they’re looking back at Camden Yards.

Like the warehouse beyond right field at the Orioles’ park, the Red Sox have preserved the structure known as the “Laundry Building,” which was designed in 1934 by the same architect who built Fenway Park but was lately used for parking. It now holds new concession stands and bathrooms.

A service area where Dumpsters and television trucks had been parked was also opened to the public.

Smith joked before the season that the new bathrooms would be “every bit as exciting as the Green Monster seats.” When it was pointed out to her on Monday that, while they were indeed nice and spacious, they lacked the cachet of the chance to sit above the famous left-field wall, she said, “That’s a matter of perspective.”

“Only 24,000 fans a year can sit in the Monster seats,” she said. “Millions use the bathrooms.”

AP-ES-08-18-03 2010EDT