"Down in the bowels of Fenway Park, down the hall and through a door from the profane precincts of the Red Sox clubhouse, sunk deep in all the bricks and all the history, there is what appears to be a fairly run-of-the-mill preschool. Small lockers festooned with children's drawings stand against one wall, which is otherwise decorated with a series of baseball scenes depicting every letter of the alphabet. I is for inning. U is for umpire (Boooo!). There is a PlayStation 2 console in one corner and a large toy stove in another. Plastic trucks are underfoot. Down the hall from where men spit and curse and play baseball for a living – F is for Free Agency, D is for Disabled List – is a place for their children simply to play. Of all the odd places in the ballpark to conduct an interview – and, when you come down to it, isn't the clubhouse itself weird enough? – this may well be the oddest.

"It's a strange life, I guess," says Adrian Gonzalez, the Red Sox first baseman, who is much too big for this room and who may well be too big for the big room that is Fenway Park in what looks to be a summer-long pennant race. "But I grew up wanting this life, so I guess you just have to roll with it.""