Fresh from Japan, Fenster steps in for shorthanded coaching staff

BOSTON — Darren Fenster’s flight from Tokyo landed at 5 a.m. Monday, and the text from the Red Sox was waiting for him as soon as he turned on his phone.

With bench coach Will Venable still under quarantine in Canada after testing positive for COVID-19, and first-base coach Tom Goodwin doing the same after being in close contact, the Red Sox needed some hands to fill in. Fenster, the Red Sox’s minor league outfield and baserunning coordinator, was on the coaching staff for the United States baseball team at the Olympics.

The Red Sox asked him if he could be at Fenway the next morning. Fenster had all of two days to process the Olympic experience before duty called back home. With no hesitation, he jumped on another flight.

“Anytime the big league team calls you, you answer it,” Fenster said. “Whatever the organization needs you to do to help them fulfill their goals — which is we’re right in the middle of a pennant race here — whatever they need, that’s what I’m here to do right now.”

Fenster was on the field Tuesday helping Red Sox manager Alex Cora with whatever he needed to prepare for the series opener against the Tampa Bay Rays. (The game wasn’t over in time for this edition.)

“I haven’t even been back 24 hours,” Fenster said. “It probably hasn’t even hit me, really, the entire experience of what we just did, being in the Olympics, but it was absolutely incredible and surreal.”

While Fenster was getting settled in Boston, he learned that the gold medal game was Japan’s most-watched Olympic event. That’s when the magnitude of the U.S. run hit him. He watched Tristian Casas elevate his game on the biggest stage, and Jack Lopez seal a game with his glove to give the U.S. a shot at the gold, though the Americans lost 2-0 to Japan and settled for silver.

“The way that we competed with a team that shut down their major league and put together an all-star team — a hit here and hit there, and that game is reversed and we’re going home with a gold medal,” Fenster said.

The first thing Cora was hoping to see was the medal. Unfortunately, while Olympic athletes take medals home, coaches do not.