It seems like a match made in clubhouse heaven: Baseball aristocracy has moved to Southwest Virginia's championship city.

When the Boston Red Sox bought Salem's minor league baseball team in 2007, they brought a wealthy franchise with a nation of fans to a small, sports-loving city where even the mayor was a high school football star.

Now, as excitement builds for Thursday's opening day, season tickets and ball caps are selling like Bud Light on college night. In the last six weeks of 2008, sales of Sox merchandise were up 2,000 percent compared with flat sales of Avalanche gear over the same period the year before, according to John Katz, the general manager of the Salem Red Sox.

But there is already a little dust on the bases.

The team's new owner is giving Salem baseball the Boston makeover. The Fenway Sports Group, a sister company of the Red Sox, has arrived with a list of changes for the ballpark that includes cutting more than a thousand seats. That hasn't played well with some longtime fans in an independent city that takes pride in doing things its own way.

So Fenway has met the Salem way. An injection of Red Sox know-how aims to boost attendance and make it a better ballgame. But even in a smartly arranged marriage, the honeymoon ends and the settling in together begins.

"This market is very resistant to change," Katz observed as the preseason came to a close.

Take me out to the crowd

The Salem Memorial Baseball Stadium was built under Jim Taliaferro, the revered Salem mayor who led the city for more than 20 years. When it opened in 1995, it had seats for 6,300, a number that would let the Class A ballclub grow to a larger farm team some day.

The stadium rarely filled up. The average crowd was 3,418 last season, and to an outside eye, all those empty seats left a vacant feeling.

"Last year, there wasn't an overabundance of energy at the ballpark," said Mike Dee, president of Fenway Sports Group and chief operating officer for the Boston Red Sox. "Sometimes there would be 60 seats between fans."

In a preseason face-lift prompted by FSG, the stadium has been remodeled with a touch of Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox.

Sox signs are going up, and the mascots have changed allegiances. The outfield wall was painted a dusty green, same as in the Boston stadium. Rumors are buzzing about the possible installation of a replica of the Green Monster, Fenway's towering left field wall. The price for the best box seats went up $1. Others seats remain the same price as last year.

In a symbolic change, FSG had the stadium renamed the Salem Memorial Ballpark, a title that captures the new feel of the place, Dee said.

Then, there are the tarps, the source of recent complaints.

To bring fans together and drive ticket sales, FSG has planned to cover 1,074 total general admission seats on both sides of the field -- leaving 1,960 of the cheaper seats. (The remainder are reserved and box seats.) The tarps will reduce seating to 4,968, making the ballpark one of the smaller-capacity fields in the Carolina League.

Major league teams, including the Tampa Bay Rays, have also tarped the cheap seats -- though after the Rays charged into the playoffs last year, the tarps were lifted.

From a Red Sox perspective, tighter seating creates what a fan might call the intimate, Boston atmosphere.

"I would rather go to a ballpark like Fenway, where it's small and it's packed," said Mike Potter, a longtime Red Sox fan from Blacksburg. "The environment is so much more electric when you look around and there's not an empty seat in the house."

Reducing seats is also considered a strategic way to move more tickets. Without the assurance of a seat during busy nights and playoff games, the reasoning goes in the business, customers end up buying more tickets in advance.

The Fenway method can count success on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. The Boston ballpark, which is one of the smallest in the major leagues, has sold out every home game since May 2003.

When the Greenville Drive, the Class A Red Sox affiliate in South Carolina, moved into a replica of Fenway Park in 2006, its attendance more than doubled to 330,000, according to a senior director with the team -- about 100,000 more than the Salem Avalanche drew last year.

Katz sees an updated ballpark, along with a new team, raising attendance 10 percent this year. Sales of season ticket packages are up 15 percent over the same period last year, he said.

"I think we will sell out opening day," Katz said at the end of March.

But after the changes to the park were announced, some fans soured on the prospect of a different ballgame.

Bob Ostrom, who saw 29 home games with his family last season, was disappointed to lose the sparse general admission rows. He liked to sit away from the crowd after a day at work. His children said the foul balls always landed in those far general admission seats.

"I want to pick a seat that is nowhere near anybody. I want to be able to sip my beverage and watch the game," said Ostrom, who manages a dry-cleaning business in Roanoke. He had planned to buy four ticket books this year, but decided to hold off, he said.

Max Doss, a 74-year-old retiree who is a regular, was worried about losing the preferred seating of the older spectator. His friends liked to sit high up on the left field line because the seats were better protected for the fan worried about skin cancer and foul balls, he said.

"We were so tickled to get" the Red Sox, Doss said. "But not a good start."

Other fans began to ask: Will I wind up paying for a pricier box seat ticket? Unlikely, based on last year's numbers, FSG said. Or if the game is sold out, will the tarps come up? No, but FSG said the tarps could be reconsidered if games are consistently packed.

For some, it was just too much to have Salem, which owns the field, offering to pay for $300,000 in ballpark renovations over the course of the team's two-year lease with the city, with about half going to the preseason remodeling.

The comments on a local TV station's Web site recently summed up the prevailing moods among residents.

Poster No. 1: "I'm a huge, huge Red Sox fan!!"

Poster No. 2: "Where do we spend our tax money? ... Salem is obsessed with sports."

Poster No. 3: "You know Salem is a sports city. Don't like it ... move!"

Buy me some peanuts

Even in Salem, where minor league baseball has been played for decades, the city does not break even on its investment.

Last year, the city came close, running a $2,608 operating deficit -- a dime for every resident -- in the final season of the Avalanche, its Houston Astros affiliate.

But if the Fenway formula succeeds, the economics of Salem ball change, too.

Under the city's two-year lease with the Red Sox, bigger receipts at the gate could balance the deficit, or even bring in revenue. Salem collects 1 percent of gross ticket sales up to $800,000. Over that, and the city's cut jumps to 10 percent.

No Salem baseball club has hit the target, according to City Manger Kevin Boggess. "They have a goal to get there," he said of the Sox. "If it wouldn't get us over the hump, it would get us a lot closer to a revenue-neutral operation."

Bigger crowds buy more hot dogs at the concession stand, translating to tax dollars for Salem. With Red Sox apparel in the gift shop, merchandise sales will also be stronger.

"Next to the Yankees, they might be the biggest name in the country," said Chris Kemple, general manager of the Wilmington Blue Rocks, a Carolina League rival that held the Red Sox affiliation in 2005 and 2006. For those two years, ticket sales went up a little, he said, but "the biggest spike was in merchandise."

The upswing has already registered in Salem. Sales of Sox merchandise were up sharply over Avalanche gear.

"That Red Sox nation is really speaking loudly," he said.

Root for the home team

Richard Higgins had his Red Sox moment in 1952. That summer, he traveled the railroads with his dad. The two watched Boston great Ted Williams play in every ballpark in the American League.

"I've been a Red Sox fan ever since," declared the 62-year-old Salem resident, who was wrapped in Sox apparel at a recent fan event. Higgins paused to address a fellow who was listening to his story. "I got a hat and pin that's older than you," he said.

Some fans aren't so easy. In minor league ball, it is a general rule that the crowds come for a family night out as much as for a ballgame. They come for cheap tickets and T-shirt giveaways, for hog dogs and to hear the neighbor girl sing the national anthem. In Class A baseball, the casual fan doesn't know who the prospects are on the field.

But a new team, with a strong brand behind it, whips up new excitement. "This is an opportunity for a second first look," said Carey Harveycutter, who runs the Salem Civic Center complex that is the home to the Salem ballpark.

Harveycutter has watched enough seasons to know there are variables every year. Bad weather and rain keep the fans away. So does a losing streak. This year, the slumping economy is expected to take a toll on the stands.

On a recent afternoon, he took a stroll through the ballpark.

At the moment, the Eagles song "Peaceful Easy Feeling" was blasting over the field speakers. Construction crews were painting the bare concrete a midnight blue, something close to the color of a Red Sox cap.

What did he think of the changes?

"I know the aesthetic things will work," Harveycutter said. But when it came to the tarps, he seemed to hedge a bit. "I think it's going to make a better feel for the baseball game.

"They're the baseball experts," he said.

Staff writer Katrina Waugh contributed to this report.