En route to Fenway on a warm July afternoon, the familiar excitement in the air is palpable.
The game isn't scheduled to start for another few hours, but fans sporting worn-in baseball caps adorned with red stockings already dot the surrounding streets.
Turning onto Yawkey Way, you wave to the security guard as you enter in through Gate D. You head up to the clubhouse and enter the audiovisual room where Manny Ramirez is watching clips of his last encounter with Yankee pitcher Randy Johnson, prepping for the rematch that will take place in a few hours.
You set up your laptop nearby, waiting for one of the players who will inevitably stop past and ask you for advice about the effectiveness of the latest power supplement or how to tweak a pre-game meal for maximum energy.
Surely you must be dreaming; David Ortiz, Manny and Curt Schilling are asking you for advice? But this is a reality for Tara Mardigan, a Tufts Friedman school of Nutrition Science and Policy alum. Mardigan has worked with Red Sox players on their nutrition for almost four years but began forging her career path long before that.
Mardigan has always been interested in nutrition. As a young gymnast, she watched teammates struggle with eating disorders, which she found bizarre.
Instead of fearing food, Mardigan saw it as fuel and remembers thinking, "How can I eat so that I have more energy, so when I tumble, I tumble higher?" At the time she could not know that someday she would help the most elite of athletes answer the question of how to eat for optimal energy, with the goal shifting from a higher tumble to slamming a ball over the Green Monster.
Mardigan continued to pursue her interest in nutrition at the University of New Hampshire where she received a bachelor's degree in nutrition. She then completed Yale-New Haven's dietetic internship to become a registered dietitian. After working in dietetics for a few years, Mardigan decided to attend graduate school at Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition & Science Policy. Mardigan was drawn to the flexibility at Tufts and was able to pursue a double-major - a Masters of Science (MS) in Nutrition Communications and a Masters of Public Health (MPH).
"At Tufts, I always felt like I was encouraged to tap into my creative side," Mardigan said. Here, Tara was allowed to mold her masters program to fit her needs. A few years later when she sat down to write the proposal for her Red Sox job (a job that never existed before Mardigan arrived), Mardigan reflects that her communication classes came in handy.
During the process, a past writing professor's insistence on conciseness kept popping into her head. When things got too wordy she would think, "He'd be horrified if I put that in there, I've got to get it out." Lessons like this that helped Mardigan to put together a winning document.
But Mardigan's proposal required more than conciseness and creativity; timing and strategy were involved. Her Red Sox journey began improbably on a bitterly cold January day in 2002.
Mardigan ("I never get sick!") had a sore throat and was in excruciating pain from a long, marathon-training run the day before.
"Everything was working against me," she recalled. But Mardigan had devoted much of her time to the organization Sociedad Latina, teaching an interactive nutrition course to inner-city teens. Mardigan didn't want to miss the organization's fundraiser to benefit little league teams throughout Boston.
Mardigan happened to plop down next to Stacey Lucchino, wife of Larry Lucchino, Red Sox president and CEO (the Sox were sponsoring the event). As if it were scripted, Mrs. Lucchino immediately asked what she did. Hearing she was a nutritionist, Lucchino replied, "My husband needs your help."
Mardigan began at the top, working with the team's president on his own nutrition. Mardigan helped Lucchino improve his eating habits. She taught him how to eat for day-to-day energy and why healthy eating is important for disease prevention later in life.
Almost a year later, when pitcher Curt Schilling demanded a nutritionist before signing with the Sox, Lucchino knew just the woman for the job. Schilling was not the type to sit back and wait. After hearing from several people that he had no nutritional skills and being warned by Roger Clemens that this would weigh down his performance, Schilling became determined to improve his eating habits.
Mardigan received a call requesting she fly out to Arizona. After verifying that it was indeed Schilling on the line and not a friend playing a prank, Mardigan was on the next flight out to Arizona and working with Curt on improving his eating habits.
The other players, curious, began asking Mardigan their own questions. It was difficult to turn them down. "You're not going to say, 'sorry [Tim] Wakefield, go away,'" Mardigan joked. Her popularity among the other players grew and made the team's need for a nutritionist evident.
Recognizing this need, Mardigan carefully crafted her proposal to become the team nutritionist, and the Sox were quick to sign her.
Mardigan's responsibilities are many and extend beyond the Red Sox. She travels around giving lectures to area minor league teams. She answers any nutrition questions these players have. This responsibility has prompted Mardigan to learn Spanish in her spare time, time that is hard to come by since Mardigan also holds a job at the prestigious Dana Farber Cancer Institute.
A vital part of Mardigan's job is keeping abreast of the plethora of supplements to determine if they pass strict Major League Baseball regulations. She also aids players in making nutritious pre-game choices and coordinates with the Red Sox kitchen to ensure that healthful options are available. Much of this work takes place earlier in the day (or on non-game days).
On game days Mardigan is available for any last-minute questions. But before the national anthem blares, Mardigan heads for, "the best seat in the park." This behind-home plate hot spot is part of a section where Theo (Epstein, for those of you not on a first-name basis with the GM of the Red Sox) and the rest of his crew watch the game.
These seats are usually reserved for scouts, but early on Tara noticed that they were frequently vacant and asked, "Can I watch a game up there maybe once or twice?" She has been enjoying the view ever since. "When I'm at Fenway, I like to watch the game," Mardigan confesses with a huge grin on her lightly freckled face.
"I never would have thought I would be doing this - I think, 'Wow! How did I arrive here?'" But deep down Mardigan knows her hard work, creativity, and never-ending optimism have earned her a spot in the Red Sox family and the right to refer to the team of elite professional athletes as "the brothers that I never had."
