Once the “Red Sox hospital,” now a nursing home, Sancta Maria in Cambridge to close.

The Cambridge Chronicle has a nice story on the hospital’s history, along with some photos of the nuns who worked there.

Shortly after its founding in 1948, Sancta Maria Hospital earned the nickname “the Red Sox hospital” because of the number of players who received care there. Initially located on Memorial Drive in Cambridge, a little more than a mile across the river from Fenway Park, the hospital provided a convenient place for treating players’ injuries and ailments.

The nuns on staff, members of the Daughters of Mary of the Immaculate Conception, would receive a call from a team doctor or trainer asking, “Is our room empty?”, according to a 1949 Boston Globe article. The nuns would start preparing “the Red Sox room,” described as a “pleasant, blue room with large open fireplace and cheery floral hangings.”

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