Despite a new ad praising Fenway, Scott Brown pushed in 2001 to move the Red Sox to Foxborough

By Frank Phillips, Globe Staff

In a new radio ad released today, US Senator Scott Brown wraps himself around the legendary Fenway Park and the celebration of its 100th anniversary.

He heaps praise on the current Red Sox ownership for “improving what we have instead of starting over somewhere else.”

What Brown doesn’t mention in the 30-second spot is that it represents 180-degree turn from the public position he took a decade ago.

Back in 2001, when the Red Sox ownership was looking to relocate the Red Sox, Brown, then a state representative, not only pushed to remove the team from the storied park, but also out of Boston.

As a state legislator, he pressed to have the Sox move to Foxborough, the town adjacent to his own town of Wrentham. In a letter dated January, 2001, Brown asked Patriots owner Robert Kraft to consider using property around his football stadium to build a new ballpark.

That’s a sharp contrast to today’s radio ad, in which Brown extols the current Sox ownership and the old park itself.

“Think of it: the park opened in 1912 - the same year as the sinking of the Titanic,’’ he says. “It’s not only the home of the Red Sox, it also connects us to our past....”

Brown campaign spokesman Colin Reed said the senator acknowledges in the ad that the calls for moving the team out of Fenway were wrong.

But Brown’s only reference in the radio spot to the earlier public debate over the future of the ballpark is more general.

“You know there has been a lot of talk over the years about replacing the park, but that would have been a mistake,’’ Brown says in the ad.

He makes no mention of his role.

An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Brown supported a bill that proposed moving the team to Foxborough. Brown expressed his position in a letter to Robert Kraft.