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FORT MYERS, Fla. - — For five weeks, "boring" was the buzzword at Red Sox spring training.

Hardly any new faces or any news. Even Manny Ramirez was a picture of serenity, floating through camp in a Zen-like state.

If there was one consistent source of agita for the coaching staff, it was the inevitability of the too-soon trip to Japan, with its promise of draining intercontinental flights and rushed roster moves.

Departure day finally arrived Wednesday. Still, before the Red Sox boarded their 747 amid a setting sun, a sudden and stunning end came, without warning, to Camp Tranquility.

"All the things I talked about prior to today about it being a quiet spring," manager Terry Francona said. "You can throw that right out the window."

In a brazen display of team solidarity and defiance, the Red Sox spent Wednesday morning bunkered inside their clubhouse at City of Palms Park, refusing to take the field to play the Blue Jays in their final spring game, refusing to board the plane bound for Tokyo, determined to right a financial wrong.

In the end, the Red Sox's coaching and support staff received assurance that — as the players all along intended — they would be compensated for making the weeklong Japan trip, each earning roughly the same $40,000 the players are each receiving as an appearance fee.

"Everyone connected with the trip will be fairly compensated," Major League Baseball spokesman Rich Levin said.

The Red Sox then played the game after a 64-minute delay, and the trip to Japan for the season-opening series against the Athletics proceeded.

"We have a lot of different personalities, people from all over the world who play on the team," said Kevin Youkilis, the Red Sox players' association representative, who also hit a three-run homer in a 4-3 loss to the Jays. "But the one thing we have is unity on this team. We stick together. We try to set our personal differences aside for the good of the team, and that's what we did today."

The players had believed since October that the coaches would be compensated, per their instructions in a conference call mapping out the trip's logistics. Somewhere in the intervening five months, the line of communication broke down, and only the players for both the Red Sox and A's were earmarked for compensation.

When Red Sox players learned of the situation, almost by accident after Francona spoke to A's manager Bob Geren on Tuesday, they took swift and severe action, voting unanimously to boycott the game and the trip.

By essentially holding the exhibition game against the Jays on ESPN hostage, the players forced MLB to move from a stance of no pay, to half of the players' demand, to the final agreement, with the Red Sox fronting $600,000 to pay the stipend, with assurance from MLB that it would later defray the cost.

"We stuck to the number we thought was correct, which was equal pay [for the coaches and staff]," Red Sox third baseman Mike Lowell said. "It was nothing until they found out we weren't going to play and we were serious about it.

"We needed to use this game, because if we said we're not getting on the bus, we'd probably sit on the bus for 12 hours while they negotiated this. We needed to hurt someone or make a statement in some capacity to let people know we didn't agree with this. An hour for those guys to be taken care of shouldn't be a big deal to anyone."

When the team voted before 10 a.m. to boycott, there was an accusatory tone to the players' deliberations, having seen other promises from MLB pulled back over the past five months.

By mid-afternoon, the finger-pointing gave way to shared responsibility for the confusion. Previous teams playing in Japan — most recently the Yankees and Rays in 2004 — paid their coaches from a players pool, much like World Series shares. This time, with nothing in writing, the coaches were left out of the pool. For some support staff members, $40,000 is more than their annual salaries.

"The language wasn't there that needed to be put in place," Youkilis said. "There's not one party I can say was at fault, rather than bad communication, bad language. What really needed to be done was something set in stone saying these coaches and staff needed to be compensated."

"A lot of people don't realize these guys come to the field and are here for sometimes almost 11, 12 hours. They put in a lot of time and effort and they deserve to be compensated for big trips like this."

In Phoenix, Athletics players also considered a boycott. They didn't take batting practice and held team meetings before following the Red Sox's lead and deciding to play. An A's split squad lost 6-1 to the Angels before leaving for Tokyo.

Scheduled Red Sox starter Daisuke Matsuzaka was sent to minor league camp to pitch against Triple A Rochester. He allowed one run (a homer) on three hits with one walk and eight strikeouts in six innings and will pitch the opener in Tokyo on Tuesday.

While fans at City of Palms stared at an empty field for an hour after the scheduled start of the game, the Red Sox discovered anew how close their bond really was.

"I think it's a statement of how unified we are as a group," Lowell said. "We collectively felt — and unanimously as well, which shows how adamant we were about the whole thing — if you say you're going to do something, you've got to do it. We felt like we had to make a stand.

"The dollar amounts mean nothing to the players. We can do without it. It means more to those guys. I think that's why we did what we did. We felt like our fans would realize we're not worried about our money. Most of us would probably be willing to give our money to them, but that's not the issue. The issue is, it was said and agreed upon, and then not being done."

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