The first game at Fenway Park is special for any player on his first Red Sox Opening Day roster.
Multiply that feeling a dozen or so times, and you’ll understand how Sean Newcomb, who grew up a Red Sox fan in Middleborough, Mass. but had never been to a Fenway home opener before, felt on Friday.
“I’ve had Opening Day a handful of times (with the Braves), but coming in here, seeing all the Boston gear and the Boston logos, pretty sweet,” he told the Herald before the Red Sox played their first home game of the season.
There were no guarantees when the left-hander, 31, signed his minor league deal with the club in January.
“Coming into camp being non-roster, I kind of had to grind to get here,” he said. “I kind of had a feeling, the way my spring was going and the way things were lined up, but it’s just kind of surreal.”
Even as his own baseball journey increasingly consumed his summers, Newcomb tried to make time for Fenway. He lived at home when he played for Wareham in the Cape Cod League and won the 2012 championship.
“Each season I’d probably come over to Fenway anywhere from five to ten times, maybe a dozen depending on the year,” he said. “(We’d) take the commuter rail up or we’d go park in Quincy and take the Red Line in.”
“I remember my first game was an Easter Sunday or something like that,” he recalled. “I was probably five, seeing Mo Vaughn out there.”
His favorite players were Pedro Martinez, Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, and later, Jon Lester. Like most Bostonians in the 90s and early aughts, Newcomb and his family tried to line up their Fenway trips with the team’s main attraction.
“I’d say (my favorite memory is) probably watching Pedro pitch,” he said. “Coming to the game– usually people come to watch batting practice, see some homers, but if you came to watch Pedro pitch, you knew what you were getting into, so that was always a treat in itself, just coming to see No. 45 pitch.”
Even for someone familiar with Fenway, there were some surprises when he arrived for work on Friday.
“Realizing how tight it is inside the small confines of Fenway is all pretty cool,” he said. “I’m about to go and check out the field and see it from a different side.”
Newcomb thought his lifetime of experience as a member of Red Sox Nation would come in handy when it came time for him to pitch, which turned out to be Sunday afternoon, after Saturday’s contest was rained out and postponed to a doubleheader.
“I feel like it might be a little bit easier to just kind of block it out, the heckling, because I know how people are,” he said, “and I’ll probably be getting yelled at by people I know!”
How the tables have turned.
“I do remember doing some heckling,” he said with a chuckle. “I remember some old Blue Jays games, specifically, mostly out in right field, but nothing too crazy.”
On Sunday, fans will take the commuter rail or park in Quincy and take the Red Line to Fenway Park, where Newcomb will be on the mound. Some of them will be there just to see him.
“I had to draw the line for tickets, outside of parents and direct family,” he said with a smile. “My dad and all my buddies listen to WEEI, they’re all over the sports talk. Kind of a little too deep sometimes! They’re diehards for sure. (They’ll) get on some players for certain things and I’m just like, ‘You gotta think of it like it’s me, because it’s just a game.’”
The enormity of Newcomb’s full-circle baseball journey to Boston feels a bit “dulled down” at times because he already accomplished many career firsts with the Braves, Cubs, and A’s. But there have also been moments that reawakened his inner child, who is, of course, a diehard ‘Sawx’ fan.
“It kind of goes back and forth,” Newcomb said. “There’s days where I’m like, ‘Oh it’s just baseball, it’s the same thing I’ve been doing with whatever other team,’ but then there’s other days where I’m talking to (Jason Varitek) and he turns and walks away and I’m just like, ‘Wow I was just chopping it up with Tek in the dugout!’”