Fifty years ago almost to the day, Fred Lynn was a rookie outfielder playing his first Red Sox home opener.
Fifty years later, Kristian Campbell is the rookie making his Fenway Park debut, in front of Lynn and several of his 1975 teammates, who returned to Boston for a 50th-anniversary fête.
For Lynn, there are pros and cons to being a top prospect or rookie today. There’s a font of information the likes of which he never could’ve envisioned in 1975.
“Here’s the deal: these guys, as rookies today, they have a lot afforded to them,” Lynn said. “We had none of it. We literally asked players on the team what the guys threw.”
“The learning curve back then was staggering,” Lynn added. “A big learning curve every day for the whole year.”
Even so, Lynn believes there’s infinitely more pressure in today’s game.
“You guys already know this kid and you expect a lot from him,” Lynn said. “Didn’t expect anything from me! Now Jimmy (Rice), he had a little cred coming his way when he got to the big leagues; I was just a 21-year-old out of college. So no one knew us really, outside of Boston. Everybody knows these kids now.”
Yet what Lynn and fellow Red Sox legend Dwight Evans know about Kristian Campbell so far impresses them.
“I think he’s just going one pitch at a time right now, one play at a time. I don’t think he’s getting ahead of himself,” Evans said. “He’s a really bright kid, and a really good kid, and a great athlete, so I love seeing what I’m seeing right now.
“He’s learning stuff and also he’s gonna know that they’re learning him, too, so he’s gonna have to adjust along the way, and he is capable of doing that.”