The primary recreation at Fenway Park is particular for any participant on his first Pink Sox Opening Day roster.
Multiply that feeling a dozen or so occasions, and also you’ll perceive how Sean Newcomb, who grew up a Pink Sox fan in Middleborough, Mass. however had by no means been to a Fenway dwelling opener earlier than, 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 informed the Herald earlier than the Pink Sox performed their first dwelling recreation of the season.
There have been no ensures when the left-hander, 31, signed his minor league cope with the membership in January.
“Coming into camp being non-roster, I kind of had to grind to get here,” he mentioned. “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.”
At the same time as his personal baseball journey more and more consumed his summers, Newcomb tried to find time for Fenway. He lived at dwelling when he performed for Wareham within the Cape Cod League and gained 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 mentioned. “(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 favourite gamers had been Pedro Martinez, Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, and later, Jon Lester. Like most Bostonians within the 90s and early aughts, Newcomb and his household tried to line up their Fenway journeys with the crew’s principal attraction.
“I’d say (my favorite memory is) probably watching Pedro pitch,” he mentioned. “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 somebody conversant in Fenway, there have been 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 mentioned. “I’m about to go and check out the field and see it from a different side.”
Newcomb thought his lifetime of expertise as a member of Pink Sox Nation would turn out to be useful when it got here 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 mentioned, “and I’ll probably be getting yelled at by people I know!”
How the tables have turned.
“I do remember doing some heckling,” he mentioned with a chuckle. “I remember some old Blue Jays games, specifically, mostly out in right field, but nothing too crazy.”
On Sunday, followers will take the commuter rail or park in Quincy and take the Pink Line to Fenway Park, the place Newcomb shall be on the mound. A few of them shall be there simply to see him.
“I had to draw the line for tickets, outside of parents and direct family,” he mentioned 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 occasions as a result of he already completed many profession firsts with the Braves, Cubs, and A’s. However there have additionally been moments that reawakened his interior baby, who’s, after all, a diehard ‘Sawx’ fan.
“It kind of goes back and forth,” Newcomb mentioned. “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!’”
