'Feels the same': Lovullo, Hazen make return to Fenway

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BOSTON -- Fenway Park was once home for D-backs general manager Mike Hazen and manager Torey Lovullo, but neither had been back to the historic ballpark since they departed the Red Sox organization to reunite in Arizona after the 2016 season.

The pair got their first look at it Friday when the D-backs arrived to open a three-game series with Boston.

"It seems like it's been a long time," Lovullo said. "I know we were supposed to come here in 2020, but COVID changed the schedule. It's nice to be back. I do have a lot of great memories. I spent five years in this organization, and we won a World Championship, so you make a lot of good friends along that pathway."

Lovullo served as John Farrell's bench coach from 2013-16 while Hazen was the team's GM for the 2016 season, though he was not the top decision maker, as Dave Dombrowski was the president of baseball operations.

Hazen was born in Massachusetts and grew up coming to Red Sox games, and the memories came flowing back when he walked in on Friday.

"That’s the beauty of this ballpark and what it means to the game of baseball -- nothing really changes," Hazen said. "It feels the same, it looks the same, even though they added tons of improvements. It never changes, the feel of what it’s like to walk out of that tunnel. I did it this afternoon; I remember doing it as a kid. Walking out of that tunnel and in your mind, you think this place is enormous, and then you walk out and it’s like, 'This place is tiny.'"

When the D-backs dismissed chief baseball officer Tony La Russa and GM Dave Stewart following the 2016 season, Hazen was one of their top targets.

Had he been the top baseball executive in Boston, he might not have left, but the chance to run his own department in Arizona was too good of an opportunity to pass up.

"It was hard to leave for my family and my kids, but from a baseball opportunity, where we were at, Dave had just gotten here, and so he was entrenching himself into the top leadership position," Hazen said. "So that coming available in Arizona, it actually was pretty easy. It was something I had wanted to do. I always told myself, 'If you were ever going to get that opportunity, you weren’t going to cherry-pick where you were going as a first-year GM. And then you have to go prove yourself.'"

Hazen has certainly proven himself as a GM in Arizona, with the D-backs making the postseason in 2017, narrowly missing it in '18 and '19 and making their run to the World Series last year.

Twice since Hazen has come to Arizona, the Red Sox's GM job has become available, but leaving his two top baseball operations executives -- Amiel Sawdaye, who came over from the Red Sox with Hazen and Mike Fitzgerald -- along with Lovullo didn't feel right.

"We have business to do [in Arizona]," Hazen said. "I’ve said this from the very beginning. We want to try to win a World Series. Winning it in Arizona would be an enormous challenge, and that’s what we want to do. We have built stuff together. Me and Ami and Fitz and Torey, we’ve been together for so long. One of the things I’ve said is I don’t think I should be the first person to leave."