Norwich – It has been suggested that home is any four walls that enclose the right person. Then there’s Dave Schermerhorn — an illustration of the right person — for whom home has 6,000 seats, a wall stretching foul line to foul line and a retro beer stand.

What, you think it’s coincidence that “Dave Schermerhorn” and “Dodd Stadium” bear the same initials? Please. The 10-year-old who used to ride his bike around Norwich getting people to sign up for the Navigators Booster Club was the 30-year-old man Wednesday night who was, well, Da Man.

You have your basic “local boy makes good” stories, sure. But this? From growing up in the ballpark to running it one day? Meet Dave Schermerhorn. Norwich native, Norwich Free Academy graduate, and the brand new general manager of the Connecticut Tigers.

“It’s almost too good to be true,” Schermerhorn was saying Tuesday, roughly 24 hours before fans entered the ballpark for its 21st summer, the home opener for the community conscious Tigers.

“I love being here in my hometown, the ballpark I grew up in,” he said. “I took a tour of this place before it opened, before there was an outfield fence. I tell people I’ve been working here for 21 seasons.”

That’s because he has, save a four-year stretch at Stonehill, where Schermerhorn earned a marketing degree. The kid who was the left fielder on NFA’s 2003 state championship team — ranked No. 1 in the state at the end — came home in 2009 looking for a job. He went to the Connecticut Defenders website almost out of reflex.

“I looked for the closest thing that would fit a marketing degree and I sent an e-mail in July,” Schermerhorn said. “I said, ‘you’re probably staffed for this year, but do you have any advice?’ As luck would have it, I got an e-mail a few hours later, if not sooner, and I learned their intern left and went for an interview. I started a couple of days after that as the Community Relations and Promotions Assistant, the last year of the Defenders.”

Schermerhorn graduated to Director of Community Relations with the Tigers for three years, assistant general manager in 2014 to general manager in the recent offseason.

“It’s pretty cool to be part of something from the ground up,” Schermerhorn said.

But then, given Schermerhorn’s passions and his background, he would go home again.

“This couldn’t be happening to a better person,” said John Iovino, NFA’s Director of Student Affairs and its former baseball coach. “Dave moved into the neighborhood when he was little. Pretty cool story that he goes from wiffle ball games in my front yard to playing left field for us on a championship team to running the Tigers. That’s a pretty damn cool story.”

Indeed. And perhaps you’ve noticed that Dodd Stadium has never been more of a communal center for eastern Connecticut than since the Tigers began in 2011. High school baseball, college baseball, high school soccer, car shows, a Renaissance Fair, three French hens, two turtle doves …

This is what happens with guys like Dave Schermerhorn and (Director of Sales) Brent Southworth, once the Norwich American Legion coach, who understand the concept of community.

“We’ve always felt this facility should be more than a minor league baseball facility,” Schermerhorn said. This should be a gathering place for the community. Whether it’s the Tigers, a car show, NFA baseball, soccer, it’s a great place to come. I guess part of it is also we want to get people familiar coming up through the industrial park. It’s not an ideal location, but also not as difficult to get to as people might think. Hopefully when people come up, they want to come back.”

And so the kid who remembers his seat location for the first game at Dodd in April, 1995 — Section 8, Row B, seats 1-4 — was busier than Times Square on Wednesday night. Iovino couldn’t be more correct: Pretty damn good story. The success story. For the local guy.

“I tell people all the time how fortunate I am,” Schermerhorn said. “I love coming to work every day. The memories I have here as a kid, and helping to produce some of those memories for the kids now, is really something. One of the things that I think is cool, is that we still have the Tater (the Gator) statue out front. Every time I see a dad taking a picture of a kid in front of that statue, I can almost connect the dots and say he was that kid at one time, too, getting his picture taken there. It’s kind of a generational thing.”

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro.