ARLINGTON, Texas — There are players for whom the significance of the Opening Day introductions will be obvious.

Jon Lester will draw his first ever assignment to start the season’s first game, a testament to his stature in the game. Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford officially will commence their Red Sox careers after the team acquired the two players in trades this offseason. Jacoby Ellsbury, Dustin Pedroia and Kevin Youkilis will be back in the lineup after missing huge chunks of last year.

Those players will command the most attention. But a player whose introduction will receive little notice might have the most appreciation for his situation.

The 2011 season will mark the second time in his 14-year professional career that Darnell McDonald will be on an Opening Day roster. The first came in 2009, with a Reds club with whom he signed as a minor league free agent in December 2008.

That moment represented a watershed for McDonald, but this year’s honor may be even more significant. With Cincinnati, McDonald was a little-known outfielder who earned a major league stint with his spring training play.

This year for the Sox, McDonald is not just in a major league clubhouse but a meaningful part of it, a hugely popular player amongst his teammates after having spent nearly all of the 2010 season at the major league level in Boston. He arrived in camp as a known quantity, and was afforded the opportunity to feel at home in the setting.

In his career, the 32-year-old has bounced from Baltimore (the team that selected him in the first round of the 1997 draft) to Cleveland, Tampa Bay, Washington, Minnesota and Cincinnati before ending up in Boston. He has survived in the game from one minor league contract to another; this year marks the first time that he enjoyed an offseason and then a full spring as a member of a 40-man roster since Baltimore released him.

And so, when he is announced as a member of the Red Sox on Friday, he will not take the moment for granted.

“It means a lot. Shoot, I worked hard for a long time to have this opportunity,” said McDonald. “It’s funny that it comes with a team like the Boston Red Sox. I’ve been with Tampa Bay, the Nationals, the Twins. But being with the Boston Red Sox, this opportunity means a lot to me.”

McDonald emergence last year – he made the second most starts of any Sox outfielder while hitting .270 with a .336 OBP and .429 slugging mark — is a study in the power of persistence. But, of course, McDonald is not the only player to offer that lesson.

Interestingly, his first baseball roommate serves as another reminder that an indirect career path can prove incredibly rewarding. When McDonald started his career as a 19-year-old in Single-A Delmarva, he was roommates with another Orioles first-rounder from the ’97 draft, Jayson Werth.

Werth had been selected No. 26 overall, four picks after McDonald, and so perhaps it seemed natural to pair the two of them. McDonald recalls with amusement that his former teammate – now considered one of the top defensive outfielders in the game – was then a catcher with an unusual body type for the position.

“I remember he was just tall, lanky, didn’t have as much power as he has. He’s kind of grown into his body, put some size on,” McDonald recalled. “It doesn’t really surprise me because he had that body type that you knew in a few years, when he filled out and trained a little bit, he was going to be a monster.”

But back then, McDonald suggests, the two of them didn’t really understand what it was to be professional baseball players, the work that needed to go into building their careers.

“We didn’t know what to expect in pro ball with playing everyday, the ins and outs. We were learning along the way,” said McDonald. “There are a lot of things I’d probably do differently now. We really just thought you showed up to the field and played, like high school. We really didn’t know the work that you had to put in.”

That was a lesson that both would learn over time. Werth, too, ended up kicking around between organizations, going from the Orioles to the Blue Jays and the Dodgers, where he suffered a wrist injury that nearly derailed his career. It was only with the Phillies, after missing a full season and signing a minor league deal, that he got his chance and emerged as one of the top outfielders in the game.

That, in turn, positioned Werth to emerge as one of the two most coveted free agent outfielders this winter, along with Carl Crawford. McDonald became close with Crawford during his year and a half in the Rays system, and talked to the multi-dimensional outfielder a couple of times during his free-agent process.

While McDonald has not kept in touch with Werth, he was aware that the Sox were likely to acquire one of the two, and he was excited about whatever might happen. In the end, he was thrilled for both players when they signed their landmark free agent contracts, Werth receiving a seven-year, $126 million deal from the Nationals, Crawford a seven-year, $142 million pact from the Sox.

“It’s cool for me knowing those people, seeing them come up, seeing the position they were able to get in. I was definitely watching,” McDonald said of their respective free agencies. “Either way, you can’t go wrong with either one. They’ve both done some great things.”

In his own way, so, now, has McDonald. After his call-up to the Sox last April 20, he became the first player in franchise history (since the RBI became an official statistic in 1920) to record a walk-off hit in his Sox debut. He became the first Sox player in more than 20 years to homer in each of his first two games with the club.

It was rewarding to make such a mark, gratifying to see that, in his own way – like with Werth and Crawford – he was being rewarded for his hard work and determination to advance his career.

“It’s being in the right place at the right time, but it’s also that mindset,” said McDonald. “Everyone has taken different roads, different paths, but I think that we all have the same passion for the game, and we all want to continue to improve. I think that’s what drives all of us.”

Though his road required patience to travel, McDonald is not complaining. To the contrary, his efforts have paid off in a fashion that he does not take for granted.

On Friday, when he is introduced for another season with the Red Sox, he will receive another reminder of that fact.

“It makes it easy coming to work every day, being able to be around people you enjoy, being part of a team that has so much tradition and history,” said McDonald. “I feel like I’m living a dream, man. To not only be here but to have the teammates I have here, the coaching staff, this is the most fun I’ve had in my professional career.”