Heat, Practice and a Dust Storm

On the left is my new 2B glove, and the on the Wright (because
its a David Wright Model) is the new 3B glove.

On Wednesday I got to make my practice debut.  That was after sitting in the clubhouse for nearly 3 hours. We arrived early because Max Fried, who has become a good friend needed to be there early for his concussion test.  I sat at my locker on the navy SD logo stool trying to pass the minutes by checking Twitter every two seconds, and Facebook every five.  Right before practice I got the packages I had been waiting for.  First was the box containing my brand new Wilson baseball gloves, a 1786-SS, the same model I've used all through my college career, and a DW5 that I'll need to figure out how to use in case I end up playing at 3B.  As always they felt great right out of the box, and I immediately put each one on and started to pound away at the palm and the webbing to start creating a pocket.  I didn't get much time though, as two more boxes were delivered to my locker, one holding my new New Balance molded cleats, and another containing all my Under Armour gear.  This was a huge relief considering I didn't bring batting gloves with me and I was under an hour from my first practice of my pro career.  I didn't want to go in an hit without batting gloves and either throw the bat trying to swing, or tear up my hands.  I was like a kid on Christmas morning, I ripped open the boxes and pulled out and inspected each piece of gear I had received before placing it delicately inside my locker.  I'm pretty particular about locker setups so I had to spend a little time making sure each of the gloves were sitting properly, and that my batting gloves were all lined up etc.  I also was called in to the equipment room so I could get a helmet, the gigantic Rawlings S100's that all minor league players have to wear, and a pair of bats.  I chose Rawlings Big Stick B141 models.  They looked cool, and more important, they felt good.  I tarred them up, and headed out to the back field for practice.

Practice was a real killer.  Having only been in the Arizona heat as a spectator at Monday's practice and as a water park goer on Tuesday I really wasn't prepared for practicing.  About half way through our dynamic warmup I was feeling the heat.  It felt as though I was in an oven, baking, while trying to also do running high knees and all the other stretches.  I threw with Travis during warm up and then we were broken up into infielders and outfielders.  Infielders took ground balls, starting out with 5-3/6-4-3's, then 6-3/5-4-3's and finally 4-6-3/3-6-3's.  These are all the combinations of double plays on the infield and are noted by the positions that touch the ball.  For example, 6-4-3 means the ball went from the shortstop (6) to the second baseman (4) and on to first (3).  After defense we broke into batting practice.  My first ever pro BP group was me, Travis, Jeremy Hermida (a big leaguer) and Vince Bellnome (AAA 2B), not a bad start.  We hit, then did two rounds on defense, ran the bases during group four and got to hit in the cage with Coach Lantigua. He threw soft toss and explained the two principles that the Padres organization teaches all its hitter.  I'm not sure if I'm allowed to reveal the secrets, but I will say that the one adjustment he made in my swing yielded an impressive difference in the exit speed on the ball.  I liked the new found power, but obviously it will be a while before the changes set in and work at game speed. 

We finished practice and headed inside to grab a Jimmy John's sub for our pregame meal, and sat around in the dining room watching the Padres game on tv.  After finishing, me and Travis had to go into the equipment room to pick up our game pants.  Wearing Majestic pants after playing in the horrible Wilson greys we wore all year was awesome.  There is just something so wonderful about good baseball pants.  We threw on our uniforms and headed out to the stadium.  We stretched, and threw and then I headed back to the dugout and staked out my spot for the night, sitting with Jeremy Rodriguez, Malquiel Brito and Anthony Renteria.  We made the most out of not playing as we had a good time watching the game, talking about all sorts of stupid things and protecting ourselves from the 4th inning dust storm by wearing sunglasses and towels over our faces. The dust was so thick that we could barely see the right fielder from our spot in the third base dugout.  By then end of the storm there was a thick cloud of haze hanging over the ballpark and we were all caked in dirt even having not hit the field. We lost 11-9 thanks to a monstrous opposite field home run by the Dodgers first baseman, a 17 year old kid in his first pro season.  So far since I've arrived the Peoria Padres are 0-2, hopefully I get up to Eugene before I cause too much of a losing streak!