Fast Turnarounds, Ghost Hotels and a Win Streak

First off I have to apologize for the amount of time between posts. This past five days has been pretty hectic.  My last post was from Las Vegas, and following that post me and Otto made the trip up to Spokane.  What a gorgeous view as our plane came into the small northwestern city, it reminded me a lot of camp but on a much larger scale.  More green space, more lakes, mountains rather than rolling hills.  It was nice to see green life below me considering Arizona is too hot for most places to even have grass, it has this weird alien sort of feeling, you can drive for miles and never see grass. 

We arrived in Spokane and took a taxi to the ballpark.  When we arrived we were told to call our ATC, Jeremy, but his phone wasn't working.  We stood on the side of the road outside Avista Stadium wondering what the hell we should do next.  Luckily one of the players who is rehabbing an injury was running outside the stadium.  He passed us and huffed out "if your the new guys its the third door on the right side over there" as he continued his run. I guess the navy Padres bags and the clueless looks were a giveaway, note to self, look like you have some semblance of a clue, even if you have none.  We walked up to the clubhouse and stepped into our new manager, Pat Murphy's office.  This guy is a legend on the college scene having coached Arizona State teams to Omaha every year, it seems since they started the College World Series.  Murph welcomed us to the team, had a nice little catching up conversation with Otto (he committed to play for Murph at ASU two years ago) and then explained how he wanted us to step in to leadership roles.  Having been wide awake since 5:30 a.m. I was almost delirious when he delivered the best news ever, "Tiss you'll be in there at second tonight, we're gonna bat you 3rd. Don't force it, just go in an relax."  I was half stunned and half expecting it so I managed to nod my head and reply with an "mhm."

The view out to CF.  This was during the cleanup prior to
game 4 of the series.  Storms forced us to cancel BP but we
got all the games in, thanks to a great grounds crew.

We left Murph's office and met Kyle, our clubhouse manager who got us set up with our grey road uniforms and our navy batting practice ones. He also told us we had 10 minutes until stretch.  I hurried into my uniform and headed to the field.  When I arrived I immediately fell in love with the stadium, it had that perfect old school Americana feel to it.  It's high outfield wall was covered in billboards, the press box sat on the roof, an add on not needed when it was built.  The backdrop was gorgeous with mountains all across the horizon.  We stretched, threw and before I knew it we were back in the clubhouse after winning an exciting game.  I got my first hit, made some plays at second and all was good in the world.  Games two and three were much the same.  We scored, Spokane answered.  We scored again late, held them and we won.  Three straight to start my career with the Emeralds off.  The week was spent meeting new teammates, becoming friends with guys I had previously played against, including Ronnie Richardson who played CF for UCF and their set up man Roman Madrid.  I met some people I had only ever heard about in college baseball blogs, Goose Kallunki being one of them.  It seemed like all through the college season there was no shortage of love for Goose on the baseball websites, and rightfully so, the kid can certainly hit.  I found out this was a pretty cool, loose group thanks in part to our haunted hotel, one in which Marcano, Gabby and some others all saw ghosts.  There was a midnight ghost hunt on Friday the 13th, but I was too exhausted to even consider spooking myself.  It was a great first three days, and an intro into the team I'll spend the rest of my summer with.

Getaway day in Spokane was a special one though.  We knocked out a whole lot of hits, scored a whole lot of runs and cruised to an 8-2 victory.  Why would that be a special game?  Well, leading off the 7th inning I quickly fell behind 1-2.  The pitcher beat me twice with inside fastballs. I worked the count full, and his 3-2 pitch was exactly what I expected, fastball in.  I turned on it and hit a line drive that just never seemed to come down.  It smacked off of the train car, turned sports bar in right field for my first career home run.  I tried to fight back the goofy smile but there was no concealing it.  I was higher than a kite as I rounded the bases, it was an incredible feeling.

The not so incredible feeling was the eight plus hour bus ride back to Eugene.  We watched two movies on the bus before everyone tried to fall asleep. I curled up on the floor under my seat and rolled up a couple of sweatshirts for a pillow and managed to get six very restless hours of sleep before we got home.  We headed back to the hotel and I got a couple more hours of sleep.  I met up with Gramma and Zidie in time to go for breakfast.  We spent the day running around, shopping eating and just hanging out before I had to go to the ballpark.  I arrived plenty early, mostly so I could meet my new bats.  They were incredible.  There is something so cool about getting new bats and being able to just bust them out right away for a game.

Needless to say we were plenty excited when Ronnie made
it back to the plate after his walk off bomb.  This was part
of the celebration.

We took on the Vancouver Canadians, or the Baby Jays as some of them call their team on Twitter.  It was an exciting game, very low scoring, very good pitching and defense.  There were three ejections in the game as their manager lead the charge to an early exit after getting tossed in the 8th.  Next was Scooter, Stephen Carmon our shortstop.  In the bottom of the 9th he got punched out on a bad strike three call and he made a seemingly harmless comment as he walked back to the dugout.  He got thrown out.  That lead Murph to go on the most impressive tirade against an umpire I'd ever seen.  It was awesome, he chased the guy around the home plate area to ensure he got every last piece of his mind. We were fired up, or so we thought.  The very next pitch, Ronnie crushed a ball to center and just like that it was all over. We tossed whatever we were holding in the dugout aside and ran out to home plate to meet him. The crowd was rocking as he rounded the bases and we went nuts, mobbing him as he crossed the plate! It was an insane moment, one that reminds you just how incredible baseball can be. 

It's been a special few days getting my feet under me with the Ems.  I'm going to make sure I don't got 5 days without writing, but given all the new routines, people and places I felt it was necessary to devote my time to things other than writing.  Now that I have some idea of what goes on daily I can get back to keeping everyone in the loop.