Liveable Heat

It's official, it's summer.  How do I know? Every year it takes me about 3 weeks of not being on schedule to completely forget what day it is.  Well, I've made it to that point where every day is Sunday. It's a great feeling not having a clue what day it is, and knowing that the only thing I have to worry about is staying down on ground balls and staying through my swing in batting practice. 

On Tuesday we had our normal practice before our home game against the Diamondbacks.  I went out to the cage early and took some BP with Lantigua for one last time, as I would later find out he's actually our Dominican Summer League Academy coordinator and had a flight home on Wednesday.  We kept on drilling in my new swing, making sure I have loose muscles and fast hands that attack the inside half of the ball.  I hit well, and felt really good which was most important.  I cut my early work short to make sure that I'd have time to get to practice on time and I grabbed my helmet, bats and gloves and walked over to the practice field.  I sat in the dugout waiting for practice to start, before heading out to right field for our daily meeting, and stretch. 

Every day, we begin practice by having a meeting to discuss the prior evening's game.  The meetings take about 15 minutes, but they would take half the time if not for the need for translation.  Gabby, our manager begins by speaking about one of his talking points, and then trails off and looks to our hitting coach, Sosa.  He then repeats everything in Spanish for the non-English speaking players. When the meeting is finished in both languages we head to the right field line to meet Vern, our strength and conditioning coach for stretch.  This is always one of the funniest times of the day because Mallex never stops joking around about anything and everything.  His jokes cover an array of topics, most of which I can't really post on here in case I have any younger readers (or in case Gramma reads this post...Zidie probably knows them anyways).  We took mass ground balls, meaning everyone got to throw to first and turn double plays.  We then broke up into our bp groups, and I hit really well.  I finally felt comfortable with a wood bat, and my new swing.  Both Lantigua and Easley commented on how much better my swings were.  It was a good day.

We faced the Diamondbacks on the side field, instead of the stadium, and played a good game, snapping our mini losing streak. I sat and watched as my old A2000 made it's AZL debut because Goree, our second baseman's glove was too floppy for him to use. I joked with the guys that if Jalen made any awesome plays that I got credit for them since my glove was actually catching the ball.  Nothing too exciting to write about my glove, so I guess the highlight of the night was Quintana's monster home run to left field.  The ball was about a thousand feet up in the air when it cleared the 385 sign in the left field gap.  It was by far the farthest home run I've seen since I've arrived. We won, went inside the clubhouse and ate, then headed back to the hotel to sleep.

Yesterday it rained for the first time, and it was also the first day when the heat wasn't murderous.  It was (I think I gave this away in the title) liveable heat.  It was warm enough to warrant only shorts and t-shirts but not hot enough that it feels like your skin is on fire.  Because of the rain we got to warm up inside, 20 minutes of cardio and then band stretches, choppers and foam rolling.  If you have no idea what those things are, fear not.  Band stretches are the most basic, we get our legs loose by wrapping a rubber band around our feet and stretching by pulling our legs in a bunch of different directions.  Choppers are a Padres hitters drill, and are done with the tubing people use at physical therapy to strengthen weak joints and muscles.  We basically take slow controlled swings while holding the tubes, and this loosens up, and wakes up our hitting muscles.  Finally, we grab hard foam cylinders and roll around on them.  It basically acts like a massage but with generally applied pressure.  It all adds up to a lot of sweat, and loose, lean, mean hitting muscles.

We took BP in the cages since it was still raining and then headed in for our pregame meal.  We had burgers, hot dogs and chilli (terrible choice to actually have the chilli) then got dressed and headed out to the vans.  We drove over to the Giants complex and played on a field that was an exact replica of their big league stadium AT&T Park.  It was a pretty cool park, and a very well played game.  We ended up losing in extra innings on a broken bat single up the middle.  Once again I realized baseball is truly a stupid game, as in no other sport can a person do everything WRONG and make a game winning play.  It just doesn't happen.  This guy swung at a bad pitch, didn't hit it hard, broke his bat and managed to be the hero.  Can you imagine a hockey player falling, breaking his stick, losing the puck and scoring the winning goal all in one move? Or how about a quarterback throwing a game winning touchdown to a receiver that loses his shoe, fumbles the ball and trips? Never going to happen.  Only in baseball. What a stupid, stupid, frustrating game! And call me crazy, but I can't wait to get out there and do it all again tomorrow.