On the Road Again

We finished out our homestand with back to back one run wins over Salem Keizer last week before hearing the dreaded sound of our alarm clocks at 4:45 am on Sunday.  We all groggily wandered downstairs to meet Rick and our bus, pillows in hand anxiously awaiting our departure so that we could get back to sleep sooner.  This was the first trip that anybody has been late for, and we actually left the hotel without one of our bullpen guys.  We're not sure exactly why he wasn't on the bus, but there were mentions of "chingy chingy"and a wry smile from the lanky Dominican that indicated he was probably out with a particular lady friend he has in Eugene.  We drove to the field to pick up our equipment that we had packed the night before and to check our jobs for the trip.  Each road trip there is a list of jobs posted, with players assigned to certain duties:

• Strength bags
• Clubhouse bags
• "Turtle" bags (these are the athletic training bags, and they're called the Turtle bags because Murph calls our trainer Turtle)
• Hat box
• Bat Bag

I was assigned to the strength bag, so for the first time I had a job other than getting my gear onto the bus. I grabbed one of the navy mesh SD logo bags with dumbells, stretching bands, tubing and other things related to working on our bodies and carried it out with my gear bag. We piled back onto the bus and were delighted to find the missing pitcher on board, we quickly laid out the foam mattress pads all along the floor of the bus and in no time at all we were asleep and on the way to Everett.

Yup, soft pillows and firm pillows. Hysterical.

We arrived in Everett, Washington to find that our rooms weren't all ready and so about half the team was stuck sitting in the lobby waiting.  I quickly stole Chabot's PSVita and began to play MLB The Show to pass the time.  At around 1:30 Chris O'dowd and I got our room keys and headed upstairs.  I immediately upon walking into the room began laughing uncontrollably as we noticed that the pillows were labelled "firm" and "soft." Not that funny right? It was one of those, you had to be there memories.  During a trip to Bakersfield, California my freshman year at school we had arrived at 4 or 5 am and Lucky and I found these tags on our pillows and for no reason at all began hysterically laughing. 

After a quick nap we proceeded to take a long, cold, miserable, ugly nap during what was supposed to be game one against the AquaSox.  It was a 7-1 loss, our only run coming in the top of the 9th on a passed ball.  We were asleep for this one and it was apparent.  We got some sleep on our choice of pillows and were back at it for two more the next two nights.  I left the ballpark with some interesting news however, and that was that I'd make my career debut at first base in game two.  I also found out that I had been selected to go to Instructional League, a 3 week camp similar to Spring Training, that is held after short season is over. It is an opportunity to get some time playing in front of the front office brass, the major decision makers, and an opportunity to work with our organization's instructors.  I was extremely excited to get an invite, even though it means that I won't be getting home until probably mid October.

One view of Everett Municipal Stadium's quirky outfield.

Our next two games were good wins for the team, and I played first base both games.  I managed to break an ugly 0-13 slide that brought my average down almost 30 points, which normally would have meant I'd have a mental breakdown.  I forced myself to stay mentally resilient and to focus on all the positive things I was doing, drawing my walks, playing good defense and hitting the ball hard in order to not have my usual mid-season crisis. We took two of three from Everett and more important, we picked up a game on Vancouver who lost last night. We're now just a single game out of the playoffs with exactly 10 games remaining.

Right field view of the outfield.

In a completely random side story, the gym that we worked out at in Everett happened to be a crossfit gym used by a lot of Everett Silvertips hockey players.  This meant that in the back of the gym was a small fake ice shooting range for the players to work on their puck skills.  I made sure to take full advantage of it, as I went to town firing probably 200 pucks at the net, another 200 off the glass, and a few more off the posts just because I miss doing it in real life.  I continue to be surprised by how much I really do miss playing hockey, but as long as I can get out and shoot around like that every so often I can do without the crashing and bashing of going into the corners!