The Daily Grind

I haven't posted in a while, so first of all I'll apologize for that. I haven't really had the time or the energy, as for the first time in my life I've figured out how to sleep in! I guess the daily grind has caught up to me, and I've learned a new skill out of it.  I'm not going to try and go back and fill gaps in crazy detail, there was a lot that went on since the end of July when I last wrote.  This post will cover our series here in Yakima, and maybe some other things.

Since the end of July we've managed to continue playing very hot and cold baseball, one day we score 10 and get 20 hits, the next we're shutout and get 5.  One day our pitching staff carves up a lineup and the next day its a mad scramble to find outs.  Such is baseball, however through it all we've had a lot of movement within our team and I think that has made things a touch more difficult.

Last week one of our infielders had to leave the team to go home and deal with a dying father.  I can't even imagine having to deal with something like that, that has to be the most horrible experience in any persons life.  That made extra roster room, along with the catcher shuffle which saw O'Dowd get the call to go up to Lake Elsinore, and Del Castillo get returned to Arizona.  For our home series against Vancouver Rodney Daal (catcher) and Felipe Blanco (SS) were called up.  Rodney made the most of it, jumping in head first with a swagger second to none.  For a really young kid he has a mentality that a lot of older guys can learn from, in his mind he is the best baseball player ever to play the game, and he plays with that sort of confidence.  It's very impressive, it doesn't hurt that he has what we call "light tower power," or the ability to hit the ball and make it either turn to dust or disappear into the sunset.  Blanco, who the Dominican guys in Arizona call "Chino," the Spanish word for Chinese (they think he looks Asian) is a young shortstop with all the tools to become a great ball player.  He is still learning though, and seemed a little outmatched in his three games with us. So after our third loss in a row to Vancouver he was sent back to Arizona, another face that was here one day and gone the next.  Gabby, the guy who stayed in Eugene with me while the team was in Vancouver also got sent to Arizona, more because he's been hurt and hasn't been able to play than anything else.

Looking toward the valley of doom that we stopped in.  It seemed like there
couldn't possibly be people, or life forms in the area, it was like another planet

Needless to say having teammates in and out of the revolving door we call the Minor Leagues is tough, it's very weird to show up to the ballpark and see empty lockers with name plates removed.  Now we're at the trip to Yakima.  We left the hotel in Eugene at 6 a.m., PSYCH, we were told we were leaving at six, but the bus didn't arrive until 7:30.  So, after returning to our rooms for an hour of sleep or video games we hit the road.  I slept for the first three hours, I brought a pillow, threw it on the floor of the bus and laid across the aisle with my feet tucked under Murph (player Murph, not Manager) and Roof's seat.  Having played three years of college baseball has given me some of the tools to make road trips bearable. We stopped at some rest station in some twilight zone area that really felt like we were on another planet.  Everything looked small, yet we were dwarfed by our surroundings.  We grabbed either Subway sandwiches or McDonalds and returned to the bus to watch Good Fellas and finish our trip to Yakima.  Having been to booming cities like Medicine Hat, Alberta and Bakersfield, California I was surprised by how exciting Yakima was.  There was a whole lot of nothing, coupled with a lot of dusty fields, trailers and a few chain restaurants like an Applebees and an Outback.  We went to the hotel and got to our rooms for a nap before heading to the field for our show and go appearance. 

The field sat idle before game one as we opted for the show
and go rather than batting practice after our long trip

No batting practice worked for us in game one as we pounded out hits, and hard hit outs en route to a win.  We arrived at the ballpark that day to find that our teammate who had been home with his ill father had returned to the team, it was a good shot in the arm as he's a great kid to have around.  Never mind he's a good player, but he's a good guy in the dugout and in the clubhouse.  We won both of the first two games pretty easily, we scored often and in bunches.  It was good to erase the memories of the Vancouver series in which we were stifled. 

Yakima's players in front of their dugout before game two
as the cages are setup for batting practice.

Last night wasn't our best effort of the summer, we were 5 hit and shutout.  We played a well enough to make the score respectable at only 2-0 but it wasn't much of a game.  We never had runners on base, never had the chances we had created the previous two nights.  After the game Murph let us have it in the locker room.  He called guys out, he called the team out.  It was a very similar style to what I had grown to know at Stony Brook, not so much about the physical play but about the process and the work.  Hopefully it will sink in this time, and we can start to get to that place that great teams get to, where the work is fun and therefore the games are just relaxed shows.  What we haven't gotten yet is the grind, the boring part of this life.  As Murph said in his meeting last night "greatness is boring, it's repetitive and it's boring!"


Today I'll be on the 2:30 bus again to get my shin splints (a lovely development from playing so many games on turf) worked on and then go over some video with Prieto our hitting coach. Then it will be back out to the dilapidated cages behind the center field wall to do some more work. A swing is never a finished product, so it will be more of the same today.