Jackie Robinson's Fenway Tryout
14 years ago
Monday, February 2, 2009
Day One, Day One, I'm Barely Making Sense
One would think that being around former major leaguers would be intimidating, but once you've had a pat on the back from Oil Can Boyd, showered with Butch Hobson and seen Frank Malzone's 80-year-old bits and pieces, there are no barriers anymore. What a first day of Red Sox Fantasy Camp.
The day began with a 6:00 a.m. wakeup call, barely scrounging enough energy after the Super Bowl to get dressed, and getting on a 7:00 bus to the Spring Training complex. It had just stopped raining and we were worried that we would be stuck in the clubhouse all day losing money playing poker to more experienced guys. Thankfully, the weather cleared up for most of the day. We arrived at the complex and were ushered into the clubhouse, where we found our lockers with our names on them, along with freshly washed jerseys (also with our names on them) hanging there, waiting for us. It was a little bit surreal. They also mixed in the pros with the campers, so some people had former major leaguers changing right next to them. The aforementioned Butch Hobson and Frank Malzone were in our row. Adam and I had adjacent lockers. He's wearing #14 (in honor of Nanny's birth year of 1914 and possibly also Jim Rice) and I'm wearing #42 for Jackie Robinson, who I admired greatly even though he was never a Red Sox. Mo Vaughn also wore #42, but that's just lagniappe.
After changing into our uniforms, we helped ourselves to breakfast, which consisted of bacon and eggs, as well as lighter fare such as cereal and yogurt. I opted for the cereal and an apple to go along with my coffee. No sense weighing myself down with the heavy stuff. We then had a sort of introductory meeting where we split into groups alphabetically and then rotated around 5 different skills stations for minor instruction and evaluation:
1) Baserunning, led by Dick Berardino, George Thomas and Rich Gedman. This was held indoors and they used my glove as a demo base. Former pros have stepped on my glove. Swoon.
2) Pitching, led by Spaceman Lee, Oil Can Boyd and (nominally) Luis Tiant. El Tiante didn't do much, but Lee and Boyd taught us how to throw a fastball properly (which I had apparently been doing wrong my entire illustrious career), and Oil Can taught us how to throw a slider. Kinda cool to get hands-on instruction from those guys.
3) Infield, led by Lou Merloni and John Valentin, which challenged our quads, but was mostly valuable for Merloni and Valentin's evaluation of local strip clubs and the former players who frequented them. Classy.
4) Outfield, led by Butch Hobson, who didn't really seem to want to be coaching outfield, but did it anyway. I made a nice running catch on a deep fly ball, so that felt good. Afterwards, Adam and I rubbed in the Gator football victory over Alabama in the SEC Championship game (Hobson's an Alabama alum).
5) Hitting, led by no one in particular, but I ended up in a batting cage with Chad Epperson, a minor league manager and hitting instructor, who gave me some pretty good tips. I might have gotten a little overconfident smashing balls gently lobbed toward me, as opposed to the 65-70 mph fastballs I was barely making contact with back home.
After the last drill, we had a lunch of salmon filet and salad and a pb&j sandwich (on quite possibly the worst bread ever), as well as an autograph session with Frank Viola, who mostly made his mark with the Twins, but also pitched a couple of years for the Sox toward the end of his career.
After lunch, we stretched and then split up into teams, again alphabetically, for evaluation games. Adam and I were of course paired up on the same team, but that didn't help our team's cause much. I played a sorry rightfield, with two balls going over my head, and popped up to the infield on all three of my at-bats. Adam helped turn my last pop out into the rare double play by getting doubled off first base after going too far off first. I batted righty on the first at-bat and then lefty on the last two, but it didn't seem to make a difference. There was a hellacious wind blowing in the entire game, but that's no excuse. They were crappy at-bats. I definitely fulfilled Spaceman's desire for me to "shit the bed" during the evaluation sessions, so we'll see where we get drafted later tonight.
The day began with a 6:00 a.m. wakeup call, barely scrounging enough energy after the Super Bowl to get dressed, and getting on a 7:00 bus to the Spring Training complex. It had just stopped raining and we were worried that we would be stuck in the clubhouse all day losing money playing poker to more experienced guys. Thankfully, the weather cleared up for most of the day. We arrived at the complex and were ushered into the clubhouse, where we found our lockers with our names on them, along with freshly washed jerseys (also with our names on them) hanging there, waiting for us. It was a little bit surreal. They also mixed in the pros with the campers, so some people had former major leaguers changing right next to them. The aforementioned Butch Hobson and Frank Malzone were in our row. Adam and I had adjacent lockers. He's wearing #14 (in honor of Nanny's birth year of 1914 and possibly also Jim Rice) and I'm wearing #42 for Jackie Robinson, who I admired greatly even though he was never a Red Sox. Mo Vaughn also wore #42, but that's just lagniappe.
After changing into our uniforms, we helped ourselves to breakfast, which consisted of bacon and eggs, as well as lighter fare such as cereal and yogurt. I opted for the cereal and an apple to go along with my coffee. No sense weighing myself down with the heavy stuff. We then had a sort of introductory meeting where we split into groups alphabetically and then rotated around 5 different skills stations for minor instruction and evaluation:
1) Baserunning, led by Dick Berardino, George Thomas and Rich Gedman. This was held indoors and they used my glove as a demo base. Former pros have stepped on my glove. Swoon.
2) Pitching, led by Spaceman Lee, Oil Can Boyd and (nominally) Luis Tiant. El Tiante didn't do much, but Lee and Boyd taught us how to throw a fastball properly (which I had apparently been doing wrong my entire illustrious career), and Oil Can taught us how to throw a slider. Kinda cool to get hands-on instruction from those guys.
3) Infield, led by Lou Merloni and John Valentin, which challenged our quads, but was mostly valuable for Merloni and Valentin's evaluation of local strip clubs and the former players who frequented them. Classy.
4) Outfield, led by Butch Hobson, who didn't really seem to want to be coaching outfield, but did it anyway. I made a nice running catch on a deep fly ball, so that felt good. Afterwards, Adam and I rubbed in the Gator football victory over Alabama in the SEC Championship game (Hobson's an Alabama alum).
5) Hitting, led by no one in particular, but I ended up in a batting cage with Chad Epperson, a minor league manager and hitting instructor, who gave me some pretty good tips. I might have gotten a little overconfident smashing balls gently lobbed toward me, as opposed to the 65-70 mph fastballs I was barely making contact with back home.
After the last drill, we had a lunch of salmon filet and salad and a pb&j sandwich (on quite possibly the worst bread ever), as well as an autograph session with Frank Viola, who mostly made his mark with the Twins, but also pitched a couple of years for the Sox toward the end of his career.
After lunch, we stretched and then split up into teams, again alphabetically, for evaluation games. Adam and I were of course paired up on the same team, but that didn't help our team's cause much. I played a sorry rightfield, with two balls going over my head, and popped up to the infield on all three of my at-bats. Adam helped turn my last pop out into the rare double play by getting doubled off first base after going too far off first. I batted righty on the first at-bat and then lefty on the last two, but it didn't seem to make a difference. There was a hellacious wind blowing in the entire game, but that's no excuse. They were crappy at-bats. I definitely fulfilled Spaceman's desire for me to "shit the bed" during the evaluation sessions, so we'll see where we get drafted later tonight.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Fantasy Madness Begins
Just back from the preliminary events of Red Sox Fantasy Camp. Quite an affair, as they rented out a huge ballroom in the hotel for an open bar meet-and-greet, with introductions of the coaches, followed by a Super Bowl party. They had the World Series trophy, along with championship rings from 2004 and 2007, which Adam and I are wearing above (forgive the horrible picture quality).
We met many Red Sox greats such as Luis Tiant, who informed us that he would be selling his brand of cigars in the dugout during games. Nice. The highlight of the meet-and-greet was Bill "Spaceman" Lee, who definitely lives up to his nickname. Adam and I got pictures with him and he had heard about us because we are a "package deal" when it comes to picking teams. He sized us up, admired our physiques (even telling Adam that he had a "nice body") and told us to "shit the bed tomorrow" during tryouts, so that he could pick us in a lower round. We told him it would be no problem for us to pretend to suck. One of the other campers who had been to fantasy camp before said there's a lot of wagering going on amongst the managers and coaches, so it gets very competitive for them. I hope we get picked by the Spaceman, though we are bound to disappoint him. We also met his wife Diana, who is a lovely lady and also attested to the Spaceman's competitiveness. I think we were able to persuade her to get Bill to draft us tomorrow night.
After a long night of being plied with free drinks, and watching the incredible Super Bowl finish, I'm off to bed with a little bit of headache and a 6:00 a.m. wakeup call. Good luck to me.
Red Sox Memories
Day Two in Ft. Myers so far seems a lot warmer than Day One. We spent last night trolling around Ft. Myers Beach, about a 10 mile drive from our hotel. Typical Florida beach town, not much terribly exciting. We did encounter a friendly cafe owner and her one-toothed patron/friend/local beach bum. Delightful. Afterwards, we headed to a bar closer to our hotel and watched the debacle that was the Florida-Tennessee basketball game.
Today is when the pre-camp festivities beging: registration, meet-and-greet cocktail hour, and a Super Bowl watching party. We're so ready to get this camp started. Anything somewhat officially Red Sox related is grounds for excitement and the fact that I'm participating is off the charts.
I'm often asked why I'm a Red Sox fan, since what most people know about me is that I grew up in Florida and live in New York, but my Red Sox roots grow deep. Yes, I was born in Malden, Mass., in the same hospital as my mother and grandmother, but that isn't what qualifies me to be a Red Sox fan. The credit for the shaping of my fandom has to go to my grandmother Ethel, who I called Nanny. She lived in the Boston area her entire life and ever since I can remember, whenever I would go to visit her during baseball season, she would be listening to Sox games on the radio. Or later on as technology caught up to her, she would watch the game on TV, shut it off in disgust, usually with the flourish of mispronouncing some player's name, and then promptly lie down on her bed to go to sleep. Invariably, five minutes later the radio could be heard from her bedroom, with the tragedy of the ballgame carrying out its final inevitable conclusion. These were the ingolorious days of the '80s and '90s, of course, where the Sox would flirt with ending the Curse, only to drive the stake deeper into our hearts. Nanny was only 4 years old the last time the Sox had won the Series, so she had a lot more water under the bridge than I had, for sure, and it ate at her just as deeply as it did me.
I have a couple of fun memories of going to ballgames at Fenway Park with Nanny and it always makes me smile when I think of them:
1) In the summer of 1995, I was a counselor at Camp Ramah in Palmer, Mass. and was able to take a weekend off to go visit Nanny in Boston, about an hour and a half away. She took me to a game against the Detroit Tigers. I remember sitting in the grandstands along the right field line, shaded by the deck above. All I remember about the game itself is that Mo Vaughn hit two home runs. The feeling of having the team's slugger come up to bat, with the entire stadium demanding him to hit a home run, and him delivering not once, but twice, was euphoric. As I look at the box score from that game, I see that the Sox went on to win 12-11 in the bottom of the ninth, but all I remember is the Mo Vaughn home run show.
2) In 2000, I moved to Boston after graduate school, in part to be closer to the city I always loved and in part to spend more time with Nanny. Soon after I moved there, we went to a game against Tampa Bay. It was an unseasonably cold August night and we were sitting in the bleachers. The ninth inning came around and the score was tied and I noticed that Nanny, though excited about the game, was starting to get tired. I wondered how much longer I could reasonably ask her to stand out in the cold of a game that could go on for a few more innings, at least. "Let's stay through the bottom of the ninth," I said, "and then we can listen to the rest in the car on the way home." After a scoreless top of the ninth, the Red Sox quickly got two outs with a man on base and it didn't look good for sticking around for the end of the game. Then, the Devil Rays intentionally walked two batters to load the bases so that they could face Rico Brogna, a veteran on the last legs of a modest career. With the crowd properly revved-up for a bases-loaded, two out, bottom of the ninth situation, Rico Brogna not only delivered the game winning hit, he sent it soaring over the right field fence for a walk-off grand slam. I just remember jumping up and down in the stands, and Nanny jumping up and down with me. It was the last game Nanny and I went to, just the two of us. She never did get to see the Sox win another World Series; she died in 2003. The first person I thought of when the Red Sox finally won it all the next year, as I gathered with a small group of friends in my Pittsburgh apartment, was Nanny. I know she kept her radio on for that one.
Today is when the pre-camp festivities beging: registration, meet-and-greet cocktail hour, and a Super Bowl watching party. We're so ready to get this camp started. Anything somewhat officially Red Sox related is grounds for excitement and the fact that I'm participating is off the charts.
I'm often asked why I'm a Red Sox fan, since what most people know about me is that I grew up in Florida and live in New York, but my Red Sox roots grow deep. Yes, I was born in Malden, Mass., in the same hospital as my mother and grandmother, but that isn't what qualifies me to be a Red Sox fan. The credit for the shaping of my fandom has to go to my grandmother Ethel, who I called Nanny. She lived in the Boston area her entire life and ever since I can remember, whenever I would go to visit her during baseball season, she would be listening to Sox games on the radio. Or later on as technology caught up to her, she would watch the game on TV, shut it off in disgust, usually with the flourish of mispronouncing some player's name, and then promptly lie down on her bed to go to sleep. Invariably, five minutes later the radio could be heard from her bedroom, with the tragedy of the ballgame carrying out its final inevitable conclusion. These were the ingolorious days of the '80s and '90s, of course, where the Sox would flirt with ending the Curse, only to drive the stake deeper into our hearts. Nanny was only 4 years old the last time the Sox had won the Series, so she had a lot more water under the bridge than I had, for sure, and it ate at her just as deeply as it did me.
I have a couple of fun memories of going to ballgames at Fenway Park with Nanny and it always makes me smile when I think of them:
1) In the summer of 1995, I was a counselor at Camp Ramah in Palmer, Mass. and was able to take a weekend off to go visit Nanny in Boston, about an hour and a half away. She took me to a game against the Detroit Tigers. I remember sitting in the grandstands along the right field line, shaded by the deck above. All I remember about the game itself is that Mo Vaughn hit two home runs. The feeling of having the team's slugger come up to bat, with the entire stadium demanding him to hit a home run, and him delivering not once, but twice, was euphoric. As I look at the box score from that game, I see that the Sox went on to win 12-11 in the bottom of the ninth, but all I remember is the Mo Vaughn home run show.
2) In 2000, I moved to Boston after graduate school, in part to be closer to the city I always loved and in part to spend more time with Nanny. Soon after I moved there, we went to a game against Tampa Bay. It was an unseasonably cold August night and we were sitting in the bleachers. The ninth inning came around and the score was tied and I noticed that Nanny, though excited about the game, was starting to get tired. I wondered how much longer I could reasonably ask her to stand out in the cold of a game that could go on for a few more innings, at least. "Let's stay through the bottom of the ninth," I said, "and then we can listen to the rest in the car on the way home." After a scoreless top of the ninth, the Red Sox quickly got two outs with a man on base and it didn't look good for sticking around for the end of the game. Then, the Devil Rays intentionally walked two batters to load the bases so that they could face Rico Brogna, a veteran on the last legs of a modest career. With the crowd properly revved-up for a bases-loaded, two out, bottom of the ninth situation, Rico Brogna not only delivered the game winning hit, he sent it soaring over the right field fence for a walk-off grand slam. I just remember jumping up and down in the stands, and Nanny jumping up and down with me. It was the last game Nanny and I went to, just the two of us. She never did get to see the Sox win another World Series; she died in 2003. The first person I thought of when the Red Sox finally won it all the next year, as I gathered with a small group of friends in my Pittsburgh apartment, was Nanny. I know she kept her radio on for that one.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Greetings From Ft. Myers
After an early morning flight from Newark, we landed in Ft. Myers to find a bright, blue sky awaiting us. Unfortunately, it's also a tad chilly, with temperatures in the low to mid 60s. That's not too bad when we'll be playing, but it puts the screws on any beach action. We might do a little running (or not) and then watch the Florida-Tennessee basketball game tonight.
As I look ahead to the week of baseball coming up, I can't help but think back to my brief baseball career as a youth. I played one year of organized baseball in my life, sometime in middle school for a City League team, which was a rival of the local Babe Ruth League. Gainesville didn't have a Little League then. In any case, I have 4 distinct memories of playing baseball:
1) Pitching in one game, likely in middle relief because I begged to pitch so much that I probably annoyed my coaches, I remember throwing what can only be described as the most perfect curve ball ever thrown. Never mind that I did not (and still do not) know how to throw a curve ball, this pitch came over the plate in a perfect 12-6 motion, starting up near the hitter's eyes and then completely falling off the table into the lower half of the strike zone. The poor kid didn't know what hit him and quite frankly, neither did I. On the next pitch, he grounded weakly to me and I tossed over to the first baseman to get out of the inning. It is the only memory I have of pitching, though it's quite likely that I was an otherwise horrible pitcher, or else I would've been summoned to break off the old Uncle Charlie more often, no?
2) The only at-bat I remember is an opposite field double that bounced once and hit the right-field fence. I must have closed my eyes when I swung, or done some other ridiculous action, because when I got to second base, the opposing team was laughing at me. I couldn't hear what they were saying to me, so I just shrugged and pretended that they had never seen a ball hit so far in their lives and thus they could only throw their hands up and laugh in despair when facing such an imposing hitter and that I must have been called upon to be their God.
3) In my senior year of high school, I tried out for the baseball team. I had been on the varsity soccer team my sophomore and junior years, but I knew I wasn't going to get an opportunity to start and I had just been elected North Florida Council Vice President of my youth group (BBYO), so I didn't have time to play soccer in the winter anyway. But as spring rolled around, I got the baseball jones. By this time, I hadn't played baseball in 5 years and was competing with varsity and junior varsity players for a roster spot. Of that experience, I only remember two moments: 1) been yelled at for sitting down when proper protocol was to "take a knee" and 2) hitting an inside-the-park home run to deep center field (whatever that means). Needless to say, that fleeting display of power and speed were not enough to overcome my inexperience and my instinct to plant my ass in the grass when told to relax.
4) Perhaps my most traumatic experience as a baseball player didn't even take place on a field. When I was in middle school, my parents found a gift certificate to a local bookstore, on which I had crossed out my own name and written in the name of our 17 year-old neighbor Chris across the street. Of course, my mother thought that it must've had something to do with drugs, and my refusal to tell her that I had in fact hoped that he would buy me some dirty magazines did not serve to assuage her fears. I had a baseball game that night and she threatened to keep me home if I didn't tell her the truth. Here I was, a lonely and woman-obsessed thirteen year-old faced with a choice of missing out on a baseball game or suffering the humiliation of telling my mother that I not only wanted dirty magazines, but that I also wanted to implicate the neighbor (who had already refused the mission) in my filthy conspiracy. Finally, we hit upon a solution in which I would call my brother at college and tell him what I was up to and then he would judiciously give my mom the Yay or Nay as to whether I should be burned at the stake for my crimes. Not that telling my big brother that I was some kind of pervert was my idea of a compromise, but I was left with no choice if I had any hope of playing baseball that night. So, I told him I had wanted Chris to buy me the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue. In my adolescent mind, I felt that this represented enough of a version of the truth, while still maintaining my dignity in my taste for pictures of scantily-clad women. I then suffered an awkward (how much more awkward it must have been for Adam!) lecture about how "women aren't everything" and that I should "focus on other things in life." With all parties satisfied that I was not a juvenile threat to society of my family's honor, I did make it onto the ballfield that night. I was the one with the bright red face.
As I look ahead to the week of baseball coming up, I can't help but think back to my brief baseball career as a youth. I played one year of organized baseball in my life, sometime in middle school for a City League team, which was a rival of the local Babe Ruth League. Gainesville didn't have a Little League then. In any case, I have 4 distinct memories of playing baseball:
1) Pitching in one game, likely in middle relief because I begged to pitch so much that I probably annoyed my coaches, I remember throwing what can only be described as the most perfect curve ball ever thrown. Never mind that I did not (and still do not) know how to throw a curve ball, this pitch came over the plate in a perfect 12-6 motion, starting up near the hitter's eyes and then completely falling off the table into the lower half of the strike zone. The poor kid didn't know what hit him and quite frankly, neither did I. On the next pitch, he grounded weakly to me and I tossed over to the first baseman to get out of the inning. It is the only memory I have of pitching, though it's quite likely that I was an otherwise horrible pitcher, or else I would've been summoned to break off the old Uncle Charlie more often, no?
2) The only at-bat I remember is an opposite field double that bounced once and hit the right-field fence. I must have closed my eyes when I swung, or done some other ridiculous action, because when I got to second base, the opposing team was laughing at me. I couldn't hear what they were saying to me, so I just shrugged and pretended that they had never seen a ball hit so far in their lives and thus they could only throw their hands up and laugh in despair when facing such an imposing hitter and that I must have been called upon to be their God.
3) In my senior year of high school, I tried out for the baseball team. I had been on the varsity soccer team my sophomore and junior years, but I knew I wasn't going to get an opportunity to start and I had just been elected North Florida Council Vice President of my youth group (BBYO), so I didn't have time to play soccer in the winter anyway. But as spring rolled around, I got the baseball jones. By this time, I hadn't played baseball in 5 years and was competing with varsity and junior varsity players for a roster spot. Of that experience, I only remember two moments: 1) been yelled at for sitting down when proper protocol was to "take a knee" and 2) hitting an inside-the-park home run to deep center field (whatever that means). Needless to say, that fleeting display of power and speed were not enough to overcome my inexperience and my instinct to plant my ass in the grass when told to relax.
4) Perhaps my most traumatic experience as a baseball player didn't even take place on a field. When I was in middle school, my parents found a gift certificate to a local bookstore, on which I had crossed out my own name and written in the name of our 17 year-old neighbor Chris across the street. Of course, my mother thought that it must've had something to do with drugs, and my refusal to tell her that I had in fact hoped that he would buy me some dirty magazines did not serve to assuage her fears. I had a baseball game that night and she threatened to keep me home if I didn't tell her the truth. Here I was, a lonely and woman-obsessed thirteen year-old faced with a choice of missing out on a baseball game or suffering the humiliation of telling my mother that I not only wanted dirty magazines, but that I also wanted to implicate the neighbor (who had already refused the mission) in my filthy conspiracy. Finally, we hit upon a solution in which I would call my brother at college and tell him what I was up to and then he would judiciously give my mom the Yay or Nay as to whether I should be burned at the stake for my crimes. Not that telling my big brother that I was some kind of pervert was my idea of a compromise, but I was left with no choice if I had any hope of playing baseball that night. So, I told him I had wanted Chris to buy me the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue. In my adolescent mind, I felt that this represented enough of a version of the truth, while still maintaining my dignity in my taste for pictures of scantily-clad women. I then suffered an awkward (how much more awkward it must have been for Adam!) lecture about how "women aren't everything" and that I should "focus on other things in life." With all parties satisfied that I was not a juvenile threat to society of my family's honor, I did make it onto the ballfield that night. I was the one with the bright red face.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
