Archive for the ‘Baseball’ Category

I’ll share a story about something that helped me recently. I hadn’t been able to long toss much this summer because of the rigors of the starting rotation. When we had nearly a whole month without a day off, 4 days in between starts was too little rest to drain my arm with long toss. But in late July I had to take time off when I got a massive blister that left my middle finger with a dime-sized piece of skin missing. It took much longer to heal than I had anticipated, but it gave my arm some rest. So, I got to long toss when the skin toughened up a bit.

And having not long tossed in over two months, I had forgotten how it felt. We threw at a bandbox field, GCS Ballpark, that had a 301 foot fence extending straight out to center field, parallel to the left field line. So, even at the power alleys, the fence was 342 feet from home plate and just 301 feet from the other foul line, making it a great long toss goal. 300 feet should be an easy chuck for anyone with 88+ in his arm, so I wanted to see it go over onto the berm.

GCS Ballpark: The shortest, most poorly designed bandbox ever. Most suitable for little leaguers.

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It’s 4:33 in the morning and I’m on a bus, singing Bob Dylan to myself amongst a crowd of sleeping ballplayers. I don’t know why I feel compelled to sing the tunes of the old poet at this hour, but it’s soothing, and I’m fighting the wearies at a very early hour. After all, we just crossed over into Central time, and if we were still on Eastern, as we had been for the past week, the sun would already be laughing at us. I’m really tired, and Bobby D is about the best medicine for me right now.

Game no. 81 was played today, and we have 15 to go. It’s late August now, which means our season is rapidly winding down, at a rate that seems to speed up by the day. What was once an impossibly long season is now quickly giving way to an obtrusively and abruptly approaching off-season. I really don’t want this ride to end, ever. Yet, at the same time, the schedule will force it to in a few short weeks.

Nearly 100 innings in and approaching nearly 100 games, I’ve finally come to understand something for which 15 years of amateur baseball did not adequately prepare me – it’s just plain hard to make it through a pro baseball season. Read the rest of this entry »

The season is winding down, which means I’m now spending a lot of my spare time reflecting on how I’ve done, how I could have done better, and how I intend on improving for next season. I’ve thrown more good pitches than bad, but success doesn’t inspire the need to change; rather, looking back at some of the pitches yielding hard hits, runs and losses has been a way for me to grow as a pitcher. The most drastic the outcome, the more indelibly the pitch has been scarred into my mind. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s the 5th inning, and your starter hasn’t been overly thrifty with his pitches. He has 1 out so far in the inning, and just threw his 88th pitch. What is the fate of this pitcher on this hypothetical day?

If it’s 2010, chances are that a reliever is stirring in the bullpen, and this starter won’t see the 6th inning. Why? Because he will have exceeded his 100 pitch limit by the end of the 5th, or would too greatly surpass it if he went back out the following inning. The 100-pitch barrier proves the undoing of his fun. Read the rest of this entry »

Two years ago I had such a good 4th of July with my college teammates, just sitting outside grilling meat and eating and drinking various things, that I decided it was my favorite holiday. The combination of summer heat, patriotism, friends and laziness just brewed in me an ataraxic cocktail. Yet, last years’ independence day was a big letdown. This past weekend, however, rejuvenated my faith in my favorite holiday.

Our weekend was spent in Traverse City, Michigan, which is way up North on the shores of Lake Michigan. The Traverse City Beach Bums were our Independence Day opponents, and I doubt we could have had a better place to play for the holiday.

Game 1 of the series was a win, thanks to Tyler Lavigne, who continued dominating teams like he has all season. Game 2 was mine, and it was lucky that my date fell on July 3rd. July 4th is usually spent with family, cooking out and doing various patriotic things, and so crowds aren’t usually as big on the actual holiday. July 3rd, however, is the day before the day, and since it fell on a gorgeous Saturday, the ballpark was packed.

Before the game, a really nice ceremony was held honoring our troops. The Blue Angels were in town for an air show, which we had watched on the beach that afternoon, and they were also at the game shaking hands with our veterans. I’m not all that sentimental, but with all of the speeches and veterans around, I felt pretty thankful to be on a baseball field, with 6,500 fans to watch us play. That was the biggest crowd ever in Traverse City, by far the biggest I had pitched in front of, and It was a neat experience. We even got a fly-over from a B-52 bomber. When the game started I got hit like a red-headed stepchild and didn’t make it through 4 innings, but it was a good day nonetheless. Some of our hitters really stepped up and mounted a strong comeback to try and bail me out. Though they couldn’t, the loss felt like a minor detail in light of the sacrifice of all our military personnel out there. Sports are crucially important to our culture, and I don’t believe what we do is at all frivolous, but fighting for one’s life is scary, and there were a lot of people watching us who had done just that. If it’s a job for the solider and a job for me, I’m pretty happy to be pitching baseballs rather than grenades.

Game 3 was a loss as well, and while it was a hell of a shame to leave town with a series loss, the weekend as a whole was interesting. Without baseball, I would probably never have visited Traverse City, which is a decent little town. I had never seen the great lakes before, and Lake Michigan was pretty amazing. Blue water that was only a foot or two deep for 1000 feet out. We got a chance to walk in it before heading to the ballpark on Sunday. And not to mention that it was the annual Cherry Festival, which brought thousands of people into the town for the weekend. With a ton of people around celebrating our country on a blue-skied holiday, the atmosphere was buzzing.

My stomach also honors the cherry.

Yeah, the ride home was long, and quiet (we were all pissed about dropping the series), but win or lose the trips are an experience. Independent of our losses, this one was pretty cool. As we rolled out of town we caught 5 different sets of fireworks from our bus, some I think that were in Grand Rapids, which kind of summed up the life we live. Being on the move all the time, we don’t get to soak in a lot of things like holidays and family moments, but we get a high volume of little cultural fragments. Sure, we didn’t get to watch the fireworks from a blanket with our loved ones, but we got to watch it from the bus, doing something we love with our summer family. I don’t remember the first time I watched fireworks, but I’ll remember the first time I watched them from a bus.

Life as a low-level professional ballplayer is pretty sweet. How would I describe it in one word? Lazy.   Read the rest of this entry »

This is my first season pitching within a true 5-man rotation. In college and summer ball, there often are too many off-days to make the rotation stable. Weekend series in college mean that starters generally pitch once a week, giving ample time for physical and skill work in between outings.

But in the professional season, off-days are few and far between, and the rotation gives each starter 4 days to prepare for his next outing. Everyone is different in what he needs to prepare, but I’ll share my own preparation schedule that I feel gives me the best chance to succeed and stay strong throughout the season. Read the rest of this entry »

Every kid growing up playing baseball wants to someday be a pro; a Major Leaguer, really, but I guess being a minor leaguer counts too. Aside from living the dream, playing a fun kid’s game for money, and living devoid of the job responsibilities most of the world endures, there is one other, big perk: All the PB&J your face can handle. Read the rest of this entry »

Starting pitchers are given plenty of time between outings to build a scouting report and game plan for facing their opponent. Our season started last week, which meant we had to figure out what our opposing hitters had on the fly. As an expansion team, we didn’t have scouting reports already laid out for us, so we were faced with assessing all of the hitters ourselves.

So as the pitchers leaned on the railing, watching the games, we bounced ideas off each other and our pitching coach about each hitter. Some of the things discussed were: Read the rest of this entry »

I arrived in Normal, Illinois on May 3rd for spring training for my first season of Independent professional baseball. I had pressure on me because I knew I had to perform well and outcompete a staff of more experienced pitchers, but I didn’t realize it would be maybe the two most stressful weeks of my life. Why was it so hard? Because I really, really, really didn’t want to go home, and it felt, at times, like certain things were out of my control.

Here’s how Independent ball works, and why it can be harder than affiliated ball to keep your job: Read the rest of this entry »