Spring Training 2009!

The time has finally arrived. After six months of living back at home, waiting tables at Rancho Grande, and working out at the Mabee Center I am finally back down in Jupiter, Florida and more importantly back on the baseball field.

I started my drive down from Liberty on Tuesday March 10th. I was embarking on a journey that was supposed to be a 22 hour trip; it would turn out to be a lot longer. I drove through Nashville and Atlanta on the first day and finally after 14 hours of traveling I decided to stop for the night at Days Inn in Ashbury, Georgia. I woke up the next morning at 9:00 and was on the road by 9:30. I had about six hours left, so my estimated time of arrival was 3:30. I had made four hours worth of progress and had gotten on my last leg of the trip, the Florida Turnpike, when things began to go downhill.

I had the truck set to cruise at 70 MPH, a nice easy pace. All of the sudden the truck began to sputter and I could immediately tell that something wasn’t right. I looked down at the dash and the “check gauges” light had come on. I looked around at the gauges and saw one that stuck out, it was all the way down at zero. I don’t know the first thing about cars but I knew that this wasn’t a good sign. I quickly pulled over to the side of the turnpike and shut down the truck. I looked in the owner’s manual and after some extensive research I found out that the gauge that was low was the oil pressure gauge. I do know that the engine needs oil to run and if there wasn’t any oil going into the engine then something was really wrong. Once I realized what was going on I knew that there was no way that my truck would be making the rest of the trip with me.

Luckily we have Triple AAA, which was always seems to come in handy, and they were able to come pick me and my truck up and tow me an hour to the southeast to a little town called Malabar. It had already been a really long day, and as I sat around the auto repair shop I was spinning my wheels trying to figure out how I was going to finish up my final hour and a half of my trip. I finally decided on a rental car, and everyone knows that Enterprise picks you up. So I called them up and somehow, with the way that my luck was going, they still had one car that wasn’t rented out yet. A little while after calling the local Enterprise they were there to pick me up in a 2009 Dodge Journey. We headed back to fill out some paperwork and by 5:30 I jumped on I-95 headed south towards Jupiter.

I finally got into Jupiter at around 7:00 and I was hoping that the way my drive went wouldn’t be an indicator of how my Spring would go.

Every year from February to March Jupiter is home to around 500 professional baseball players. I would say that Spring Training in this area helps with the town’s economy but I’m not really sure if this area could get any wealthier. I was reminded the other day about how rich this area really is when I noticed six Lexus parked right next to each other. Out of all the fans that come down to Jupiter to watch Spring Training I would say that 90% are Cardinals fans, 8% are just plain baseball fans, and maybe 2% are Marlins fans. It’s weird to come down to Florida and see half of the cars in the hotel parking lot with Missouri license plates.

I was part of the last group of players to get down to Jupiter. The first group arrived towards the start of February, all guys who were attending big league Spring Training. The second group included guys that were attending mini camp which began at the end of February. The guys that attended mini camp were younger guys and guys who received a large signing bonus. Next were the pitchers and catchers, followed by the “visa” players (players from outside of the country), and finally I arrived on March 11th with the rest of the guys who didn’t fit into those categories. So if you followed that I was in the group the included American non big league invites who were older, didn’t sign for a lot of money, and played a position. For me it’s a tough thing coming down later because the natural feeling is to feel that you aren’t quite fully prepared. Part of the reason why I work so hard in the off season is so that I don’t ever have that feeling of being under prepared. Scott and I were talking when we were back in Liberty about how weird it seemed that we were still back at home working out in the cold when there were big league Spring Training games that were getting underway on TV. And then I had to deal with people who saw those games and then saw me and would ask me “Hey I thought you played baseball, I saw some highlights the other day on Sportscenter”. Explaining that to some people can be difficult to say the least.

After our first day of physicals and testing (I finished second in our testing) it was great to finally be back on the baseball field working towards the ultimate destination. The first few days of workouts have gone by pretty smoothly. Coming into camp I had mostly hit off the tee and had taken a few rounds of front toss. I hadn’t seen any batting practice and definitely hadn’t seen any live pitching. The first day I walked into the clubhouse and looked at the schedule I realized that I would be seeing live pitching before I even took a round of batting practice. I honestly wasn’t really worried about it though, I knew that eventually we would be seeing live pitching and at this point I was in the same position as everyone else. I kept thinking about one of my favorite sayings “Get comfortable being uncomfortable”. What I take out of that saying is that you can’t be afraid to work on the things that you aren’t good at and you can’t be afraid to look foolish at times.

After six months of not seeing live pitching I stepped back into the batters box with the same confidence that I had towards the end of last year. When I get in the box I look at it as a one on one battle, and no matter who you’re facing you have to think that you’re better than that other guy. It felt just like riding a bike for me. The first pitch I saw I fouled off and the following pitch I drove to the warning track in right center. The feeling of hitting a baseball on the sweet spot of a wood bat is absolutely priceless. When you hit a ball good you can’t even feel it and the sound that it makes is just as good.

The following couple days have been just like the first day. We’ll begin playing our games this coming Wednesday. We only play 10 games this Spring Training, apparently the Marlins are trying to save a little money just like the rest of America. For me there are a few things that I want to accomplish during this years Spring Training. I want to maintain my physical strength, become as comfortable as I can in the batter’s box, go into the season as confident in my abilities as I can, and stay healthy.

This is the first of many blog entries that I plan to enter this year. The life of a minor league baseball player is a very little known about lifestyle, but it’s a great ride that I feel like people would enjoy to hear about and I love to write about it. Check back in a few days and in the meantime fell free to email me with any questions that you might have at hminliberty@yahoo.com. Thank you so much for reading and I look forward to my next writing adventure!

By the way…how bout them Tigers!!

“When I’m focused, there is not one single thing, person, anything can stand in the way of my doing something.” –Michael Phelps