How to spend three hours at a food court

Got woken up at the field by the annual spring training drug test. When I first ot there I didn't have to pee and the line was long so I figured I would go to my quiet place in the back and drink a bunch of water and start reading "33 Year Old Rookie". I got through the introduction and preface when the 36 ounces of water I had just downed started to expand in my bladder, it was time to take that drug test. So I out my book up and proceeded to wait in line for 20 minutes, it was definitely one of the most uncomfortable 20 minutes of my life. I finally got that out of the way and at 8:45 it was time for another annual spring training meeting, this one about the security in being a professional athlete. It's always a good meeting filled with funny videos and interesting things to think about.

Our game today was against the low a team today, I'm back down in the high a group by the way. That's something that I have no problem with because I honestly don't feel like I deserve to be moved up to double a after the sub par year I had last year. I'm not looking for any handouts, don't get me wrong I wanna get to double a, but I want to get there because of my performance on the field. I ended up going 0-4 with a walk, but it was a productive day. My first two at bats I struck out but saw a lot of pitches. Right after my second at bat I realized I wasn't seeing the ball as well as I should be so I sat in the dugout and went through in my mind what was going wrong. I realized that I wasn't getting my foot down early enough, therefore making the pitches seem like they were coming in at 110 MPH! So for my next at bat I just wanted to slow the game down, get my foot down early and try to see the ball as well as possible. I was successful with the adjustment. I lined out to the pitcher, you could say that the ball found his glove as oppsed to his glove finding the ball. I was confident after that at bat knowing that I made an adjustment that I thought would pay dividends. My next at bat I thought the same things and ended up walking, my second positive at bat of the day. My final at bat I got up 2-0 in the count and decided to just think of getting my foot down early and try to get my bad head out front of the plate and see what would happen. I did exactly what I wanted to on the next pitch, I just didn't get it up in the air. I ended up hitting a hard groundball to the first baseman, another positive at bat. So this is why baseball could be such a misleading sport. If you were to look at a box score you would see that I was 0-4 and you might find it as a bad day but to me it was a very positive day where I made adjustments and had 3 positive at bats, very misleading.

Dinner was at the mall with some of my favorite people in the organization. It's one of the best places to people watch, and when that's paired with a visit from our favorite triple a guy, you then can understand how we can spend 3 hours just sitting, watching, and talking baseball. Some of our conversations might be boring to some passer bys but to us they're priceless.

Camp is winding down and there are still a bunch of tough decisions that the organization will have to make. I'm trying to stay as positive as possible, and trying to fall back on the fact that everything happens for a reason.


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