Well I didn’t get a professional contract or invites to spring training. I’m a little disappointed by the whole thing considering that 68 guys got offers and some of them really didn’t do very well. Some guys who had batting averages like .204 and .176 got picked up and then someone like myself didn’t when I batted 0.346. There were even guys who did better than me who didn’t get picked up either. One guy was crushing the ball and had a 0.395 average. He carried his team to the championship game in the playoffs. It isn’t really fair but that is baseball. You are only as good as the coach thinks you are in baseball.

The managers don’t really look at the stats. They usually come up with something in their head on how good a player is. If they think they have a good swing in batting practice then they automatically think they are a good hitter even if they don’t really hit the ball in the game. A lot of times when these guys would contact the ball it would be a super weak grounder which produced an out. A lot of times when I contacted the ball it was hard hit and it was unfieldable.

It happened on the pitching side as well. Some of the guys who got picked up weren’t very effective. One guy who was on my first team got absolutely shelled when he pitched. Guys were crushing it. The pitching was flat and wasn’t fooling the hitters but he got a pro contract.

Some of it really became a popularity game and also some guys seemed to be riding on past experiences. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of the guys who got picked up were legit but I felt like I was right there with them and my stats confirm that.

I don’t regret playing in the league. I talked a lot of trash about baseball and wanted to prove to myself that I could play at a professional level. I feel like I did the best I could with the situation and I honestly had a great time overall. I met a lot of cool guys and it was a unique experience living in a hotel for a month and just playing baseball with 180 other guys going after the same thing. Now I need to figure out what I want to do going forward. Yesterday I played with my team up in Phoenix and I went 2 for 2 with a walk. To be honest it wasn’t really a challenge and I didn’t feel like it was going to help me with anything. I want to play a level of ball where I feel like getting a hit is a major accomplishment. There are a lot of tryouts that will be coming up for professional baseball and I need to decide whether I’m going to concentrate on that or switch everything back to javelin. My elbow is a big question mark for throwing the javelin so I’m going to have to test it out and see how it goes over the next 3 or 4 weeks. While I’m doing that I want to stay sharp for potential baseball tryouts.

Team Picture

Well my team got knocked out of the playoffs so tonight I will be watching the championship game from the stands. Overall the league was a success. I finished with a 0.346 batting average and I had fun which were the two most important things to me. I only had 32 plate appearances during the league which wasn’t as many as some of the other players who didn’t have anyone else at their positions. Yesterday the managers had a draft to see who would get contracts to come play for various independent organizations. The results will be revealed tonight after the championship game. It is a toss up if I impressed anyone. Switching teams late in the season was a good move in a lot of ways. I couldn’t put up with the old manager anymore. I started to have the same feeling I had when I was 13 where I wanted to play baseball but didn’t want to go to the game. Sounds weird but if you have had that feeling you know what I’m talking about.

I feel like I really held my ground here. After not playing baseball in high school or college and then coming out here and doing better than guys who already have professional contracts, I feel pretty good about it. Hopefully it will at least convert to an opportunity to go to spring training and prove my ability further.

If it turns out that I didn’t get picked up in the draft that will be posted tonight I’m going to go back to Tucson and continue my javelin training to see if my elbow is going to hold up for that. If it can’t hold up to the pressure of throwing the javelin I might try to just hit up every pro baseball tryout I can to see if I can catch someone’s eye. The manager that I had for the second team at the winter league is a scout for leagues in Japan, Taiwan, and Germany. Also the coach I was working with before I came here has contacts for leagues in Europe so hopefully that will help.

This may seem cocky but I feel like if I was given a proper chance I would be able to adjust and play clear up at the major league level. Throw me on a single A or independent team and say “sink or swim.” I didn’t drown in this league after 12 years away from the game. I feel confident that I would adjust and fight my way to the surface.

I will update you guys when I find out the results of the draft.

Final Batting Stats

Something crazy happened in the last few days here at the winter league. My former team got shelled by the Long Beach Armada and they called the 10 run rule on us. We lost 11-0. I went 1 for 2 with a double and a strike out. After the game is what set off a chain of events that landed me on the team that just beat us.

Basically my coach from my old team was racist and made a lot of inappropriate comments toward the players on the Long Beach team. More than half the team is from Japan and so is the manager of the team. The main comment he made that was way out of line was “I really wanted to beat those slanted eye mother fuckers.” He also said a lot of other things trying to degrade their style of play. On my former team we had two Japanese players one of which is an interpreter and understood everything he was saying.

After the game I decided I didn’t have any respect for my former manager and told him that what he said was totally disrespectful and that I wouldn’t be playing for him again even if I had to sit out a few games before I found a new team. A manager is someone you should respect and learn from but this guy was far from that. So now I’m on a new team. Here is how my stats were stacking up for my former team and how they stack up against my new team.

Old Team Stats

My new team has a lot of guys who can mash. The outfielders have been hitting really well. The good thing is that my new manager is trying to equal out the times at bat for everyone.

New Team

I don’t have a lot of at bats but I have tried to do the best I can do. Tomorrow is the MLB Tryout day so I need to do something special. We will run the 60yd dash, then they will test our arms, and then after that we will play mock games. I will probably get one or two at bats during that and I need to really crush the ball to turn some heads.

OK it is ice bath time and then bed time.

This is kind of the half way point in the league and I’m off to a decent start. I am pretty satisfied with my appearances at the plate. I have struck out more than I would like but the one thing that I worked on before I came is swinging the bat hard all the time instead of slowing my bat down for off speed pitches. I see a lot of players slow their bat down and they slap a weak pop up or grounder. That is one of the reasons that most of the time I make contact with the ball it is hit hard. We are playing in the main stadium at 2:00pm today against a team that we lost to a week and a half ago. Below are the team batting stats so far.

Batting Averages After 7 Games

The winter league is under way and I’m having fun which is Goal #1.

GOALS:
1) Have fun. (If you aren’t having fun playing a game then there is no reason to play.)
2) Have a batting average over 300.
3) Get seen and when they look do something to get signed. (My epic stash has gotten me seen and my bat is heating up.)

Epic Stash

We have actually had 3 game at this point but since we have 4 outfielders I played the first game, sat out the second game, and then played the 3rd game. The first game was good. I had 3 balls hit to me. 2 Fly balls which I caught and a one hopper that I threw to home but the throw was too late because the guy was on 3rd and then took off before I had the ball in my glove. I ended up battling hard up at bat but struck out twice and then I had a walk. I fouled a lot off but couldn’t get anything in play. No one on my team got a hit and we lost 1-3. The second game I felt like a bench warmer but we had to rotate because we have 4 outfielders. We lost because the pitchers had control issues and we had 19 walk and fell 10-4.

Today we won our first game. I felt like after the first game the coach was acting like my hitting form wouldn’t work. I almost wasn’t going to get to play this game but I said something to him and he ended up putting me in as a designated hitter (DH). We had batting practice before the game and I was feeling good and took one out of the park. It went around 380ft. Then my first at bat I had a nice hit out to right field and drove in a run. The next at bat I popped out to left field. 3rd time up I walked. 4th time up I popped out to the 3rd baseman in foul territory. So it was really 1 for 3 since walks don’t count.

Overall I’m not off to an amazing start but today I was putting the ball into play and making good decisions at the plate. I’m a little worried that people’s previous experiences are kicking in. We have guys on our team that already have pro contracts and other guys who played college ball at division 1 schools. One of our pitchers got drafted by the Brewers and also got drafted in hockey. I’m not sure why he got released from the Brewers. Long story short I have as much hitting power as anyone on the team. There have only been two of us take it out of the park during BP. As far as game play is concerned I’m at no disadvantage to anyone else. Certain lingo that our couch uses that I don’t pick up on might make me seem like a less seasoned baseball player.

The funniest thing that has happened so far is on day two the trainer was suppose to lead warm ups for all 200 guys here and he asked me if I remembered what we did on day one for stretches and warmups. I was like “Yeah I remember.” So he had me lead the warmups for everyone. I was laughing to myself because I was leading a large group of players a lot of which have professional contracts and I took a 12 year absence from the game. HAHAHAHA

I’m just going to keep working hard and my confidence is going to build. I feel like I have adjusted back to the live pitching and I’m ready to knock this piss out of the ball.

It is an awesome feeling being here. One of the issues with Track & Field is that it is rare to be around so many other people who are trying to do the same thing as you are but here at this league there are 200 guys “Going for it.” Everyone is excited about playing and getting seen.

I’m hoping to get some video footage. It is going to be hard unless I have people come and hopefully video for me. We have 5 games in a row this week so it is going to be a busy week.

Bats

Most of us played the game at some point. Why did we switch to Track & Field? Everyone has their reasons but most people have an “I got screwed” baseball story…from Little Leaguers to Big Leaguers. If you go by college scholarships both sports offer similar opportunities. Both sports are considered non-revenue sports in college but THEN after college, baseball has astronomical financial opportunity and Track & Field is left in the dust. Are there a few instances where a T & F athlete made some decent money?…..yeah. You have to be one of the very best though. In baseball the best can never be completely decided. It is constantly up for debate because it is a subjective sport. Track & Field is pretty cut and dry. Also it is questionable if all the very best baseball players are playing in the MLB. There are some really good players playing in Japan and Cuba to name a few places. With Track & Field the results are measurable and plus the Diamond League series has the athletes with the best results in the world.

So why am I bringing all this up? Am I chasing the money? Did I give up on javelin? Do I want a change of pace? Well I haven’t given up on throwing the javelin. I’m still training at the University of Arizona and really like going out and throwing the javelin…… taking easy throws of 35-40m is like shooting hoops to me. A big thing that is missing for me is a team atmosphere. This is one of the hardest things about trying to compete after college. You can pretty much bet you are going to be a lone ranger. Some of my best memories from playing sports are all the times joking around with my teammates. Let’s just face it…sports are fun whether you are scoring goals, hitting home runs, throwing far, or running fast. In two months we will find out if my javelin training can make up for a 12 year time gap in baseball. Watch Episode 30 to find out more!

Custom Canadian Yellow Birch Bats

I have noticed a trend over the last several years. A lot of people talk trash over the Internet when they have no room to talk. I think this has really been going on for a long time but in the past people would just talk behind others backs and the visibility of the trash talking was pretty low. Now everyone has a voice which is a good thing. Some choose to use this voice to spew out negative remarks at others. They wouldn’t say those same things to the persons face but suddenly they are tough behind the keyboard. It is bad when someone is tearing down another thrower for not throwing as far as they would have liked but when a thrower with a 51m PR is tearing down a thrower with a 76m PR it really leaves you scratching your head. There is nothing wrong with throwing 51m. I remember the day when I hit 49.69m and was on top of the world. We are all trying to improve and do our best and no one needs to be taken down a notch by an Internet troll no matter how far you have thrown. I have even seen people tearing down guys who have thrown over 90m. It is laughable to say the least. The only answer is jealousy. I have been somewhat guilty of it myself especially with baseball. It isn’t really nice to say a baseball player is fat even if they are sporting a serious gut. Could I hit off of Bartolo Colón or CC Sabathia? I don’t know but I would gladly accept the challenge if given the chance.

We are all throwing sticks so why not encourage everyone to throw further than they have before? Also when an athlete has a good meet it is easy to congratulate them but when they don’t do as good as expected a lot of times NO ONE contacts them to pick them up. That is when they need it the most. Tell them they are still a beast and to forget about it because next meet they are going to smash their PR. If you see a bad result hope that they got out of rhythm and left a mark on the board that they would rather wipe off. The worry is that they were hurt which isn’t out of the question considering we run as fast as we can and throw our leg out to stop in hopes a metal spear which weighs 6 times what a baseball weighs will fly as far as possible!