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