The playoff run comes to a halt

A virtually cloudless sky greeted the campers today as we embarked upon day number three of this week's festivities.  I arrived a little later than I had wanted to, but I spent a little time on yesterday's blog entry before I left the hotel. Once again I had the same brekky that I have virtually every day.  "Brekky" is a term I picked up from my trips to Australia. But I like it and I bring it out once in a while just to change things up. 

At the "golden rope" presentation this morning I had a nomination for going 3-for-5 yesterday with a double.  I don't think much about my batting stats because this is a game where some of the greatest to play it actually fail 70% of the time.  That's why it is said that hitting a baseball is one of the hardest things to do in sports. I am more concerned about my defensive stats and helping my team keep our opponents from scoring if at all possible. I had my success yesterday mostly with a bat which says "Brent Gates- Oakland Athletics" on the end.  It is a product of my employment with the Minnesota Twins. Brent finished his career with the Twins, but the bat I have was actually inside of an equipment bag left behind by the Seattle Mariners for whom Gates played in 1997.  The bag contained four of Gates' bats and one from some guy named Alex Rodriguez. Apparently this Rodriguez fellow played for the M's at one time as well. I know not what ever became of his career, however.  Maybe I should Google it.

So this bat that I'm using would have to be at least 21 years old in that Gates last played for the A's in 1996.  It has served me well to this point, and hopefully it will continue to do just that.  

Our opening game today was against Mookie's Monsters, coached by Mookie Wilson, a member of the 1986 World Champs.  The game was going to mean absolutely nothing in the respect of who would make the playoffs and so we played it with that lack of intensity foremost in our collective minds.  After the their inning we were once again trailing by (any guesses? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?) yes, FIVE BLOODY RUNS! We fixed that by first scoring two to be down by three, and then finishing the game with the Monsters winning by a 13-9 score. But like I said earlier, this game meant virtually nothing to the overall scheme of things.  

After lunch we found out who our first round opponents in the playoffs would be. It turned out to be the Saber Met-Tricks whom we'd beaten 9-8 after scoring 6 in the bottom of the 7th inning.  

The game was tight from the opening pitch.  Phil Forman, currently in his 5th year and 7th week of camp was on the mound and he pitched a gem.  Not only did he allow only 5 hits but he drove in the only run of the game in the fourth inning on a double to the left field corner.  I played left field today and I will be the first to tell you that what I know about left field is how to get there from the dugout and how to get back to the dugout from there.  But I''m a "gamer" and will do whatever it takes for this team to finish on top.  I had two fly balls make their way out to my immediate vicinity and made the catch on both.  I singled in my second at bat and a made it to third with one out.  My coach instructed me that I was "going on contact" when the ball was hit.  Unfortunately it was hit to the third baseman who threw home to the catcher who make the tag on me. I boldly predict that that play will show up in a highlight reel from this week somewhere soon. 

The Kangaroo Court session was held tonight at the Island Club with Doug Flynn and Nelson Figueroa serving as our judges. As always, it was a laugh riot with everyone enjoying themselves.  The fines collected for various offenses, such as going to bat without a batting helmet on one's head, wearing the wrong uniform to the team photo session and showing up late for your game because you went back to the hotel to take a nap and overslept during the lunch break all go, this year, to a veteran's group which assists soldiers after they arrive back home from deployment.  Someone join the group even pledged that if they collected $2,500 tonight that they would match it for the charity.  Previous years have seen monies go to the Michael J. Fox foundation and the Gary Carter Foundation.  

So tomorrow will see us take the field at 9:30 am with a chance to go to the championship game at stake.  Sure, we'll be nervous, but so will they.  It should be a very good game to say the least.  Heck, after today, I'm not sure how much more some of us can take.  But it's right where we want to be.  And when it comes right down to it, isn't being "right where we want to be" one of the coolest things in the world? 

I knew you'd agree.  

With the Super Bowl only 11 days away and it's being played in the city in which I reside, Minneapolis, I leave you with this quote from former pitcher Jim Bouton:

"You want proof that baseball players are smarter than football players? How often do you see a baseball team penalized for too many men on the field?"

It's a great game.  It truly is.

Cinderella was eaten by the big bad wolf early this morning on field 5 at the Mets Complex.  I know that those two characters don't actually exist in the same story, but how things could be different if they had, right?

After the usual start of the day, Lenny's Brides set off to take on the Saber Met-rics.  We were the visiting team as we were the 4 seed playing the 2 seed.  Things looked ominous in the bottom of the first inning when the Met-rics leadoff hitter hit a shot into the left center alley.  I got a decent but not great jump on it and it literally made contact with the ball with the tip of my glove.  I probably should have laid out for the play, but there may have been a call to the local medic shortly thereafter.

The batter made it to second but was stranded there and we took a shot at breaking the tie in the next inning.  We jumped out to a 3-0 lead shortly thereafter and knew that it would be a daunting task to keep the Met-rics to fewer runs than that.  They proved us to be correct by making fine defensive plays and their pitcher found his groove and kept us off balance for most of the remainder of the game.

With the number of outs available to us dwindling slowly and the determination of our opponents rising it was fairly evident that our "Cinderella story" was going to end like an episode of "Grimm".  We congratulated them after the final out was recorded and thanked each other for the efforts that had gotten us this far in the quest for a shot at a championship.  They were just a better team, plain and simple.  

We prepared to face our final opponent in the 2pm game. We had fun with the contest, even pulling the "fake baseball" trick on one of our veteran players, one Bobby Whelan.  I hear that it was pulled last week on someone and has become somewhat of a staple at camp in recent years.  For those do not know how this is done, an apple is wrapped, usually, in gauze tape.  Red stitches are drawn on to give it the illusion of being an actual Rawlings spheroid.  At some point in the action, someone gets the apple to the pitcher in exchange for or instead of the ball he formerly had.  I got to be the pitcher for this trick in 2013 when we pulled it on a guy named Mike Arunzullo.  Mike crushed the pitch and it was instant applesauce!  Now, in 2014, Arunzullo was again the target, but this time he was my teammate, in the process of leading us to a championship of our own.  So this made for my third "Mott's" experience.

The game was a close one and with one down in the 7th inning I came to the plate with the tying run at third.  I got down in the count early and swung through a pitch that I should have at least made contact on. The final out of the game followed after that and we'd dropped our final game by a one-run deficit.  

We gathered around and thanked each other for the fun we had had during the week and congratulated each other on our achievements.  I had the great fortune to play  with some fine people. I will go down the roster in a later post, but it was a thrill to play alongside each and every one of them.  

The championship game was to follow over at First Data Field. The Saber Met-rics vs Rocky's Raccoons.  The Raccoons jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the first and added on a pair in the 5th. The final score was 5-0 and it was a well-deserved victory to say the least. I was especially pleased for a number of the Raccoons, such as my good friend Tom Formicola with whom I'm played with in past camps, and "Bobble Ed" Moore, who even though his team won in 2012, he was unable to play due to injury in the finals, so this was his first as an actual participant. Also, I had four other Raccoons who had closely-adjacent locker spots to mine whom I made friends with during the week.  All of them rookies, it was fun for me to watch them each day with the wonderment that I had during my rookie year.

After the championship game the campers all met over at Tutto Fresco, and Italian restaurant right near the hotel.  It was great to sit down with people whom I had not seen for much of the week during the week because we were on different fields so often.  I tried to pass along sage advice about what the experience of playing the pros tomorrow will be like.  The pros take this game rather seriously.  They got tied last week, and that was too close for comfort for them.  They actually got beaten in 2014 by the second-place team who were coached by one of my coaches for THIS year, one Lenny "All-Time" Harris.  As a matter of fact, a photo of their celebration at the pro game made the cover of the information brochure for the 2015 camp.  

I don't anticipate a chance to hit off of Doc Gooden this year, but "one never knows, do one?"  I forget where that quote is from, but it just seemed to fit right there.  The pro game will have plenty of food and beverage for all involved and they put out a fine spread in the Budweiser Tiki Bar behind third base. Tomorrow evening is the awards banquet where we hand out individual and team awards before dinner and have a great time before camp breaks and everyone heads back to their real lives.  

One full day to go.  Once again it has flown by like a comet, but I have been so pleased and blessed to be here with so many great people.  I've gotten so much great feedback from players about the blog and it means so much to me that I'm able to give them something to read even though they aren't able to be here or even they are.  Gary Pincus told me today that he sometimes reads them during the year to kinda take his mind back to these fun weeks for a few moments when you need a temporary escape from the day-to-day.  That was a huge compliment. I am finding out how my wife Bryn, a 14-time published author herself, feels when people tell her how much they enjoy her work.  

My English teachers in high school in Connecticut would be shocked and amazed.  They should be, because I have no idea where this stuff is coming from. I'm just glad that it is.

 Rusch Hour has started

Day 3 started like the first two. A little brekky in the morning and then we broke to go to the fourplex for photos. We took a couple of the entire group and then we did individual pix with the coaching staff. Our first game was played on the turf field. The field is entirely turf except for the pitchers mound. All of the base paths and the areas around the there bases and home are turf as well. This didn't deter us from putting up a very good effort in a game which saw Seth Carini wheel and deal us through the first six innings of a game which we dominated from the start.

I had two hits myself in the game, a wristed liner to center and solid line drive to right. The hit to right felt better to me because it was the result of my plan when I went to the plate. Lenny Harris taught me years ago that when you get to the place you need to "have a plan. If you get to a place where there are two strikes on you, scrap the plan and try to get a base hit without it. "Scrap" was not the original term he used when he explained this theory to me, but I got the point.

So I went 2-for-4 on the game as in my other two at bats I hit balls which traveled a combined distance of 9-1/2 feet. So it was kind of an all or nothing situation to say the least. 

Game 2 was on field 1. Field 1, which used to be field 7, is made to the same dimensions as Citi Field in New York. The field re-numbering was done by current Mets manager Buck Showalter last year. Kinda makes sense in that the four fields that you come to as you leave the clubhouse used to be numbered 4-7 for some reason, not 1-4. 

We got off to another fast start in this game. Everyone contributed. Top to bottom. My new glove has even worked pretty well this week. I had a bit of an issue with my fielding in 2019 when I was also coached by Figgy. We turned in some very nice defensive plays today. A double play that was major-league caliber from Sean Gagnon and Paul Isserles. I even got into the mix as I stretched far to my right to lasso an errant throw to end an inning when the game was still very much up for grabs. I followed immediately by leading off the bottom of the inning by hitting a frozen rope off the glove of the third baseman. I later scored another run. I think I reached base 5 of the six plate appearances I had in game 2. Seth Carini hit a ball toward the left center field alley that missed clearing fence by 4 feet. It must've traveled about 380 feet. 

I decided that since we were wearing our stark white jerseys for game 2, I'd wear my "old school" stirrups (not the ones sewn onto the white socks) and along with my vintage Reggie Jackson Puma cleats I was stepping back in time. I'm not sure if they had anything to do with our results in game 2, but I'm not going to give them a little credit.

But the biggest thrill I had was seeing Justin Vogt pitch a complete game with his father catching. When the final out was recorded they each ran towards each other and embraced as only a father and son could as adults. Never having kids of my own and never having a similar event with my own father, I was enjoying seeing this moment from a distance. I know it will be talked about by each of them for a long time to come. I'm glad that I was a part of it. 

Tonight was Casino Night at Clover park for the campers. They set up poker, blackjack and roulette tables and we spend "Monopoly money" which can be used toward coupons which will let us bid on as many as around 20 autographed items. As I did last at last year's Casino Night, I broke out my Mets polyester suit. The guys thought is was great. Those who know me know that wearing such a piece of clothing is not like me whatsoever, surprising a bunch of people.

Those of you who were in high anticipation about my gold rope nomination need to slow your roll a bit. I sat up from purposely in order to be close to the awarding location. But the brown rope actually went to a pitcher who gave up 8 runs on 1 base hit in the game in which I played yesterday afternoon. I believe he hit a couple of batters, one of whom was yours truly. So it wasn't the result I'd expected. But trust me on this, Judges Bobby Wine and Doug Flynn will be on my case tomorrow in Kangaroo Court.

Tomorrow's games? Who knows right now. There are many different scenarios which would give us a bye in the first round of the playoffs. But even Figgy didn't know what time we might play tomorrow. So we're just gonna "wing it", I guess. 

We've won 3 of our first four games and we are 'hittin'and stickin' like Mama's fried chicken" right now. We're edging closer to our goal.

To all of you players who have told me how much you enjoy these daily blog entries, I appreciate it. 

Do good things, people.  Talk to you tomorrow.