KING OF JEWISH BASEBALL

We won last night, 9-7.  The game was an hour-and-a-half north of the city.  I rode up with Dave, the team’s manager.

The game started at 8pm.  We were playing a team called the Bears. They were mostly college kids.  They looked so young and I realized at some point in the game that I am old.  I don’t feel old.  And I don’t look that old, at least when I shave and you can’t see the white in my beard, but looking at the kids on the other team, there’s no denying it, mortality, it’s for us all!

I came up with runners on first and second in my first at-bat and hit a 1-0 fastball off the base of the fence in right field which is great, but it wasn’t a good swing and I knew then I was a little off at the plate and, besides a bases loaded walk later in the game, it was my only time reaching base.  1 for 4.  1 RBI.  1 Run scored.  I swung and missed twice at fastballs in the zone.  Swinging and missing at a slider, or a fastball up out of the zone is one thing, but swinging and missing at a fastball in the zone should never happen, especially off some college kid.  I mean, I am the King of All Jewish Baseball, after all.

I had a little swag working on defense, felt good out there, but I don’t trust swag.  Just when you think you’re good, something will happen, you’ll trip on the way to first base, or swing through a cock shot as it were.

I am heading into the stretch right now, July, where I will playing the most of my games.  And I need to get it working.  I am in my 7th month of training, and I amazed and pleased to report that apparatus feels good.  I can throw without pain.  I can run without pain.  And my reflexes, despite my advanced age, seem to still be in tact.

It is July 12.  59 days ’til we report.  I still do not know…

1) If I am going to make the actual tournament team.

2) How many other guys are reporting to training camp.

3) Who those other guys are.

4) When the team will officially be named.

5) What training camp is going to “look” like.

6) How good, or bad, South Africa, France, or Spain will be.

7) How the tournament will be structured.

8) Or what will happen to me in general following the tournament – creatively, personally, professionally, or otherwise.

I, we, know virtually nothing.

All I know is that I have a plane ticket to Florida September 8th at which point I am expected to play baseball to the best of my ability.  Pretty simple actually.  Much more simple than whatever is going to happen after the tournament…   For now, it’s baseball season.

Maria Hernandez Park, around the corner from my apartment, where I hit off the tee at night.

For anyone doubting how seriously I am taking this blog… Boom!  A photo of the blog on my new Mac Book Pro!

new mac book!

Moving on up from this guy, an old Dell.

old dell.

You cannot see it, but in the chat box my sister is saying she retweeted my tweet about yesterdays post (follow me @kingofJbaseball).  But that she only has 11 followers.  Ouch.  What you see behind the computer are some rocks I painted and put in plastic bags.  And next to the computer, none other than… some of my jewels.  Which reminds me, jewels update!

sweet new jewels.

Boom!  Two new bracelets.  Gonna take my inner peace game to a whole new level.  I do afterall have a mantra.  “Commit to effort”.  Say it between every pitch.  There’s too much shit that can go wrong on a baseball field.  Thinking about results is just a distraction.  So if you can commit one pitch at a time to great effort, you’re good.  Come to think of it, I do not think officially that you are supposed to share your mantra with other people.  Shit.

I went to Frank’s today.  Had to pick up Shlo’s glove for him.  They were restringing it.  Frank’s is the oldest and still best sporting goods store in New York City.  It’s on Tremont Avenue in the Bronx off the 176 Street stop of the 4train, four stops past yankee stadium.

yankee stadium, from the 4 train, if you could not tell.

Frank’s is in a tough area, but they’ve maintained over the years.  Better than maintained.  They provide gear to a lot of Major League players and organizations.  At the store they have a file cabinet with players and their agent’s names with a list of what gear the player uses during the season.  Because they supply so many pros, they have a room in the basement full of overstocked pro wood bats.  I know they guys at Frank’s, so they let me down there to pick from the pro stock.

basement at Frank’s.

This training shit is expensive…

6, wood bats ($300)

1, pair of new nike spikes ($100)

1, glove restring ($20)

1, nike compression sleeve so I don’t keep cutting my arm when I dive for balls or slide head-first ($20)

1, 60 minute full body massage ($75)

3, month memberships to Richie’s Gym ($75)

1, training session with a coach at Velocity sports, a speed and strength gym in midtown ($135)

1, Oakland A’s hat ($30)

An absurd amount of gold and beaded jewelry (PRICELESS)

Grand Total = $755!  So far.

And that doesn’t count all the cliff bars, gatorades, and bananas that litter my ball bag.  I am not particularly shrewd, bad with money to be honest. Spend too much of it.  But, as King of Jewish Baseball and certifiable baseball genius, I feel entitled to free gear.  Once you’ve been issued free stuff for so long, and even get paid (if only a little) to play, there’s some switch that is thrown and you think you are gonna get free stuff forever.  But, alas, no.  At some point every man must rejoin the ranks of the common shlub and pay for shoes and gym memberships.  At least I have Frank’s.  Thanks guys!

Frank’s Sports Shop.

5 games in the next 5 days.  3 with the T-Dogs, starting tonight, and 2 with the A’s.

Will let you know what transpires.  For now, Nate Fish, King of Jewish Baseball, signing off.

So far, this blog has been about me (bad habit, if you haven’t noticed).  But this tournament is not about me despite my sometimes feeling like it is.  It’s about a lot of people.  There’s Peter and Haim, the heads 0f the IAB (Israel Association of Baseball) who have been working on baseball development in Israel a lot longer and a lot harder than I have, than anyone has, really.  There’s Dan and Shlo who have been on the Israel National Team since Israel has had a national team.  There’s Leon Klarfeld and David Shanker who coached them when they were little.  There’s Pat Doyle, the head coach last summer in the European Championships Qualifiers.  There’s Richard Kania from Check Republic who goes to Israel every summer to coach and who was an assistant with me under Pat for that team.  There’s Alon.  All the guys on the National Team.  Steve Hertz, my coach in the Israel Baseball League.  There’s Sham, Blomberg, Holtzy, Prib, Levy, Haystings, Larry, Brett and Eric, the kids that came to our games, Tony, everyone who played and coached and watched and who care about baseball in Israel.  Point being, a lot of people, so let’s take a minute to look at what is called the big picture.  What does this tournament really mean to Israel, and baseball, and Israel Baseball?

We have two goals for the tournament.

1) To win the qualifier and advance as far into the World Baseball Classic as possible.

2) To do what no one else has been able to do, yet… make baseball popular in Israel.

The two are not exclusive from one another.  There’s no doubt that the better we do in this tournament, the better chance we have on making an impact in Israel, specifically with kids in Israel.

Peter sent the team this e-mail last week…

This is a historic day for Israel Baseball.  We finally have the opportunity
to build a field of our own.  The mayor of Raanana has approved the
establishment of a national baseball field in Raanana.

The realization of this dream, however, is dependent upon us to raise
sufficient funds in a relatively short period.  This is a true test of our
organization to work together as a team to achieve this goal, which will
change the face of baseball in Israel.  We have started the process to
transform our initial sketches to exact architectural plans.  We are also
leveraging our exposure with our participation in the WBC to get donations
for this project.  But of course much more is needed and everyone’s
involvement will hopefully give us the momentum to move forward.

The mayor of Ranaana, a small town about 30 miles north of Tel Aviv, has approved the plans to build the first bonafide baseball stadium in the country.  There are currently three fields in Israel; one is on Kibbutz Gezer, shout-out to the Leischman Family!  One is in Sportek, Tel Aviv’s “Central Park”.  And one, the nicest of the three, is in what is called “Baptist Village” or “Yarkon Sports Complex” depending on who you ask.  Everything in Israel has multiple names in multiple languages.  What can I say? The place is nutty.  Petach Tikvah, where Baptist Village is located, is in view of the West Bank which is neither here nor there but adds some gravity to the story and sheds a bit of light on why things in Israel have multiple names in multiple languages and hold multiple meanings to multiple groups of people.  The field was built by Baptists from Tenessee who felt it was there mission to build and, to this day, maintain a pretty nice baseball diamond in the Promise Land.  I do not think the plans for the new stadium in Ranaana would have been approved if we weren’t playing in the WBC, so there is some impact already.

picture of ausmus (manager) meeting president peres, from ny times article.

But like it says in the email, being approved to build a stadium, and the actual building of a stadium, are two different things.  The gap is the roughly three million dollars it’s going to cost to turn the structure from an architectural model into a full size building.  So we need to raise money.  We have fundraisers in New York and Chicago coming up this month.

official invite.

If you want to attend…

http://www.baseball.org.il/en/newyork

But to understand where baseball in Israel is headed, you have to understand where it’s been.  So, come with me on a journey through the magical and shabby history of Israel Baseball.  It is fortunate that as the King of all Jewish Baseball I have done extensive research on the matter, mainly for my still unpublished masterpiece, … THE SCHNITZEL AWARDS; The Story of the First and Only Season of the Israel Baseball League, so I will be able to retell the story to you now.

Baseball in Israel started in 1989.  At least, that is when the IAB officially formed, and Israel entered a “national team” into their first international competition.  I put national team in quotes because when you, reader, think “national team”, I assume you think Olympics, nice uniforms, and the finest training facilites and accomodations.  But in this case, “national team” means a bunch of kids and their dads going completely unprepared to a baseball tournament not having any idea what to expect.  That first tournament in ’89 was the Junior Euro Championships in Ramstein, Germany.  The kids were 12 years-old I believe.  They stayed in a bomb shelter next to the Rabbi’s house on the air force base in Ramstein where they slept on matresses thrown on the floor.  In the mornings, they would sit shivering on benches outside the bomb shelter eating cold cereal.  They had exactly 9 gloves and shared them depending on who was in the game and who was on the bench.  They wore mismatching hats and t-shirts and sweat pants as uniforms.  They lost their first game to Germany.  And lost their second game – a close one, 51-0 to Saudi Arabia.  I will not delve into the intrigue of those little league match-ups – Israel V. Germany, and Israel V. Saudi Arabia, and will simply point out how bad they must have been to lose a baseball game 51-0.  What are called humble beginnings.  The team eventually earned their first win at a tournament in Italy versus Estonia three years later.  To give you an idea of how far they’ve come since 1989, last summer, 2011, 21 years later,  we lost to Great Britain in the finals of the European Championship Qualifiers, the day Shlogun threw 13 innings.  Their team was full of North Americans with British passports many of whom had played pro baseball.  And our team was full of, well, basically those same kids that were sleeping in the bomb shelter 21 years earlier.

2011 Israel National Team!

So, there is a functioning baseball world in Israel, however small.  There’s a little league, a men’s league, a national team program, and quite a few ex-pats watching their favorite team play on MLB.com at 3am each night.  But despite the good finish last summer and our being invited to the WBC, let me say explicitly so you understand, baseball is still way off-the-radar in Israel.  People like soccer and basketball.  In general, it is a sporty place, Tel Aviv at least.  But people there say what all people who don’t like baseball say – that it is slow, they do not understand the rules, and the players are fat (it comes up a lot).  When I’m in Israel playing or coaching and tell cab drivers or the lady at the post office as much, they look at me blankly and say, “No, No, we do not have beisbol in Israel.”  Then I say, “No, yes, you do– I am here–”  Then they lose interest and look away.  If you are from America and you grew up playing baseball, you’re just an average American, no explanation is required as to why.  In Israel, if you play baseball, there’s a story. Either you moved there from California, or your cousins in Long Island mailed you a glove and bat and ball, or you just wanted to do something different.  In America, baseball is tradition.  In Israel, it’s weird.  So what does it take to make baseball, anything, popular in a place where it is already unpopular?  I personally have played in places where the game is huge – the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, and places where it is not – Israel and Germany, and still do not know exactly the answer.  Why do people in the Dominican Republic love the game and people in Germany don’t know the pitcher and hitter are on different teams?  Why are some people willing to learn the rules and spend a lifetime practicing the game and some just think the uniforms look funny?

Let’s take this a step further.  To understand if baseball will become popular in Israel, we have to understand how it’s become popular other places. Outside the United States, baseball is played mainly in the Caribbean and Japan, right?  There is an emerging international baseball scene, primarily in Asia and Europe.  Just about every country not considered “third world” has some version of a pro league.  But most of the European and Asian counties are in the same boat as Israel in that baseball is considered a fringe sport there.  Competing in the WBC this September will be a quantum leap for most of the new countries trying to qualify for the first time.  So why did baseball catch on on Japan and the the Caribbean and not other places?  The common assumption about baseball’s proliferation is that American soldiers build fields wherever they’re off fighting and then everyone uses the fields when they leave which is not that far off.  The field on the air force base in Ramstein is a perfect example.  War does seem to play a big part…

Supposedly, the first baseball game ever played off American soil took place in 1847 when the wooden leg of defeated general Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was used as a bat in game between soldiers in the Mexican American War.

Baseball came to Cuba in 1860 when professional team from Philadelphia and Chicago went to Havan to play exhibition games in the warm weather.  The Cubans eventually brought baseball to the rest of the caribbean fleeing the Spanish in Ten year War.

In 1837, an American teacher named Horace Wilson is credited with bringing the game to Japan.  By 1934, over sixty years later, the game was popular enough for an American All-Star team to go there to play.  Babe Ruth was on the team.  One of Ruth’s teammates, Mo Berg; catcher, Jew, and CIA spy, took photos of Tokyo on that trip that were later used in the plans to bomb the city.

There is no shortage of war in Israel unfortunately.  The weather is perfect for baseball.  And there are lots of Americans. All the ingredients are there to make baseball, if not huge, good at least.  But it’s only been 20 years, and these things take time.

Here are some of the kids from our baseball camp last summer….

Mendy

rocky

evan

moshe

one of the kids had a youkilis jersey!

the next generation of israel baseball stars, at lunch.

For the full story of the Israel Baseball League.  Check out my teammate Aaron Pribble’s book!  Just click the link below…

http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Pitching-in-the-Promised-Land,674766.aspx

7/3/2012

Went to the park this morning to do my throwing program and hit off the tee then went to Richie’s for a lift.  It’s funny, I am 32 years old, and I’m just now learning how to hit, hit the right way at least. I know I keep making outrageous claims saying I am a baseball genius and calling myself the King of All Jewish Baseball – both of which are true – but I realize at some point I am going to have to do something to prove it, so allow me, quickly, to explain what I mean when I say I am learning how to hit “the right way”.

My entire generation of players, from what I can tell, has been taught to hit the wrong way.  We were taught a style of hitting that revolves mainly around two points.  First, to get your stride foot down early.  And second, to keep your weight back, or “stay back” as it’s said.  And it just so happens both are points are wrong.  Hitting is not about getting “set early”.  And it’s definitely not about “staying back”.  It’s about timing!  Allow me to explain.

A hitter has three timing mechanisms; load, stride, hands.

1) Load.  When the pitcher spearates his hands to throw the ball, hitters do something called “loading”, meaning they rock back mirroring the rhythym of the pitcher.  Hitters, like boxers, and like pitchers for that matter, are turned sideways in their stance, so they have two sides, a front side and a back side.  If you were to cut the hitters body in half down the middle, two halves serve different functions. His front side is for direction.  And his backside is for power.  So, by loading, or shifting their weight back, hitters are getting their weight to their back side, their power side, before delivering that power to the baseball.  And loading sets the hitter’s timing in motion.

2) Stride.  Anthropologists call walking a “controlled fall” forward, meaning instead of putting “one foot in front of the other” as it’s commonly said, we actually fall forward and stride out catching ourselves.  If at any point we did not stride, we would fall flat on our faces.  Striding in hitting is the same thing, a controlled fall forward, which is maybe why we use the same word to describe both.  And this is where my generation went wrong as hitters.  A hitter should stride roughly as the pitcher is arriving to his release point and get that mass of weight which is the hitters body moving towards the ball.  We were taught, instead of using forward motion to generate power, to keep our weight back.  We will talk more about that in a moment, but let’s get back to this pitch.  So, the ball is in flight towards the hitter, and the the hitter’s foot is off the ground and he is gliding forward towards the baseball.  Now, you cannot swing until that front foot lands.  So what most defines the timing of contact is the timing of that foot landing.  To go back to front side and back side.  Besides direction (what i mean by direction is this.  If the hitters front side is moving towards home plate, that is the direction the barrell pof his bat is going to follow.  If it’s moving out towards third base, that is the direction the barrel will follow.  Their is a directional relationship between a hitter’s front side – his front foot, hip, and shoulder, and his bat), hitters front sides serves another function, it “contains” the swing.  So, again, the hitter’s foot is off the ground, he is gliding forward, as soon as that foot lands, guess what happens? – That’s right.  Front side stops, back side starts, and the actual swing is set in motion.  It’s like this.  Imagine a car crash.  The front of the car hits a wall let’s say.  What happens to anything in the back of the car? It’s projected forward.  And that abrupt stop in front provides a lot of power from the back side.  The reason we were not all taught to hit like this is that is is hard.  You actually have to be good to do it, a good athlete, good “dynamic balance”.  You have to be strong and quick and coordinated.  This is how Major League hitters hit.  The problem is, we’re not all Major League hitters.  So our coaches came up with a style of hitting that would give everyone a chance – the lowest common denominator style of hitting if you will.  Like a said before, hitting is about timing, and this style of hitting in particular is ALL about timing.  If the hitter’s foot touches down early, the barrell arrives early, ground out.  If the hitter’s foot touches down late, barrel is late – it’s called”striding past the ball”.  So coaches, after getting sick of seeing kids either reach for the ball, or swing late, just told us all to step early, stop, keep our weight back, and then just use our hands essentially to punch at the ball.  It is true that if I stride early it will give me a chance of hitting the ball, but it will not give me a chance of hitting the ball hard, which, afterall, is the idea.

3) The last timing mechanism are the hitter’s hands.  No matter how far a hitter strides forward, as long as his hands are back, he can hit the ball.  That period of time when the ball is in flight and the the hitter’s front foot is off the ground is called “hang time”, or “read time”.  It is the fraction of a second where the hitter is identifying ball or strike, fast or slow, inside or outside, swing or no swing.  And all that info has to be processed in the first 20 feet the ball is in flight, or it’s too late.  It all takes roughly half a second – the exact amount of time it takes to separate good hitters from bad ones.  And something else is happening during read time.  That is, a hitter’s front side is moving forward, and his back side is moving back.  If we were to cut the hitter in half again, this time at the waist, he has a lower half and an upper half, and those halves are doing two different things.  His lower half and torso are moving forward, and his upper half and hands are moving back, or staying back at least.  That separation between front and back, lower body and upper body, creates something called torque, and torque provides power.  It’s like stretching a rubber band in opposite directions, then letting it go.  You see big leaguers do it all the time in the on-deck circle and when they step out of the box between pitches.  The stride forward, and keep their hands back to work on that separation.  No matter if a hitter gets a little fooled during read time on an off-speed pitch, if his hands stay back until the ball is in the hitting zone, he’s good.  So hands are the third timing mechanism.

Let’s use a visual aid to better understand what I am talking about.  We will use, for lack of a better model, one of my swings…

stance.

That’s me!  And that’s the Baseball Academy.  Let me first, before we proceed, apologize for my left handed friend in the background.  He is a good man.  Catching a bullpen for his daughter…  Now, back to hitting, nothin special here, just getting set-up and into my stance.  Keep in mind that the keys in the swing we’re looking for will be somewhat less apparent because I am hitting in the cage and not in a game and the cage is just a more relaxed, controlled environment and most hitters are in general less violent in the cage than in games, self included.  But will suffice.  Let’s move on to the timing mechanisms…

load.

My weight has shifted back slightly.

stride.

My foot is off the ground, the ball is in flight.  It’s hang time.  Notice my slight tilt forward.  It indicates that forward motion to the baseball I was talking about before.  It’s roughly the same angle the pitcher arrives at at the top of his leg kick.  I am beginning a glide, or a controlled fall, forwards towards the baseball.

landing point, or “launch” point.

My foot’s landed.  As soon as that front foot lands, my back foot releases and my back side starts to the ball.  You can see my lower half is moving forward, and my upper half, my hands, are back.  My direction is off a little.  I should be landing with my front hip facing the pitcher.  But I am opening up a bit to third base.  This is the battle all hitters always fight.  Staying “closed” in front until you pull the trigger.

contact.

Here I am at contact.  A little upright because the pitch is up in the zone.  And…

finish.

And finished with the sweet USA Fish jersey.

Anyways, until now, I hit the old way- set early, weight back, like Granderson.  But this year when the pitcher goes to throw me the ball, I simply lift my foot up, hang, and get my whole body moving towards the pitcher, like Josh Hamilton.  And it feels great.  I am finally free to stop thinking about staying back, and just hit.  It’s natural.  It’s athletic.  And it’s powerful.  There are A LOT of other things going on if we’re gonna seriously talk about hitting – it’s almost never ending.  But the fundamental adjustment I have made this year is using a leg kick and forward motion to generate power.  When you put it all together…  Another home run for the King of All Jewish Baseball!

7/2/2012

Had two games Saturday.  The games were with the Thunder Dogs at Manhattanville College in Westchester.  Nice little field.  Games started at 10.  My fears about taking a week off were right.  I did not feel comfortable in the first game.

We went up early, 2-0.  I walked on 4 pitches in my first at-bat.  Grounded out to third base on a fastball up and in in my second at-bat, and popped-out to second base on my first infield pop-out of the season in my second at-bat, my first O-for (ended the game 0-for-2).   We were winning by a run going into the bottom of the 7^th (playing 7 inning games), but they won.  I believe the sequence of events went something like this….

• Lead off hitter – ground ball to short, throwing error, batter/base runner winds up on second base.

• Second hitter is hit by a pitch with 2 strikes.  Runners on 1^st and 2^nd, no outs.

• Next hitter advances base runners with a bunt.  Runners on 2^nd and 3^rd, 1 out.

• We intentionally walk-their best hitter to load the bases and set-up a double play.

• Their guy hits a ground ball to short.  Short feeds to 2^nd baseman for the first out.  Base runner slides in hard taking our second baseman out.  Our second baseman proceeds to lay on the ground face down while both the runners from 3^rd base and 2^nd base score.

• Game over.  We lose.

And that folks, is how to blow a lead in the last inning.

I started feeling better in the second half of the first game and made a good play at third in the 6^th inning and even felt okay at the plate despite not hitting much.

I took ground balls between games while we waited for the umpires to show up.  It was hot.  By the time we had arrived that morning at 9am, it was 80 something degrees.  By around 1pm, it was around 100 on the field, and we were starting to microwave out there.  I am usually pretty good with the heat.  In Israel in ‘07 we played 40 games in two months in June and July and game times were 3, 5, or 7pm, and it would be well over 100 every day.  But I’m not acclimatized  yet, and two hours into game 2, after a few walks, a few visits to the mound, a few pitching changes, a few errors, and a few bizarre “time-out” calls by the home-plate ump who was clearly a degenerate neo-philistine criminal with the bad habit of calling “time” for no reason right when the pitcher was about to deliver, we were only in the third inning and my mind was slipping – I was losing track of the number of outs and the count.  I was cooked.

We finally got a pitcher in the game who could throw strikes, and we won game 2 by a few runs.  I finished the second game 2-for-4, 2 singles, and finished the day 2-for-6 total with 3 rbi’s.  I am intentionally not keeping track of my exact stats.  I’m gauging my progress on a looser and more accurate scale – how I feel, and if I am having good-at bats, and am driving the ball, and am solid on defense.  If I had to guess, I am right around .333 so far with good rbi , slugging, total bases, and run scored totals which are all good things.  Gotta keep getting better though.  I think the guys we’ll see in Florida in September will be better than the pitching I am seeing now so I need to take any success I am having now with a grain of salt and be ready to crank it up to the next level when I arrive.  Nothing can replicate what the other guys on the team have, and what I am some how trying to recreate for myself with a combination of training and playing, that is… playing every day against really good competition and striving to get to the next level.  Most of the guys reporting in September will be coming straight from their minor league season at AA or AAA.  I, on the other hand, am playing for the A’s and T-Dogs, lifting at Richie’s, taking ground balls and hitting with a group of high-schoolers a couple days a week.

I don’t know who Spain, South Africa, and France are bringing to this tournament.  They do not have access to pro players “eligible” for citizenship the way we do, but they probably have a few good domestic players, and will pluck whoever they can out of the minor leagues, college ball, and various international and independent pro leagues.  International tournaments are always interesting because you really don’t know what the other teams have until you get out on the field and play.  I am sure our staff will get reports on any recognizable names on the other teams’ rosters, but for all we know there’s an 18 year-old 6’ 10’ left handed pitcher throwing a 90 mile per hour slider in a bullpen in France right now.

Talked to Youk after the games Saturday.  He was microwaved too.  Said he was 0-for-3, lined out hard to short-stop, and had a good game defensively.  I hesitate to tell him about my games because it just seems irrelevant.  It would be like a pebble telling a mountain what it’s like to be a rock.  Anyways, we never met up for dinner which sucks because I wanted to talk to him about getting traded and about the Israel Team and it would have been good for the blog!  But what ya gonna do?  They had a Sunday day game and had to be back at the park early and then probably flew at right after the game.

Almost forgot, lot’s of new gold jewels…

new jewels.

6/29/2012

Home from Vermont.  Double header in the morning.  Went to the park near my house to hit off the tee a little.  The prospect of hitting tomorrow after a week of not swinging horrified me to the point that I dragged my tee out of my bag and hit in the dark while keeping one eye out for rats.

Youk is in town.  He got traded to the White Sox a few days ago and they are here for the weekend.  I think the White Sox are a good fit for him, and he is going to tear it up in Chicago.  I saw that he went 3 for 3 in one of his first games. Funny, while I am playing third base and trying my best to hit off a college kid tomorrow, Youk will be playing third base down the street at a little place called Yankee Stadium hitting off god knows what monster on the Yankee staff.  Same game, different stakes I suppose.  Good luck tomorrow, Youk!

6/27/2012

In Vermont.  Lake living.

I found an awesome little field down the road where I’ve been doing my sprint work.  Told myself I was gonna take the week off, but can’t help it.

little field in vermont.

Anyways, back Friday.  Four games over the week now.  Double header both days with the T-Dogs.   Hope I haven’t lost anything after not playing for a week.  Will let you know.  For now, gotta get back to Lake Life Livin’.

6/21/2012

Lifted at Richie’s this morning.  Lifting at Richie’s is a close to lifting in prison yard as I ever want to get.  It is me and some adorable monsters from the local projects.  I got some looks day one, but everyone is pretty cool and I have even elevated to, after a few weeks of steady appearances, official fist-pound status with many of the regulars.

Richie’s Gym.

I also have a run with the Bridge Runners tonight, in about 30 minutes, so I’m writing fast.  The Bridge Runners are a group of former vandals, skaters, kuckleheads, artists, users, and abusers who started a running group to get healthy.  It has turned into something of an international phenomenon with Nike Bridge Runner Crews in 11 cities around the world.  Tonight is the annual Harold Hunter run. It’s just a three mile run, which is about three more miles than I am used to running.  And it’s like 100 degrees today in NYC.

here we come. nyc bridge runners.

our pace car, Freaky Fridge!

And have a group workout in Central Park tomorrow morning.  I organized group workouts for myself and bunch of high-school players every Wednesday and Friday morning at 10am on the North Meadow, field number 11.

the wed/fri central park high-school training crew. from left to right; christian, george, chris, and alex.

It will be last workout on the field for a week.  I rented a house in Vermont beginning tomorrow until next Friday, the 29^th.  I wanted to get out of the city and clear my mind after leaving work and everything else that’s happened.  But now I feel like it’s interrupting my training and I am nervous I’ll lose some momentum…

6/19/2012

Just got home from a game with the Thunder Dogs.  The T-Dogs play in the Westchester/Rockland Wood Bat League (WRWBL).  If the A’s are a bunch of maniacs just released from there pro contacts who don’t take the game seriously enough, the T-Dogs are a bunch of white guys who never had pro contacts and take the gam too seriously.  It’s a mix of college kids using the league to stay ready for their fall season, some former college and pro guys, and a few old shlubs who just never stopped playing.  I am not sure which category I fit into.  The level of play is not as good as the Zorrilla, but it’s nice to start on time and know you’re gonna have nine guys show up.  Our home field is Roberto Clemente Park in the Bronx.  Like in the Zorrilla, there’s local traffic.  Commuter trains run behind the backstop every five minutes or so and always blow their horn to say hello and try to distract us.  Built up high behind the train track are layers of dark buildings, what is known as the Bronx.

the T-Dogs before a game.

We played the Lookouts.  Their starting pitcher was just okay.  Not as good as we’ll see in September in Jupiter, but good enough that I could work on some things.  In my first at-bat, I came up with runners on second and third and hit a 2 strike curveball line drive/ground ball back up the middle.  Both runs scored and we went up 2-1.  I struck out looking, then swinging, in my next two at-bats, curveball change-up respectively.  Then, you’re not gonna believe it, it happened again.  In the bottom of the 8^th we were down by 2 runs and I came up with runners on 1st and 2nd, so I represented the winning run, and I hit a first pitch fastball over the center fielders head, and it hit the top of the fence!  This time I busted it out of the box and wound up safe on second base with a stand-up double.  The ball hit just below the yellow line.  It seems I am experiencing a power surge and a power outage simultaneously.  I am glad to be squaring the ball up, especially against the reliever they brought in who was throwing hard, but need to start hitting the ball over the fence, not off it.  One run scored on the play.  We ended up tying the game at five, but did not take the lead.

I was up again in the bottom of the 9^th inning.  Tied at 5.  Bases loaded.  2 outs.  Holy shit.  They intentionally walked the guy in front of me to pitch to me which surprised me considering I had accounted for 3 of our 5 runs so far.  But it was fine with me.  They had brought in a college kid and I was confident I was going to bang one somewhere.  But…  I swung at the first pitch and hit it into the ground.  Ground out.  Short stop.  Game finished in a tie because they had to turn the lights off.  I am not upset about the approach, swinging at a first pitch fastball is not a bad idea in that situation.  But I gotta square it up.  Anyways, I am continuing to learn and am feeling more comfortable on the bases and at 3rd base.  I had spent most of the Orieles/Mets game watching David Wright and Wilson Betemit play defense and I have adopted some of their movements, specifically a little glove touch to the ground as the ball is entering the hitting zone on every pitch.  It helped, and I played error free at third.  Finished the game 2 for 5 with 3 RBI’s.  But need to keep getting better, especially in big situations.

In team news, today Youk publicly announced his support for 2013 if we can win the qualifier.  Got an email today from the team with this picture attached…

6/19/2012

Met’s won 5-0.  R.A. Dickey threw a 1-hitter for the Mets.  Potential future teammate on Team Israel, Met’s first baseman, Ike Davis, hit a Grand Slam.  Again, the tournament in September is going to be mostly minor league players… and me.   Then if we win the qualifier, guys like Davis and Kinsler will join up for the actual tournament in 2013.

It’s embarrassing, but I still have dreams about playing in the Major Leagues.

met’s high-fiving after win

I can’t help it.  When I am conscious, I can rationally be thankful for the fact that I did not make it and instead have had the opportunity to cultivate my mind and do things most pro ballplayers miss out on like having a healthy obsession with costume jewelry.  But when I’m asleep, my subconscious takes over and I’ll have a dream where I am with Youk in the clubhouse or in the dugout and we’re both playing for the Red Sox and I keep thinking, “I’m finally in the Big Leagues, I’m really in the Big Leagues.”  Then I wake up and realize that I am not in the Big Leagues, but in my bed on the floor in my room in Brooklyn.  Who needs the Big Leagues?  I got the Thunder Dogs.  Game time is 7:30 tonight.  Will report back after…