Baseball is a game of routines. Whether you realize it or not, every player follows routines in between pitches, in the on-deck circle, and before the game even starts. Some of these routines are very subtle, that the average fan would not pick up on, while others are quite obvious like Nomar Garciaparra's extensive batting routine before each pitch. I couldn't find a good clip of Garciaparra's routine, but this is a clip of former minor league prospect Andy Phillips.
Most players have a certain routine when they go to the plate, as you just saw in the video, similar to basketball players having a routine every time they go to the foul line. The mental side of the game is very interesting and I will get into more detail of that at a later time, but I wanted to focus on my daily routine last summer. Many people ask me to describe an average day for a Minor League baseball player, so I'm going to share about my experiences last summer. The following is my daily schedule for a night game played in Vancouver.
9:45 a.m. - Wake up and eat breakfast, usually toast, banana, peanut butter crackers, and chocolate milk.
10:30 a.m. - Leave host family's house for the subway to get to the gym.
11:00 a.m. - Arrive at the gym and lift for about an hour. I would lift 3-4 times a week, so there were days when I would sleep through the morning.
12:45 p.m. - Shower at my host family's house and have lunch. I usually ate a couple PB&Js or often had some leftovers from last night's dinner along with chips, protein bar, a Gatorade, and usually more chocolate milk.
1:45 - Leave for the park. My wonderful host mom would always drop myself and my roommate off at the field.
2:15 - Start getting loose and taking swings off of a tee or front toss. Our hitting coach was great and would always be there to work with me or any other players hours before the game began. There was always a group of guys getting some extra work in, so I would take 3-5 rounds of front toss every day. Front toss is a drill where a person flips the ball underhand from behind a screen to the hitter about 10 feet away. Below is a video of Alex Rodriguez hitting front toss.
Sometime from 3:15-3:45 - Meet as a team and discuss the previous nights game for 5 minutes, then break into stretching led by our strength and conditioning coach. After stretching was team conditioning; one day was pitchers conditioning, the following day for position players, and continued forth in that pattern. Next, we would go through a throwing program to warm-up our arms, and would usually have a short, team defensive practice before batting practice. In this time we would work on fly ball communication, cutoffs and relays, 1st and 3rd defense plays, bunt plays, etc.
4:30 - 5:15 - Batting practice. We broke into 3 groups and rotated between: hitting, base running, and defense.
5:15 - Pregame meal prepared by our clubhouse manager. He was quite the cook, which led to many second helpings
6:00 - "Road to the Big Leagues" as we called it. More optional hitting to get a few more front toss rounds to prepare for the game.
6:40 - "On the line" as our manager, Skip, said. We went through a base running routine with a couple sprints.
7:05 - First pitch. Time to "tee it off" another of Skip's sayings.
Post-Game - Return home and eat dinner around 10:30-11:00. My host mom always made great, large dinners and amazing desserts. I even started eating salads (My mom was so proud!)
Shortly after dinner was over, I would get ready for bed and rest up to do it all over again the next day.
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