Spring Training 101

I have safely arrived in Scottsdale, Arizona the home to the Oakland A's spring training facility and baseball complex. I am at the minor league spring training camp and our major league team's facilities are at a different location right down the road. So some of you may have thought that I would be out here practicing with the big leaguers, but I guess that will have to wait a couple of years. There are about 150 minor league players working out, practicing, lifting, etc. everyday trying to earn their spot on a minor league team and work their way through the minor league ranks. I reported to Arizona on March 14th and for the first week we had a similar schedule every day.

Morning Routine

I set my alarm and wake up between 5:45 and 7 am and leave for the clubhouse shortly after. Breakfast is provided at the clubhouse, so I eat my breakfast before attending our morning meetings that will start between around 8:30 or 9 am. Most days before the meetings I will get some extra work defensively or hitting in the batting cages. The morning meetings have covered a wide variety of topics, from finances to motivational speakers. The first morning of spring training we had a trio of guys from Radical Reality talk and demonstrate the power of self-esteem and determination. The ultimate message they passed on was to set a goal or purpose and to surround yourself with people of like purpose. The head of Radical Reality, Donnie Moore, said that you can't get anywhere in life unless you have a purpose. Along with motivational speaking, the Radical Reality team also demonstrates some pretty incredible feats of strength. These three guys broke full soda cans with their bare hands, tore through huge phonebooks, folded a frying pan into a burrito, broke a wooden bat over their leg, and ran through a wooden 2x4..It was quite a performance You can find out more about this team at Radical Reality website.

Morning Practices
Following any morning meetings we take the fields and stretch led by one of the many strength coaches. I have running conditioning every other day with all of the hitters. The next day the pitchers have conditioning, and vice versa. Following the stretching, conditioning, we go through a throwing program to loosen our arms. Our organization preaches good base running and we practice it everyday, usually with base running stations going over the protocol at each base.

Batting Practice
Following any base running that we have, we may also have stations of bunting, defense, and hitting, but almost everyday we hit batting practice. If the average person were to watch batting practice it would seem like chaos, but it is actually a very structured event. The hitters are divided into three groups of players that will rotate between hitting, defense, and base running. A quick note on batting practice: it is common practice around baseball for hitters to work on hitting the ball to the opposite field during the first round. Practicing on driving the ball to the opposite field is something that I would advise all younger players to do. Base running during batting practice works on some of the topics we talked about during base running stations. For example, one day we might be working on 2nd base with 0 outs and reading balls that are hit. The final group is defense, as an infielder I will take ground balls and also receive throws at 2nd base from the other infield positions. Usually when batting practice has concluded everyone will head inside for lunch that is served in the clubhouse.

Afternoon workouts/games
Following lunch everyone will return outside and get ready for an intersquad or real game against another team. Many people watch big league spring training games, a lot are shown on tv, but there are also minor league spring training games. There are AAA, AA, advanced A, and low A spring training games. Today we played the Giants in our first spring training game; we had been playing intersquad games last week. On most days the game will be the last thing that I have to do, but we lift twice a week, and today was one of my lifting days.

I am usually finished with everything at the facility between 3-6 pm, and I have the rest of the night to get dinner and hang out in the hotel where most of the players are staying. Most of my time in the hotel has been watching the college basketball tournament, which is my favorite sporting event to watch. While I definitely appreciate this down time to relax each night, most of my time is spent watching tv with my roommate. My roommate and I have an ongoing joke about who is the "boss" of the room, but I clearly am the Alpha dog of this domain. Neither myself, nor my roommate, Jeff Bercume, have a car here so our choices for dinner are limited. There is one restaurant within close walking distance of our hotel; needless to say I pretty much know Ruby Tuesday's whole menu. (I would recommend the smokehouse burger and the parmesan chicken pasta) Some of the other guys drove their cars here, so we can tag along to try another dinner location. It will be a really big treat when my parents come visit later this week..I doubt we will be dining at the Ruby Tuesday's.

I usually get to bed around 10 or 11 and try to get enough sleep to wake up and perform at a high level the next day. And that is right on cue, as it is time for me to get to bed and follow this routine tomorrow. On a side note the weather has been awesome, reaching the 90s in temperature. I know Connecticut is expecting some more snow tomorrow, hopefully not too much and everyone there will be able to get their baseball seasons underway soon. Good luck in the upcoming season.