. Thanks for the great feedback guys. It was good inspiration to write more. I am purposely focusing more on Jonas' place on his team and in the GLBA rather than the league as a whole. But I'm sure you will learn enough about league as we go.
Coincidentally, the next chapter is a little longer too...
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March 1, 2000
So here I am in Cleveland. Uneventful trip here yesterday, but it was hard leaving the family behind. For that matter, it was hard leaving all of Springfield behind. I must have gotten 100 pats on the back from the well wishers this week.
I grab a cup of coffee from the lobby of the hotel to slurp down on the three block walk to practice. I meet up with a few of the other guys and we walk together. Everyone is a little apprehensive. I don’t think anyone really knows what to expect. But as usual, a couple dirty jokes loosen up the crowd and most of us have at least a smirk on our faces as we arrive.
Our spring training facility is actually a convocation center downtown that’s part of the local college. They smacked down some turf, strung a few nets, wheeled in a few cages, and voila – spring training. Not exactly ideal conditions to train a baseball team, but at least I haven’t seen any outboard motors in the Jacuzzis. Yet.
After a few minutes of milling and two donuts, the skipper gathers us in a meeting room and starts us off. The skip is Woody Boudreau, a 36-year old former scientist who was convinced to ditch the 9-to-5 rat race to lead the fledgling Cleveland Rocks in their inaugural season. Skip also doubles as the director of player ops. I guess that makes him two guys I don’t want to piss off. He seems like an egghead to me, but as long as the egghead doesn’t give me my walking papers he can use all the protractors and slide rules he wants.
After the meeting, we warmup, do some basic hitting and conditioning drills. After lunch, we break up by position. The outfielders go out to shag balls and work on our arm strength.
Tough to get much of a read on the competition today. There are only a couple guys that seem certain to make the team. Infielder Jim Rose hit the ball on the nose every time. One of his line drives went right through the netting and cracked a seat across the arena. Remind me not to eat in section 113, row 8 when he hits. The cream of the outfield seems to be Nikolai Bendiksen – the ball just lifts like a jet off his bat and he has one of the better arms to boot. Outside of those two guys, it’s tough to see a difference.
I felt like I held my own today. Like back home, I hit better from the left side, but I’m not prepared to give up switch hitting. I’ll just have to work a little harder I guess.