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as opposed to fantasy baseball camp.
Most teams run some kind of week-long "hang out with retired guys and play baseball" thing, and a couple years ago as a birthday gift my parents paid for me to go to the Cubs one. Now that the kids are a little older and I'm not quite broken down enough to not be able to go, we decided this was the year to do it. So I've been here at the Cubs spring training facility since Sunday.
Notes:
Day 0: We had a little welcome social event where they told us who all the coaches would be and which teams we were on.
Guys who are here:
Randy Hundley (it's his camp)
Glenn Beckert (in a wheelchair, mostly just watching)
Joe Pepitone (being entertaining but not attached to a team)
Team 1: Gary Matthews and Bob Dernier
Team 2: Willie Wilson and Jose Cardenal (I had forgotten Wilson ever played for the Cubs)
Team 3: Rick Sutcliffe and Tim Stoddard
Team 4: Rick Reuschel and Larry Biittner
Team 5: Jody Davis and Pete LaCock (my team)
Team 6: Todd Hundley and Ray Burris
Team 7: Lee Smith and Ed Lynch
Team 8: Mike Remlinger and Fergie Jenkins
Each team has about 11-12 guys on it. About half of the campers are rookies. In a camp where everyone is old, my team seems even older than average - there are three of us in our late 30s/early 40s, a bunch of guys in their 50s, two guys in their late 60s, and one in his early 70s.
Day 1:
Got to the locker room and discovered that they somehow forgot to order me a uniform, so I'm using a loaner. There's a row of lockers on the other end of our room for Theo Epstein, Eddie Vedder, Bill Murray, and Ryne Sandberg; nobody knows which of those guys will show up but Vedder usually does. Remlinger and Dernier and Stoddard are right near me - Remlinger has a huge bushy beard and looks like the Unabomber. After we got dressed there was a camp meeting to talk about the day's schedule and introduce the other assistants. They have the trainers from most of the Cubs minor league affiliates in camp to take care of us. Ernie Banks' son is also a camper. We walked through the main facility to get to the practice fields. We saw a bunch of minor leaguers working out and I felt kind of silly walking past them while they're at work. Apparently we used to have more access to the major league facilities before the Cubs got good.
One of the trainers led us through stretching and then we took some BP and played a couple games. I rolled my ankle in warmups, sigh. We lost both - I think 11-2 and 23-0. Our hitting and fielding are both pretty terrible, me included so far. I had been hoping there'd be more instruction for either hitting or fielding but not really. They use pitching machines rather than making people pitch. There are a bunch of people hanging around getting things signed by the coaches.
On the way back to the clubhouse I ended up walking with Willie Wilson and asked him for advice on basestealing. He said it mostly came down to the count and game situation and observing the pitcher enough to be able to tell from small clues when he was throwing over vs when he was pitching.
The trainers iced up my ankle and told me to come over tomorrow morning to get taped.
Day 2:
Same schedule but we had a bit of fielding practice also. No uniform yet so I still have my loaner. It sure is nice to have clubhouse guys to wash all your stuff. Because there was a locked gate between the locker room and the practice fields, they suggested people drive over, and I don't have a car so I went looking in the parking lot for a car with an opening. Ended up driving over with Lee Smith, Ray Burris, and Willie Wilson, who were talking about what a terrible driver Shawon Dunston was.
We lost both games again, but we scored about ten runs for the day which was a major improvement. Fielding's still not great. The tape helped my ankle tremendously. I'm mostly playing second or third. At least I got some legitimate hits. In the second game, the ump was awful and blew a call at home in our favor and the guy he called out threw his helmet and argued a bit. In the next inning he called me out at second on a force play where the shortstop was a good five feet away from the bag when he got the ball and never touched it, I complained a bit, and then Reuschel (the manager of the other team) came out and blew up at the ump also.
Eddie Vedder showed up, though he misses the morning game sometimes. Surprisingly more people want to get his autograph than the players, so it's a bit of a zoo on his field.
I got a ride back from the fields to the locker room with Pepitone and his son and another guy on his son's team.
Day 3:
I overslept a bit and missed the van going over to the park. There were a couple campers in the elevator at the hotel and I asked if I could catch a ride with them. One of them said he wasn't going yet but the other offered to take me. Turns out it's Ron Santo's son, who couldn't make it until today, so we talked about San Francisco and his dad on the way over.
Same schedule, no fielding practice, still no uniform. Pepitone told some very funny off-color stories in the morning meeting and forgot that his son is here too. Apparently the blowup Reuschel had at the ump yesterday is very out of character for him and was enough to get the ump fired - there have been complaints about him previous years too. LaCock also told a scary story about getting mugged by three guys when he was with the Royals and his pregnant wife getting threatened and his friend getting shot in the shoulder, and he kind of snapped and chased the mugger with the gun a half mile and grabbed him, and when the cops finally showed up the mugger tried to get away and LaCock ended up shooting him with his own gun.
They got that gate open so I walked over to the practice field. I saw Jason Heyward and Kyle Schwarber working out on the way over.
We played the other 0-4 team in the morning and got our first win (this was Eddie's team but he wasn't there), and we won in extra innings in game 2. It's not super competitive but the coaches really want to win and it rubs off on us.
During the game, when I was sitting out an inning, LaCock told me and another guy sitting about his experiences with Bob Gibson - http://www.gammonsdaily.com/happy-bi...-gibson-story/ .
I just looked up Jody Davis and saw that he's the hitting coach for the Reds AAA team. I'll ask him about Winker and Peraza when I get a chance.
Most teams run some kind of week-long "hang out with retired guys and play baseball" thing, and a couple years ago as a birthday gift my parents paid for me to go to the Cubs one. Now that the kids are a little older and I'm not quite broken down enough to not be able to go, we decided this was the year to do it. So I've been here at the Cubs spring training facility since Sunday.
Notes:
Day 0: We had a little welcome social event where they told us who all the coaches would be and which teams we were on.
Guys who are here:
Randy Hundley (it's his camp)
Glenn Beckert (in a wheelchair, mostly just watching)
Joe Pepitone (being entertaining but not attached to a team)
Team 1: Gary Matthews and Bob Dernier
Team 2: Willie Wilson and Jose Cardenal (I had forgotten Wilson ever played for the Cubs)
Team 3: Rick Sutcliffe and Tim Stoddard
Team 4: Rick Reuschel and Larry Biittner
Team 5: Jody Davis and Pete LaCock (my team)
Team 6: Todd Hundley and Ray Burris
Team 7: Lee Smith and Ed Lynch
Team 8: Mike Remlinger and Fergie Jenkins
Each team has about 11-12 guys on it. About half of the campers are rookies. In a camp where everyone is old, my team seems even older than average - there are three of us in our late 30s/early 40s, a bunch of guys in their 50s, two guys in their late 60s, and one in his early 70s.
Day 1:
Got to the locker room and discovered that they somehow forgot to order me a uniform, so I'm using a loaner. There's a row of lockers on the other end of our room for Theo Epstein, Eddie Vedder, Bill Murray, and Ryne Sandberg; nobody knows which of those guys will show up but Vedder usually does. Remlinger and Dernier and Stoddard are right near me - Remlinger has a huge bushy beard and looks like the Unabomber. After we got dressed there was a camp meeting to talk about the day's schedule and introduce the other assistants. They have the trainers from most of the Cubs minor league affiliates in camp to take care of us. Ernie Banks' son is also a camper. We walked through the main facility to get to the practice fields. We saw a bunch of minor leaguers working out and I felt kind of silly walking past them while they're at work. Apparently we used to have more access to the major league facilities before the Cubs got good.
One of the trainers led us through stretching and then we took some BP and played a couple games. I rolled my ankle in warmups, sigh. We lost both - I think 11-2 and 23-0. Our hitting and fielding are both pretty terrible, me included so far. I had been hoping there'd be more instruction for either hitting or fielding but not really. They use pitching machines rather than making people pitch. There are a bunch of people hanging around getting things signed by the coaches.
On the way back to the clubhouse I ended up walking with Willie Wilson and asked him for advice on basestealing. He said it mostly came down to the count and game situation and observing the pitcher enough to be able to tell from small clues when he was throwing over vs when he was pitching.
The trainers iced up my ankle and told me to come over tomorrow morning to get taped.
Day 2:
Same schedule but we had a bit of fielding practice also. No uniform yet so I still have my loaner. It sure is nice to have clubhouse guys to wash all your stuff. Because there was a locked gate between the locker room and the practice fields, they suggested people drive over, and I don't have a car so I went looking in the parking lot for a car with an opening. Ended up driving over with Lee Smith, Ray Burris, and Willie Wilson, who were talking about what a terrible driver Shawon Dunston was.
We lost both games again, but we scored about ten runs for the day which was a major improvement. Fielding's still not great. The tape helped my ankle tremendously. I'm mostly playing second or third. At least I got some legitimate hits. In the second game, the ump was awful and blew a call at home in our favor and the guy he called out threw his helmet and argued a bit. In the next inning he called me out at second on a force play where the shortstop was a good five feet away from the bag when he got the ball and never touched it, I complained a bit, and then Reuschel (the manager of the other team) came out and blew up at the ump also.
Eddie Vedder showed up, though he misses the morning game sometimes. Surprisingly more people want to get his autograph than the players, so it's a bit of a zoo on his field.
I got a ride back from the fields to the locker room with Pepitone and his son and another guy on his son's team.
Day 3:
I overslept a bit and missed the van going over to the park. There were a couple campers in the elevator at the hotel and I asked if I could catch a ride with them. One of them said he wasn't going yet but the other offered to take me. Turns out it's Ron Santo's son, who couldn't make it until today, so we talked about San Francisco and his dad on the way over.
Same schedule, no fielding practice, still no uniform. Pepitone told some very funny off-color stories in the morning meeting and forgot that his son is here too. Apparently the blowup Reuschel had at the ump yesterday is very out of character for him and was enough to get the ump fired - there have been complaints about him previous years too. LaCock also told a scary story about getting mugged by three guys when he was with the Royals and his pregnant wife getting threatened and his friend getting shot in the shoulder, and he kind of snapped and chased the mugger with the gun a half mile and grabbed him, and when the cops finally showed up the mugger tried to get away and LaCock ended up shooting him with his own gun.
They got that gate open so I walked over to the practice field. I saw Jason Heyward and Kyle Schwarber working out on the way over.
We played the other 0-4 team in the morning and got our first win (this was Eddie's team but he wasn't there), and we won in extra innings in game 2. It's not super competitive but the coaches really want to win and it rubs off on us.
During the game, when I was sitting out an inning, LaCock told me and another guy sitting about his experiences with Bob Gibson - http://www.gammonsdaily.com/happy-bi...-gibson-story/ .
I just looked up Jody Davis and saw that he's the hitting coach for the Reds AAA team. I'll ask him about Winker and Peraza when I get a chance.
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