I was eating dinner tonight with a guy who has played professional baseball for 11 years and we were discussing what it is that keeps guys doing this; what keeps guys around the game, around this lifestyle. There were many factors that we both threw in but there was one thing that trumped them all....the fellas. Spring Training brings guys from all over the world ranging from Japan to Florida and Venezuela to Canada. Accents vary from a fast talking New Yorker to the slow draw of a country boy, lifestyles from living in Compton in California to the flat plains of the Kansas farm land, and languages that include Spanish, Japanese, French, English, as well as a few others. The guys might be as different as the east is from the west, but there is a common thread, a common piece of us that brings us all together...the game of baseball. There is a special bond that is created from being with a group of guys for 180 some odd days in locker rooms, dugouts, buses, hotel rooms, different towns, and many other places that you will go together. The shared experience of minor league baseball is so unique that it is hardly duplicated elsewhere in life. From the wins and losses, to the bus breaking down, hotel rooms not being ready, the pranks pulled in the locker room, or the countless other memories that are built from this experience, it's being with the fellas that make it what it is. Looking back on my two years of playing
professionally I am blown away at the amount of things I have learned about people, places, languages, cultures, and life just from the guys I have played with. Baseball might be the game, but it's the guys who we play with that we remember the most. A Hall of F
amer was asked following his induction speech what will you miss the most; and with tears in his eyes, he simply replied, "I'll miss the fellas." Whenever that day comes that I have to hang up my spikes I think I'll say the same...
I was eating dinner tonight with a guy who has played professional baseball for 11 years and we were discussing what it is that keeps guys doing this; what keeps guys around the game, around this lifestyle. There were many factors that we both threw in but there was one thing that trumped them all....the fellas. Spring Training brings guys from all over the world ranging from Japan to Florida and Venezuela to Canada. Accents vary from a fast talking New Yorker to the slow draw of a country boy, lifestyles from living in Compton in California to the flat plains of the Kansas farm land, and languages that include Spanish, Japanese, French, English, as well as a few others. The guys might be as different as the east is from the west, but there is a common thread, a common piece of us that brings us all together...the game of baseball. There is a special bond that is created from being with a group of guys for 180 some odd days in locker rooms, dugouts, buses, hotel rooms, different towns, and many other places that you will go together. The shared experience of minor league baseball is so unique that it is hardly duplicated elsewhere in life. From the wins and losses, to the bus breaking down, hotel rooms not being ready, the pranks pulled in the locker room, or the countless other memories that are built from this experience, it's being with the fellas that make it what it is. Looking back on my two years of playing professionally I am blown away at the amount of things I have learned about people, places, languages, cultures, and life just from the guys I have played with. Baseball might be the game, but it's the guys who we play with that we remember the most. A Hall of Famer was asked following his induction speech what will you miss the most; and with tears in his eyes, he simply replied, "I'll miss the fellas." Whenever that day comes that I have to hang up my spikes I think I'll say the same...
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