Dinner and ‘the meeting.’
Quote of the day:
“Okay guys, if we win today, we go to states. Lets do it!”
- San Jose Manager Lenny Sakata, talking about our third straight intra-squad game, apparently trying to get us excited about playing another practice game.
Threw again today, one, two, three inning again. This time only 7 pitches, and they were all fastballs. I got 0-2 on the first guy, and then threw a fastball on the outside half of the plate. In retrospect, it was a bad idea, since you really don’t want to give a hitter anything to hit in that count, but he let it go for a called third strike. Fun.
I also had dinner tonight with Coaches Pericolosi and Whalen, out on spring break from Pomona. It was good to see them. They came out to the complex in the morning, and the only reason I knew they were there was because a few guys came up and excitedly told me that there was some guy wearing a Pomona Junior College (according to everyone, Pomona is a JuCo) Baseball hat like the one I have.
So we picked up Jase Turner (Pomona, 2005), who plays in the Royals organization, and had dinner in Scottsdale. Talking with Jase, I decided that the Giants don’t skimp on their minor league spring training as much as I thought. Apparently the Royals don’t give camp meal money, and Surprise, Arizona, their training camp headquarters, is a little less, uh, developed than Scottsdale. I’ll be more grateful.
Jase hopes to make the California League team for the Royals, which plays in High Desert, (Adelanto) CA. Maybe we’ll end up in the same league so that we can participate in the first all-Pomona College athletic confrontation in professional sports history—unless I’m missing something—neither Model UN nor Debate count as a sport.
Tomorrow is ‘the meeting.’ This is the time when the whole organization gathers in a huge auditorium in North Scottsdale and sits through talks by Giants officials on everything from 401ks to the new new drug policy. Last year, the drug presentation started with a PowerPoint slide with a huge ‘0’ on it. “What,” the presenter asked, “does this number symbolize?” Nobody knew. “It is the number of positive drug tests in Giants history.” OK, well now I think that number is closer to 10, so we’re not sure if that specific presentation will go the same way. Stay tuned.
Other potential ‘meeting’ highlights include: 1) the nutritionist calling players on stage at random to analyze their diets; 2) the beer goggles, when the ‘security’ team presents something on why not to drive drunk, and has players try to play catch wearing beer goggles, and finally; 3) A speech by any one of the Giants VP’s—which must include a) a down to earth—‘young people will understand this’—phrase, b) a curse word, or c) a baseball analogy—every three minutes. Anyway, it should be a fun time.
