Gardner WebLog

…you lose some, as the saying goes.

Last night I picked up my first loss on the season, coming in in the 10^th inning and giving up the game winning hit.  Not anything real great about the outing, either, because I mixed in a walk and a stolen base, too.

Anyway, it’s funny how the game works, because when you’re pitching well, everything is good.  Even outside of baseball, everything is positive and going well.  Once you have a bad outing, though, because baseball is all that you do, everything turns bad until you come back and have a good outing!  It’s funny that way.  I pitch well and love the game.  One bad outing and I’m contemplating hanging it up, my arm hurts, and everything goes south fast!

As you can see, it’s very easy to over think and make yourself a head-case after pitching poorly.  The best thing you can have in a long season is a short memory.  Being able to go out and blow one, then totally forget about it is a vital skill I haven’t yet mastered!

I got a new glove the other day, though, so perhaps getting new ‘stuff’ will help me get over my lack of execution on the mound the other night!  It’s always fun to break in a glove, especially when your old one looks like something out of the movie The Sandlot.

Since my grandparents and my dad were at both games I pitched in down south, and I did well, I can only assume that it’s their fault I didn’t do well last night.  I don’t like placing blame, but let’s look at the differences here.  Everything else is the same—60 feet to the plate, same ball, I haven’t changed anything about my delivery…  But they weren’t at the game last night.   All I’m saying is that I think it’s fairly clear where the responsibility for the loss lies.

Haha.

Hopefully we’ll pull it back together and get a few wins in a row to round out the home stand.  Stay tuned…

Just a quick entry from the lobby of our hotel before taking off from Lake Elsinore—the field here is great, they get huge crowds, and our team is 11-3.  Life is good.  Knock on wood.  We leave tonight after the game to go to Bakersfield for a one-game series against the Blaze, then bus it after that game back home to San Jose.

Last night one of the stadium entertainers dressed up in one of our uniforms and posed as our first base coach.  The mascot came over and pretended to bother him, and then they both started dancing all over the field in between innings.  It was hilarious.  It really looked like our first base coach was break dancing in front of the dugout.  I’m starting to think that between the fireworks, mid-inning promotions, concessions, and jumbo-tron antics, the actual baseball ‘game’ is now a side-show in minor league baseball.

Two other new-worthy items today.  My roommate from last year was called up to the Giants, and Kyle’s team at Redlands clinched the SCIAC championship.  Fun times.

Greetings from Victorville, CA, where we’re on our first long road trip of the season.  Fun times!  On the road, we mostly stay in pretty okay hotels (think like Ramada/Quality Inn…) near pretty okay eating spots (Coco’s, Denny’s, etc.), and play in pretty okay parks.  The stadium in High Desert is nice—but freezing cold after 8 pm at night.  I had like 5 shirts on tonight and was still cold to the core.

We’re here for another day, and then go down to Lake Elsinore to face the fearsome ‘Storm.’  Two players on the Storm intimidate me.  Here’s why.  One was a guy who in high school hit a game winning hit off of me my sophomore year—I still haven’t forgotten it.  The second guy hit two home runs in two different games off of me in Salem two years ago.  In baseball we say that he ‘owns’ me.  Luckily, he hit like 18 home runs that year, so I think he owns a couple other guys too.  Maybe the wind will be blowing in this weekend?

What did minor league baseball players do before cellphones, Sony PSPs, protable DVD players (much less DVD players on buses), or Ipods?  Looking around the bus, everyone uses some high priced electronic time-passing device on long bus rides.  I will say, however, that my Ipod was a life-changing purchase.  Endless music at any time of the day.  Priceless.  Really though, even when reading or playing cards, guys will listen to their Ipods.  What was the pre-Ipod minor league bus ride like?

My brother Kyle is tearing up the SCIAC.  I have to give him props on the blog because he’s basically two baseball players in one.  All pitchers think they can hit and whine about how easy it is, and all hitters think they have dirty stuff and want to try pitching.  Nobody does both consistently well.

That reminds me.  On the bus ride from Arizona up to San Jose a couple weeks ago, my bus actually passed Kyle’s bus on interstate 10 somewhere around Ontario.  Kyle and the Redlands team had just played La Verne, and we were taking the 10 to the 5 north heading up to the Bay Area.  Unfortunately, Kyle and I realized this too late, about 5 minutes after our teams drove right by each other.  Hilarious.

Many thanks to Uncle Sid, Ellen, and Matty Dub (the actor Matt Williams–you might remember him for his role in The Rookie) for providing the answers to the riddles.  Matt’s riddles will provide fodder for conversation for tomorrow night’s game.  Maybe it will warm us up.

That will be the last pun I use for a Blog title…bad. 

Sometimes a whole game sitting in the bullpen gets to be very long.  Here, in the pre-summer rainy season of Northern California, games are not only long, but really really cold as well.  We have to find things to keep ourselves occupied…

…thus, riddles become an acceptable means of passing time.  In Salem, we were lucky enough to have my host sister come down and vex us with some really good ones.  Last night we took it up another notch, and must have polished off about ten solid riddles.  It sounds pretty childish, but then again, we’re playing a kid’s game for money.  Let’s see how you do on some of these…

Bullpen Riddle 1:  After clearing away debris from a recent forest fire in the mountains, firefighters find a dead scuba diver, with full gear—a wetsuit, snorkel, everything.  There is a perfectly good explanation for why he was there.  What is it?

Other bullpen activities include improvised weapons, including a tediously-constructed sling-shot-esqe tool made from a latex glove finger taped to an empty tape roll.  It’s hard to envision, but this thing could (no joke) shoot little rocks about 50 feet out into the field.  It was incredible.  My skills were lacking, but a couple other guys set up a target range of cups on the water cooler and had a great time.

Bullpen Riddle 2:  The one who builds it sells it, the one who buys it doesn’t use it, and the one who uses it doesn’t know he or she is using it.  What is it?

The bullpen at Modesto is set back behind the field, such that you can’t see what is going on from about the pitcher’s mound forward, and especially not the dugout.  The bullpen usually communicates with the dugout personnel via walkie-talkies, but last night we had a catastrophic communication breakdown.  The walkie-talkies broke.  We tried sending runners back and forth, but that became awkward when every time the dugout needed an update on whether a pitcher was warm, someone had to come flying down the line to ask.  Finally, we got the walkie-talkies working again, but for about three innings the San Jose Giants were mired in a very stressful situation…

Bullpen Riddle 3 (and 3.5):  What gets wetter the more it dries?  And similarly, what gets bigger, the more you take away from it?

So anyway, bullpen time is usually fairly relaxed, until you’re told to get warm (or the occasional ‘hot,’ which means the coach wants you to throw the absolute minimum number of pitches to get ready…always fun).  Then the bullpen goes from a frat party to a flurry of activity, with guys grabbing chairs, catchers furiously putting on gear, jackets and sweatshirts flying off, and pitchers getting ready to go in the game.  That’s when it gets fun.  One more riddle to bring it home…

Bullpen Riddle 4 (somewhat morbid, but bear with me…):  A man is told to make one statement.  If he tells the truth, he will be hanged.  If he lies, he will be shot.  What can he say that will ensure his survival—meaning, what is the one statement he can make that will preclude his captors from killing him?

I’ll try to accurately convey the clubhouse scene during rain delays—it’s pretty much all that happens these days, anyway.

I’d say a solid half of the guys sit around on a few couches or chairs, and play cards.  We play a game called posoy (sp?), which is a poker-based game where you go around trying to beat other people’s hands…I don’t really understand it so I’ll stop there.  I get absolutely dominated whenever I play.  At this point in the season, however, we don’t have any card tables, so most games are played on empty boxes.  It gives the cluhouse a back alley underground casino type look—very cool.

Usually there is a DVD playing on the TV mounted on the wall—today we saw  Remember the Titans—for inspiration of course.  I casually mentioned that I went to a high school in the same district as TC Williams in Virginia–the high school in the movie–but then it got awkward when everyone realized that my school routinely beat the Titans…so we dropped it.

The coaches generally stay in their offices—they have their own TV, and if I were them I’d stay inside as well.  Today, one guy went to the mall and bought some “As Seen on TV” type rotisserie machine, so the clubhouse smelled like burned chicken.  

Food dominates clubhouse activity.  When the clubby (clubhouse manager) puts out the pre-game spread, all activities grind to an immediate halt, and everyone frantically rushes the table.  Peanut butter and jelly flies everywhere, just a mess, and we all cram food into our mouths as we ravenously scour the area for our food of choice, with the obligatory complaining, of course.  We’re paying next to nothing for this food, but c’mon, it better be gourmet!  Our spreads this year have been surprisingly decent: lasagna the other day, sandwich meats, pasta salad, and I think the front office paid for one catered meal of BBQ chicken.  So far it’s been nice—if it’s anything like Augusta, though, it will turn to PB and J fairly soon!

I took the rain delay time this afternoon to polish off about 100 pages of Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat.  Haha, now everybody is picturing me as the loner reading at his locker—I’m not a total outcast—but today I did get really into this book.  I left the clubhouse at about 3.30 to go to 7-11, and finding nothing that struck my fancy, bought a MONSTER drink—the new energy drink—which provided me the necessary energy boost to turn The World is Flat into a phenomenal page turner that I couldn’t put down.  Picture me sitting at my locker, sipping my energy drink, eyes wide, enthralled by the latest trends in business process outsoucing to Bangalore, India, while the usual locker room melee continues behind me.

It’s raining, what else is there to do?

So one GREAT thing about San Jose is that they call games because of rain early in the day rather that later.  In Augusta we used to have to sweat it out in the clubhouse until like 8.30 at night.  Here, we show up at 2.00, and someone from the front office comes in and tells everyone that the game’s been cancelled.  I think it might have something to do with the fact that rain in California sends people screaming for cover and causes them to drive like 8 year olds.

I pitched again last night—another ok outing, but with a few control problems.  It’s easier to live with a sub-par outing when you know that you’ll have many more chances to show your stuff in the season.  I ended up leaving the bases loaded for the guy who came in behind me, who promptly struck the next hitter out on three pitches.  Can anyone say Adam owes a free dinner?

So nothing much new is happening out here—rain, more rain, a little baseball, and then rain again.  I did manage to get out to Santa Cruz this evening and surf a little bit.  My dad and brother delivered my truck as well as my surfboard this past weekend, and another pitcher and I took off for the beach after the game was called this afternoon.  The weather could’ve been better, but the surf was great.  Just like soccer, I think surfing is a great conditioning sport for baseball.

I also want to say that I love this time of year, when you come home, flip through the channels, and find a baseball game on TV.  Baseball differs from football in that you can watch an inning or two, check out The West Wing (or ER if you’re my mom or American Idol if you’re my girlfriend), and then come back to the game.  Maybe nothing has happened, maybe a lot has happened and you want to keep watching the game.  Either way, you’ve already watched your favorite show, and you can sit on the couch, drift in and out of consciousness, and catch the last few innings as Joe Buck or Harold Reynolds lull you off to sleep.  It’s a pastime.

First, congratulations to Phil Mickelson, winner of this year’s Master’s Golf Tournament, helping to prove once again that left is right, not wrong.  Go lefty.

So not only have we started the season off, but I actually got in the game the other night…and got a win.  Being a reliever, this is a rare occurrence.  It also calls for another baseball glossary term:  to vulture a win.  Vulturing wins is a fine art.  Many do it without realizing it; others have it down to a perfected science.  I fall into the former category.

I’ll set the scene to describe the term.  We were playing a seven inning game because it was a doubleheader from a rainout the night before.  Our starting pitcher went a strong four innings, and came out when the team was ahead 5-4.  The rule is, if you pitch through 4 innings in a 7 inning game, and you leave the game when your team is ahead, you are in position to get the win.  OK.  Starter leaves, Adam comes in.  Now is when the vulture starts circling, smelling a potential victim.  I (stupidly) give up an (unearned) run (not that we’re keeping track, but it was unearned…), and the score is tied.  Because we’re no longer ahead, the decision becomes mine, not the starter’s.  Now Adam is in position to get the decision.  I finish two innings, and after my second inning (the 6^th in the game), we score the go-ahead run.  Now, I am the pitcher of record because there was a lead change in the game while I was pitching.  Our closer comes in, gets the save, and I come out with a win for throwing two very average innings.  So there it is: A ‘vultured’ win.

Anyway, it was an ok outing—honestly it’s weird pitching anywhere for the first time, for a new team.  You think to yourself—the plate is still 60.5 feet away, and the catcher looks the same, and the mound is the same, but still, things feel different.  The funny thing is that being nervous on the mound feels exactly the same as it did ten years ago pitching on my high school varsity team as a freshman.  I was smaller than most of the hitters (still true), I wasn’t thinking enough about baseball, and was instead focused on how awesome and scary it was that I was pitching in a varsity game (read: professional game), and finally, I wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible.  I have yet to master the art of being relaxed on the mound.  It’s even harder to do as a reliever, because rarely are you pitching in a mellow situation.  You’re always throwing late in the game, cleaning up someone else’s (or, your own) mess, trying to slam the door and win the thing.

The other night, I got lucky and benefited from some incredible defensive plays.  They had a guy on first, and the hitter made a bad bunt just to my right (glove) side—a totally catch-able ball for me usually.  For some reason, however, my knees buckled, and I stood there and watched the ball fly by.  Hello?!?!  Luckily, the third baseman was not on another planet as I was, ran in, barehanded the ball, and fired it to second base to get the lead runner.  Meanwhile, I’m standing on the mound like a doofus mumbling a half-english half-spanish thank you type comment in his direction.  So much for the whole athleticism argument, huh?

So anyway, it was great to get in the game, and hear people get excited in the stands.  Even if I did completely vulture a win and melt on an easy bunt, I’m glad that my first outing in San Jose is behind me, and feel good about how it went.  Here’s to a few more like it this year, and a few legit ones in the W column.

The season is officially under way.  Sort of.  We started it off Thursday night with an extra-inning win over the Visalia Oaks.  Highlights of the game included our new mascot “Gigante” flying to the field in a helicopter, hopping off around second base, and making a preseason victory lap, the pregame ring ceremony for the guys on the team last year who won the Cal League Championship, and the post-game fireworks show.

The game went fairly smoothly.  I thought I might have a shot to throw at the end and was warming up in the bullpen for most of the 10th inning, but the game ended in the bottom of the 11th.

Then yesterday, around batting practice time, what seriously felt like a rain squall just blindsided the field, and we all ran inside.  30 minutes later, the game was cancelled.  So today we’ve got a double-header, two games for the price of one, at 5 and at 7.  Very exciting.

I think the games are available on the internet.  The team’s website is www.sjgiants.com, and they should have an icon in the bottom right hand corner of the screen talking about how to hear the games online.

So we’re underway, 1-0, and ready to go nonstop until September.  As long as the rain doesn’t get us.  Stay tuned.

Here we are in San Jose.  A cut above Augusta, GA, this place is definitely a ‘big-league town.’  There are over one million people here–from what we’ve heard, they all come to the San Jose Giants games.  OK maybe not, but the fans are suppsoed to be great.  Nice park, good clubhouse, cool uniforms, great free gear, and interesting weather.

It’s been raining since we got here.  Northern California, for all intents and purposes, has had a month-long monsoon season in March.  People look up at the sky with bewilderment, then say something like “It always dries out at some point, we’re just waiting for it to actually happen.”  Not too much stress out here either.  It’s sunny today, however, and I’m fairly sure we’ll play.

I’m staying with a family in Gilroy, which is about a twenty minute drive south of the stadium.  I have no idea what freeway goes there, but I think last night on the way back we were on US-101 for a short time.  Learning the roads here will take a little while.  Everything is something-80.  580, 880, I think I’ve seen a 280.  Then the 101 and some other roads come through as well.  Who knows.  Anyway, the family is very nice, and their house is huge, with a pool in the back, and my roommate and I have a big room upstairs all to ourselves.  Keeping in mind that these people have a lot to live up to after the summer I spent with the Edisons in Salem, I think it should be a fun time. 

We showed up to the field the other day for the first time and were issued our uniforms (I have number 12 this year, down three from last year’s 15…), lockers, and other gear.  The only major letdown at this point has been my pants.  My pants on the road have a huge hole in the knee (you can see skin), and my home pants could probably fit two people.  I guess the club bought new jerseys instead of pants, because these things look like they’ve been through some serious use!

And so it begins.  We have our first game today, and then it’s pretty much non-stop until September, with a few off-days scattered in between.  It’s going to be fun, boring, grueling, and exciting, all at the same time.  However it is, I’ll write about it right here.

The bags are packed, the bus is ready, and we head out tomorrow at 12.30pm for San Jose.  I’ve been here for over a month, living in a hotel room, making $20 a day, and eating a lot of chicken.  I’ve got a killer farmer’s tan.  When I take my shrit off, it looks like I’m still wearing a shirt, because my arms and neckline are dark brown.  Ridiculous.

The blog has been a lot of fun.  It will continue to be a ton of fun.  I’ll keep writing as long as the ideas flow, the stories happen, and the wireless internet is available.  We’re supposed to stay in a hotel up in San Jose for the next couple nights, and then move into our host families.

Yes, in San Jose we will stay with probably the most generous people ever, minor league host families.  These unbelievable souls have chosen to open up their homes to minor league baseball players for the entire season.  The rumor is that the host families in San Jose are almost all really great.  Hopefully mine will have internet.

Anyway, I wanted to say thanks again for all of you who checked out the blog.  It’s really fun to come home from practice and see who’s posted a comment, or get emails from people saying that they’re keeping up with me via the weblog.  Writing about all this crazy stuff has been a good release for me as well.  I still have like ten unwritten blogs in my head, with all the new people and stories that come up each day.

I’ll stay as diligent as possible with the updating.  The next few days might be more difficult, but stay tuned.  If anybody in the I-10 or US-101 corridor in Arizona and California sees a big bus driving west or north tomorrow between about 12pm and 12am, that’ll probably be the San Jose Giants.  Or the Baby Giants.

Thanks again, and I’ll see you in San Jose.