Well...

The title says it all. It sums up the way I feel and what I've been feeling for the past month. Since too much has happened and I don't feel like typing it all out, I'll give you the Cliff Notes version. I can sum it up in one sentence:

Screwed.

Yep. Profound I know. I've done nothing wrong. I hit .351 in 8 spring training games with 4 of my 8 hits being extra base hits (1 HR, (2) 2B, (1) 3B). What's wrong with that you ask? Nothing. I hit the ball as well as I could have and here I am today, a month into the season without a job. I was promised a spot on the team and was asked to wait 2 weeks for that spot to open up and I did. My reward: practice. I practiced on every off day the team had practice and still received a swift kick to the groin. I played the waiting game as much as I could but just couldn't handle anymore torture. It was apparent that Long Beach wasn't working out as I had planned. As much as I wanted it to happen and workout for the best, alas, nothing came of it. Everybody on the team wanted me there but there was no spot for me. I'm a little bitter that I had to wait so long to find out that there wasn't a spot for me on the team. I could've easily gone to another team but no, I wanted to make it work with Long Beach. I endured as much waiting as possible but it still didn't work out.

Not only is it trying on myself but my wife as well. Having to come home everyday only to tell her "Well he said this and this and it's supposed to happen on this day." That's no fun. To be honest, I think this is my last go at it. I don't think I can endure another year of this crap. The baseball system has wore me down. There's no stability, no pay, and right now, no opportunity. I've been told by so many people, "It'll happen, it'll happen." Yes, I believe it'll happen this year, but will I have enough time to show scouts that I'm the real deal and I deserve a real chance to play organizational ball? I've proved all the local skeptics wrong and even fooled guys in spring training who didn't know I was a pitcher. The ones who did know now respect me as a hitter, which is all gravy, but I need the opportunity to show everybody else. I don't like having to wait for a phone call for weeks on end. I want it to happen this week but I fear that my phone won't ring with good news until next week or even two weeks. The All-Star break (mid-July) might be the first chance I have at playing, which is unfortunate. Everybody and their mother knows I should be playing right now but again, I've become a victim of unfortunate circumstances, AKA baseball.

So what happens if I play half a season, do well, and don't get signed to an organization? Do I attempt to try to get an invitation to spring training or do I just give it up? Both thoughts have certainly crossed my mind and I don't know what I'm going to do. As much as I don't want to give it up, I have to be real with myself. What are the odds that a 25-year old pitcher-converted-to-outfielder has a legitimate chance of playing the in the big leagues? The odds are definitely not in my favor. At least when Rick Ankiel did it he had already been a big league pitcher. Me? I've got nothing. A few years of pitching experience to my name. Do I think it's possible? Yes, but time is not on my side right now. If it's going to happen it has to happen now. I can't wait any longer. Unfortunately, I don't have any control over that, which is VERY frustrating. So until that happens, I'll just be here waiting for my phone to ring.

Spring is in the air

Sorry for the long delay in postings. I've been really lazy. My bad. Anyways, as always, a lot has happened in the past month that I haven't posted anything. Actually, a lot of the same has happened. I've just been working and doing my thing and getting ready for spring training with the Long Beach Armada. Wait, spring training has already started. I'll give you a quick rundown of what we've done.

Last Saturday, May 9th, we had a team meeting and physicals at Blair Field in Long Beach, which is where we'll be playing our home games. Since the Cal State Long Beach won't let us use the field for spring training, we had to find somewhere close that wouldn't charge us an arm and a leg to use their field. Thus, we ended up at Cal State Dominguez Hills located at the wonderful Home Depot Center. We started Sunday morning, Mother's Day, at 9am and started with the usual stretching and warmups to get our bodies loose. After we played catch we took what we baseball players call an "innie outtie"; otherwise known as an Infield/Outfield to you non-baseball players. After our innie outtie we went into batting practice. Now batting practice with 3 groups can be long if you're a pitcher (and believe me I know how long it can be), but we had 5 groups to get through since there were about 50 guys in camp. After batting practice we took a lunch break before heading into a 12 inning intersquad game. They made two teams with 10 hitters each and halfway through the game switched in guys who hadn't started. I played the first half of the game in right field. I went 1 for 4 in my spring training debut with a single and two strikeouts. Of course, who else would I face in my first at-bat but salted Major League veteran Jose Lima and of course I struck out.

Although my spring may have started on a sour note on Sunday I turned it around on Monday going 3 for 4 with a single, double, and home run. Tuesday I went 0 for 3 with 2 K and yesterday I turned it on again going 2 for 3 with a single, double, and walk with 3 RBIs. I've made the first round of cuts for position players, which is quite exciting. I think I'm gaining the respect of my fellow players because of the way I've been hitting the ball. I think a lot of guys who knew I used to pitch thought that I wouldn't be able to hit the ball as well as I have been, but I've definitely suprised them. It makes me feel good to know that all the hard work I've put in for the past year is paying off in dividens. The manager, Gary Templeton, told me today that I've been doing a hell of a job so far. That means a lot to me and makes me want to work harder to earn a spot on the team.

It's always fun to have guys with Major League experience out on the field because not only do they know how to have a good time, but they give valuable advice to us young'uns to help make us better ball players. Lima is no exception. He's a fun loving guy who loves to be out on the field. He's always telling a story or making the team laugh, which is a vital thing to have in the clubhouse. There's one on every team and Lima is our guy.

I did it!

FINALLY! It has happened! I got myself an invite to spring training with the Long Beach Armada. I went to their one day tryout this past Saturday, which was a VERY long day I might add, and received an invitation to compete for a spot in the outfield. This is the culmination of a year's worth of hard work and I couldn't have done it without the support of my friends and family. I love them and thank them for all their support. I feel vindicated. By that I mean that I feel like somebody other than myself sees my potential as an outfielder and believes that I can compete professionally. As hard as it is to get into pro ball, it's even harder to switch positions and compete at the professional level. I've always felt that I was an excellent hitter, but never had the chance to show anybody because everybody thinks that pitchers can't hit. Well guess what? They can!

As happy and elated as I am to get a spring invite, I still have a lot of work to do. I need to come into spring training and show them that I deserve to be on the team. I hit 3 days a week and workout the other 2 and play on the weekends. I think for me it's just a matter of getting at bats and seeing as much pitching as I can. I'll be competing against guys who have much more experience than me so it's important that I do well. I know they bring a lot of guys into camp and dispose of them pretty quickly, so I definitely have my work cut out for me.

The pay isn't going to be any good, but I already knew this. Independent ball probably, scratch that, DOES pay the worst in professional baseball. Guys with little or no experience make less than $1000 a month. Some as little as $500 a month, which is by no means a living wage. We don't play for the money, but for the opportunity and love of the game. Confucius said, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." My journey is about to begin and I've got a long way to go. Wish me luck.

Random ramblings

So last weekend I went to see I Love You, Man with my wife, Stefanie, and let me be the first to say that you MUST go see this movie. I thought it was absolutely hilarious. It had me laughing the whole time. I can't say it was the same for my wife, but she was laughing at certain moments. The acting of Peter's wife was a little cheesy, but the rest of the acting was great. There are so many one liners from this movie it's hard to pick my favorite. Jason Segal and Paul Rudd were fantastic together, as they have been in previous movies, but never as the lead characters.

I've got a tryout coming up on Saturday for the Long Beach Armada of the Golden League. This tryout is a one day tryout, unlike the Orange County tryout, which was a very long two days. I'm assuming they're going to run it like a usual tryout, but I was told they were going to make the first cuts in the middle of the afternoon, which means they might have two games. If by chance I don't make the team there is another tryout is Phoenix on April 5th for the Yuma Scorpions. Their website says they have an unusual amount of roster spots to fill, but that doesn't mean anything. If I don't make that team, there's another chance that I might get invited to a tryout with the Tucson Toros. I've emailed them and am waiting for a response.

I've also joined the Twitter world. I figured Facebook wasn't enough of a distraction during work so I setup a Twitter account. So far I have 3 followers. I know. I'm popular. There's not really much to Twitter. It's basically a Facebook status update and that's about it. The only difference is you can follow pretty much anything or anybody from friends and family to websites such as PC World and Engadget. Updates are called "Tweets" and are limited to 140 characters. That's pretty much it. You can follow anybody and search for anything, which is pretty cool.

Dale, thanks for the shout out on the Century Club post. We should hang out again soon. I'm on Twitter now so don't be afraid to follow me.

I think that's all the random thoughts going through my head at this point. I hope everybody is doing well.

Back to work

I know it's been a while but I finally have some free time to write. Anyways, the honeymoon is now over and it's time to get back to work. Work right now is really slow for me and it's hard to get on a job for more than a few days without having to take a day off due to no jobs going on with the shop. It looks like the economic slowdown has hit PCC with full force. Since I've been back I haven't worked a full week, with the exception of last week and it looks like this week won't be any different. I was over at Warner Brothers for a few days and out in LA for a few days as well. It seems like our ailing economy will never recover, with all these companies cutting jobs and putting people out of work. I did read an article today on my phone that was saying how people who have been jobless for almost a year now are actually enjoying their time off by spending more time with their families and learning new hobbies and such. I know what it feels like and after being off for two weeks on my honeymoon I felt like I was ready to get back to work. It was nice to have a few days off work when I came back though. Anyways, I digress.

Getting back to baseball and stepping in the batter's box after 5 weeks off definitely felt weird. Although I didn't do as bad as I thought I would, but I did strike out twice in my first game back with the Redbirds. I also walked twice in that game and stole a base. After embaressing myself I decided it was time to see Craig again. For those of you who don't know Craig is my hitting coach. He's worked with many big league hitters and used to be a scout for the White Sox as well. We fixed something that he had seen that had to do with my back leg and hips. Needless to say the problem was fixed and I was anxious to get back to the field to try it out but low and behold mother nature had something to say about it. She refused to let me play this week and from the looks of it she's going to have a repeat performance this upcoming weekend. I'm also sad because this coming weekend is the Annual CLU Alumni game. I don't know if the Alumni game has ever been rained out but there's a strong possibility that it might be this week. There is also a chance that I might be playing this summer with the Orange County Flyers of the Golden League. If that doesn't work out then there's also a possibility that I might be playing in Marion, IL in the Frontier League.

Oh, some new exciting personal info, I got a new router and it works like a charm. Before I had an old junk Microsoft router that was unsecured and open for business to the public. Anybody who wanted to connect to it could because there was no password to connect to the network. This new one I got yesterday at Best Buy is a D-Link and is primarily built for gaming. The reason I got a new router was because the old one for some reason or another kept dropping my wireless connection. Ever since AT&T came out to fix our internet that wasn't working when we got home (go figure) the router had been acting up. The guy told me that my router was very touchy and sensitive and had a tendency to drop the connection. It would literally do that every 15 minutes or so. This new router since I hooked it up has been awesome and hasn't dropped the connection yet. It seems to be a pretty popular router wand was a PC World Magazine top choice in 2007. That must mean it's the BEST! Did you catch that sarcasm there? I thought so. All in all I'm just happy to have a router that acutally works and to have my internet work the way it should work, not being slow as molasses. YES!!! Anyways, that's about all I got right now. Kind of disappointing I know but hey, that's what you get when its 11:50pm and I'm staring to fall asleep in my bed sitting on my laptop writing this blog. Maybe next time I'll be a little more exciting. haha just kidding. I'm always exciting if you hadn't noticed. I'm just rambling on now. Alrighty. One more thing. I'm actually curious to see how many people are actually reading this thing so for my sake I'm going to ask you guys a favor and just leave me a comment if you happened to read this blog and let me know what you guys think. Hell, you could even give me a topic to write about and I'll fire on all cylinders and give you what I got. Dale, I know you got something. haha. Alrighty, I'm out.