text:
Everyone's Blog Posts - CheckSwing 2016-09-26T20:15:37Z http://www.checkswing.com/profiles/blog/feed?xn_auth=no Minor Leagues, Minimal Wages tag:www.checkswing.com,2016-09-22:2099111:BlogPost:348920 2016-09-22T02:46:27.000Z Bill Stanton http://www.checkswing.com/profile/Bill

Minor Leagues, Minimal Wages

Legal technicalities dating back to 1922 have kept many players' pay below poverty level.

 The view from the dugout during a game between the Boise Hawks and the Vancouver Canadians Christopher Morris /…

Minor Leagues, Minimal Wages

Legal technicalities dating back to 1922 have kept many players' pay below poverty level.

 The view from the dugout during a game between the Boise Hawks and the Vancouver Canadians Christopher Morris / Getty

Jeremy Venook

3:00 PM ET

Business

When news of a superstar athlete's blockbuster contract breaks, it can be easy to assume that all pros are living large. In baseball, however, this is far from the case: Major League Baseball, in which the biggest names can clear $30 million a year, pays poverty-level wages to thousands of players.

These players toil away in obscurity on one of hundreds of minor-league teams that funnel their top talent to the majors. There, they practice and develop—some for as long as 13 years—until they are promoted to major-league teams or, in nearly 90 percent of cases, are waived by their teams or retire. Though some top prospects are rewarded handsomely before making the jump to the majors, many minor leaguers report making as little as $3,000 to $7,500 for a five-month season of intense physical labor, 60-hour workweeks, and little chance of advancement.

Dirk Hayhurst, whose memoir The Bullpen Gospels documents his years as a minor-league pitcher, describes the problems that these wages create. Mandatory team dues, he said, can reduce players' salaries to less than $300 per month. To save money, players "find at least two more people than the amount of bedrooms that are actually in the place"—sometimes as many as six to a two-bedroom apartment—and spend nights in sleeping bags or on air mattresses because they can't afford furniture. Food, too, can be a recurring issue: Grueling schedules, frequent travel, and low wages leave players reliant on cheap and unhealthy fast food or snacks from gas-station minimarts. Throw in the fact that many players "have alcohol, tobacco issues to help them cope with the highs and lows of the game," he says, and the league's $25 per diem rarely lasts the day.

Labor conditions like these have prompted dozens of former minor-league players to file two separate suits against the MLB. The first, Senne v. MLB, alleges that the MLB habitually violates federal minimum-wage statutes. Moreover, the plaintiffs claim, it's not fair that the season includes stretches of entirely unpaid labor. Reasoning that training games are for the benefit of the players and not the league itself, the league does not pay players during pre-season spring training. After spring training, a team may choose to send certain players to an "instructional," rather than competitive, league, where the team applies the same logic and may not pay players for upwards of a month. (Major League Baseball did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this article.)

According to Nathaniel Grow, an associate professor of legal studies at the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business, the MLB is able to maintain such low wages (or avoid paying them entirely) thanks to a clause in the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act. The law, a linchpin of the New Deal that, among other things, outlined the 40-hour workweek and established a federal minimum wage, carved out an exception with which Major League Baseball justifies its practice. Minimum-wage and overtime requirements do not apply, the law stipulates, to "any employee employed by an establishment which is an amusement or recreational establishment" that "does not operate for more than seven months in any calendar year."

"From a general fan perspective," Grow says, "there's no question that the baseball or football teams are amusement and recreational." But digging into the technical details reveals some complications, he says: "These baseball teams also have sophisticated marketing departments, ticket-sales departments, all these other more core business functions. Are all of them seasonal employees at an amusement or recreational establishment?" Grow brought up other, finer-grained questions: "Is the Tampa Bay minor-league affiliate for the Yankees a separate establishment that you then judge seasonality differently than the main team in the Bronx? Within the team in the Bronx, is it all one, or is the business office a separate establishment from the provision of entertainment to the fans?"

Parallel to Senne is Miranda v. Selig, a case that seeks to remedy the same problem through different means. Where Senne focuses on alleged minimum-wage violations, Miranda aims itself at what many consider the root of the problem: the minor league's decades-old exemption from federal antitrust law. Major League Baseball, the organization that governs both major-league and minor-league players' contracts, gained an exemption from antitrust laws in 1922, when the Supreme Court ruled in its favor against the Federal League, its upstart competitor. At the time, the exemption applied to both major- and minor-league teams. The Supreme Court twice reaffirmed the exemption to protect the MLB's use of "reserve clauses," which bind players to the team that drafts them for up to seven years.

However, the antitrust exemption no longer applies to major-league teams. In 1970, the perennial all-star Curt Flood sued the league for free agency, which allows players to negotiate with new teams when their contracts expire. Though the Supreme Court ruled against Flood, reaffirming his contract's reserve clause, the lawsuit set into motion further protests and legal action by major-league players, who ultimately won free agency in 1975. Two decades—and one season-ending strike—later, the Curt Flood Act of 1998 rolled back the exemption in the league's dealings with major-league players.

Crucially, though, the Curt Flood Act doesn't protect minor leaguers, whose contracts remain controlled by the major-league team with which their minor-league team is affiliated. Unsurprisingly, none of the protections major leaguers have negotiated since 1975—no-trade clauses, for instance, which enable players to veto a deal to send them elsewhere, or free-agency options, which allow players to negotiate for higher contracts with new teams—exist for minor leaguers.

The main reason the Curt Flood Act didn't cover minor leaguers is that they lacked a union to represent them. The law, Grow says, "was basically a compromise hammered out between the MLB, the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA), and the Minor League Owners Association to try to come up with language that soothes everyone's concerns and made everybody happy." With no representatives for minor leaguers at the table, Grow says, their interests went unheard, enabling minor-league owners to extract concessions that major-league owners couldn't.

According to Warren Zola, an associate professor of business law at Boston College's Carroll School of Management, the Curt Flood Act's omission of minor leaguers makes clear the MLBPA's conflicting incentives: "While they in theory represent future members, to be in the union, you have to be on the 40-man roster of a major-league baseball team," he says. If they fought more actively for minor leaguers, "it's not impossible to believe that you might give up certain rights that major-league baseball players currently enjoy."

The preservation of the antitrust exemption for minor-league teams has significant ramifications for minor leaguers. It means teams can promote, demote, or waive a player for any number of reasons, from performance to injury to attitude. It depresses salaries by tamping down competition and prevents players from testing the waters elsewhere, whether with an unaffiliated league in the U.S. or abroad. And it allows teams to include a contractual provision called a "clawback," with which a team can rescind a player's signing bonus should he choose to retire before fulfilling his contract.
 "We're playing a role in creating this value. It's time for us to be compensated as such."

Both Miranda and Senne were filed in 2014, and the cases have proceeded slowly. Miranda, which both Grow and Zola believe faces bigger challenges due to the antitrust exemption's longstanding precedent, was dismissed last fall; the plaintiffs have appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, but a hearing has not yet been scheduled. Senne lost its class-action status after the MLB successfully argued that players cannot sue as a class, as doing so implies equivalency between players who take the field thousands of miles away from each other and overlooks the fact that some players are compensated extremely well, receiving massive bonuses upon signing their first contracts. If the class-action status is not restored, any ruling would only apply to the experiences of the players involved and may not have broader effects on minor leaguers generally.

The plaintiffs, in turn, say that these arguments are less airtight than the MLB suggests. Even across different states, minor-league teams conform to a uniform pay scale. And though some players make millions on their signing bonuses, the plaintiffs allege that contracts like this—and, more broadly, those of players who are picked in the earliest rounds of the draft—are the exception rather than the rule. Though the MLB only publishes data on contracts through 10 of the annual draft's 40 rounds, according to Garrett Broshuis, an ex-player-turned-lawyer spearheading the Senne case, "most players drafted outside the top 10 rounds sign for less than $10,000. Some players, especially college seniors, sign for as little as $1,000."

Zola characterizes the suit as part of a groundswell of what he calls "athlete advocacy." With broadcast revenues continually increasing, Zola says, "there is an added incentive for the players—in professional sports, at the Olympic level, at the amateur level, and in college athletics—to stand up and say, 'We're playing a role in creating this value. It's time for us to be compensated as such.'"

Though increasing salaries would make a big difference for many minor leaguers, many commentators agree that raising minor-league salaries would not significantly affect the league's bottom line: The MLB made nearly $9.5 billion in 2015, and the average operating income for a major-league team in 2016 is projected to be $22.5 million. Likewise, arguing that raising pay would adversely affect poorer teams—the penny-pinching Oakland Athletics of Moneyball fame, for instance—and thus disrupt competitive balance overlooks the fact that the relationship between a team's valuation and its profits is tenuous at best.

A decision for the plaintiffs in Miranda, meanwhile, could have major ramifications not just for the players but for the overall structure of organized baseball. Already, the relationship between major-league and minor-league teams is unique among American professional sports: Basketball and football players typically jump straight from college to the NBA or NFL without years of post-draft development; minor-league hockey teams do exist, but most aren't officially affiliated with the NHL.

These differences arise in part because the skill gap between amateur baseball and the Majors is significantly larger than it is for other sports: Since 2000, only two drafted players have debuted on major-league teams without playing for a minor-league one first. But the antitrust exemption also plays a key role in enabling the partnerships between major-league and minor-league teams, allowing them to partner in ways that may be deemed collusive in other industries. "[If] that antitrust exemption goes out the window," Grow suggests, "then you could reasonably question, well, does this whole minor-league structure violate antitrust law? Why is it that the Toledo Mud Hens are agreeing to be subservient to the Detroit Tigers and not compete with them when they're 50 miles away?"
 "If you bitch first, and you're not that good, they will release you and then somebody will take your spot."

These lawsuits are not, strictly speaking, necessary for implementing the changes the players seek: Minor leaguers could potentially acquire enough leverage to improve their lot by forming a union. But there are several reasons why that movement would have difficulty gaining traction. For one, any attempts to unionize would be happening at a nadir for organized labor; the MLBPA, meanwhile, was founded in the 1960s, a high-water mark for unionization in the U.S. Further, Broshuis has described unionization efforts as a non-starter among players. "They're chasing this boyhood dream that they've been after since they were three or four years old," he told Mother Jones in 2014, "so guys are reluctant to do anything that might place that dream in jeopardy."

Hayhurst was more blunt in his explanation: When unionization talks begin, he says, players worry that, "if you bitch first, and you're not that good, they will release you and then somebody will take your spot." Moreover, forming a union would be logistically difficult. "It's really hard for guys making that little, who don't know each other, who have no method of communicating with one another, to somehow pull enough numbers together to threaten Major League Baseball with their demands," Hayhurst says.

These problems are arguably even more acute for players who enter the league from foreign countries, especially Latin American ones. The Washington Post described how unlicensed scouts called buscónes recruit Dominican teenagers, often from destitute backgrounds, to the Minors in exchange for a chunk of their signing bonuses. For many with whom Hayhurst played, a minor-league salary, he says, "is more money than they've ever had. Why would they want to piss on that?"

Grow and Zola point to additional difficulties in attempting to form a union. Zola listed several tricky questions a union would need to consider: "Who qualifies? Is it someone who's drafted, someone who signs, someone who has been in the league with a certain amount of service time? Do you forgo your membership the second you make a 40-man roster [for a major-league team]?"

Grow believes that the players' best chance for unionization might be if they were to win one of their lawsuits, particularly Miranda. If the MLB suddenly found its antitrust exemption in jeopardy, Grow says, it would actually be in the league's best interest to encourage minor leaguers to unionize. Doing so would invoke what lawyers call a nonstatutory antitrust exemption, which basically says that, if both the players and the teams have voluntarily entered into non-competitive agreements, future cases would be treated as labor disputes rather than antitrust issues.

As Hayhurst sees it, whether or not the lawsuits succeed in court is secondary to the attention they bring to the struggles of life as a minor leaguer. While many people who read his book express surprise and sympathy, he says others reject the idea that they should feel sorry for professional athletes. He characterizes the opposition as resentment: Casual fans, Hayhurst says, "associate players with getting to live the dream, and if you're living the dream, you have zero right to bitch about anything, ever," especially considering that "the most successful versions of you make oodles of money, the amount of money that small countries make."

Hayhurst finds this attitude misguided, pointing to the fact that many minor-league players wind up in significant debt with few marketable skills on which they can fall back. Though he thinks favorable verdicts are unlikely—"the war chest that the Major League Baseball Players Association has, and just Major League Baseball in general, just outstrips everybody that would stand up against it," he says—he hopes that the increased attention the suits have brought will lay the groundwork for better pay.

As the lawsuits proceed, the ex-minor leaguers are likely to face resistance not only from the MLB but also from other quarters as well. In June, Representatives Brett Guthrie, a Republican from Kentucky, and Cheri Bustos, a Democrat from Illinois, introduced the Save America's Pastime Act, which would make Minor League Baseball's exemption from the minimum wage explicit and permanent. The law is seen as unlikely to pass—Bustos withdrew her support a few days after introducing it—but its framing is nonetheless remarkably telling. In the name of "saving America's pastime," some members of Congress have proactively suggested keeping thousands of minor leaguers in poverty.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/minor-leagues-minimum-wage-lawsuit/500216/

 The Man. The Voice. The Stories. tag:www.checkswing.com,2016-09-21:2099111:BlogPost:348725 2016-09-21T16:56:30.000Z Bill Stanton http://www.checkswing.com/profile/Bill

When Vin Scully first walked into the Dodgers' broadcast booth, Winston Churchill hadn't started his second stint as the prime minister of Great Britain. Connie Mack, a man born while Abraham Lincoln was president, was still managing in the major leagues. The transistor radio -- a gizmo that would turn the man at the microphone into a California icon -- wouldn't be invented for another four years.…

When Vin Scully first walked into the Dodgers' broadcast booth, Winston Churchill hadn't started his second stint as the prime minister of Great Britain. Connie Mack, a man born while Abraham Lincoln was president, was still managing in the major leagues. The transistor radio -- a gizmo that would turn the man at the microphone into a California icon -- wouldn't be invented for another four years.

That was April 1950.

Full article:

http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/17595432/the-man-voice-stories

 Baseball's minor leaguers pursue their dreams below the poverty line tag:www.checkswing.com,2016-08-26:2099111:BlogPost:348479 2016-08-26T16:00:00.000Z Bill Stanton http://www.checkswing.com/profile/Bill

Baseball's minor leaguers pursue their dreams below the poverty line…

Baseball's minor leaguers pursue their dreams below the poverty line

By Kent Babb and Jorge Castillo August 26 at 10:44 AM

 A rainbow arches across the sky over Lake Olmstead Stadium during the playing of the national anthem as Class-A Augusta GreenJackets play the Delmarva Shorebirds in Augusta on July 15. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)

AUGUSTA, Ga. — They trickled into the mid-July night, a rain-shortened loss beginning their Friday night early. A 25-year-old catcher hung back.

Matt Paré chatted with teammates and underwent a long treatment session as other Augusta GreenJackets players exited through a clubhouse door wedged open with a broken bat. He kept himself awake with a marathon shower.

By the time Paré dressed, he had the clubhouse to himself, along with what was left of the GreenJackets' postgame buffet. "What have we got, Sarge?" he called toward clubhouse manager Kristopher Nichols, a former Army drill sergeant who appreciates — and usually rewards — Paré's resourcefulness.

Paré is the oldest player for the San Francisco Giants' Class-A affiliate, and he begins most homestands by waiting out his teammates in order to stockpile free food.

Far away from Major League Baseball's mighty salaries and Hollywood glitz, Paré is among the thousands of minor leaguers who survive on baseball earnings below the federal poverty line. Baseball has in recent years parlayed renewed popularity into record earnings, leveraging apparel and media demands into $9.5 billion in revenue last year; each of its 30 franchises averaged $23 million in profits in 2015, and many of their minor league affiliates saw attendance figures and team values continue a steady climb.

But the overwhelming majority of players in professional baseball's extensive player development system never see a cut of that wealth. More than 80 percent of draft picks will never reach the big leagues, and most live on salaries of less than $10,000 per season; the starting salary for a first-year player, paid only during the regular season, is $1,100.

"You always question yourself: Should I be doing this?" said Pare, who says he's making about $7,500 in salary during this 22-week season — a little more than $340 a week, or about $8.50 an hour.

Paré shares a two-bedroom apartment with three teammates. He has, in four years as a professional ballplayer, accumulated a mountain of credit card debt.

 Matt Paré leaves the stadium in Augusta carrying left over food from the clubhouse. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)

His experience is typical among players on pro baseball's ground floor, highlighting that financial struggle is, as much as promo nights and floodlit nostalgia, a minor league tradition. One that might, according to a lawsuit filed against Major League Baseball two years ago, violate federal and state minimum wage laws.

"The organization traces its roots to the nineteenth century," reads the suit, filed in a California district court and led by 41 former players. "Unfortunately for many of its employees, its wage and labor practices remain stuck there."

MLB has denied that its organizational structure is unlawful and rather provides opportunity to thousands of young athletes who want to make it to the big leagues. Indeed, many players say the sacrifices are worth it.

"In reality I just wanted a chance," said Wilmer Difo, a Dominican-born player who, before being called up by the Washington Nationals last year, spent five seasons in the minor leagues and spent the majority of the 2013 season sleeping on an air mattress in an apartment with five other players. "That's everyone's dream, to get to the major leagues. But it's not always going to be like that. Not everyone. Unfortunately, not everyone, but there are a lot of people that depend on it anyway."

Wilmer Difo in the dugout before a Nationals game against the San Francisco Giants on Aug. 5 (Nick Wass/AP)

Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred indicated to reporters in July that additional regulation could ultimately lead to smaller minor league rosters or fewer teams.

The lawsuit has nonetheless turned a spotlight on a shadowy corner of a game in which players routinely put in 60-hour work weeks and must face continual personal and professional obstacles in the name of chasing a dream.

Athletes from Latin America are particularly at risk. Many come to the United States from impoverished backgrounds with little or no knowledge of English, and lack both the cultural understanding of life in the country and network of family and friends that can help ease the burden. They are guaranteed a salary, health insurance and not much else.

But there are reasons they keep playing: Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw's $33.8 million annual salary is the game's richest, and the average major league player earns $4.4 million per season. When the GreenJackets' season began, their highest salary belonged to Adam Sonabend, an undrafted 24-year-old catcher. His biweekly paycheck, after taxes, is $671.

That's enough for Sonabend to have his own bedroom, which is more than his three roommates can say. GreenJackets pitchers Michael Connolly and Jake McCasland share a room, and Paré sleeps on a mattress on the dining room floor.

Before heading home on this July night, Paré loaded a serving bin with chicken thighs and vegetarian lasagna; Nichols encouraged him to take as much as he wants.

At nearly midnight, Paré finally headed for the clubhouse door, carrying his bounty with both hands.

 Adam Sonabend waits for roommate Matt Paré to gather his things from the floor mattress where he sleeps in the apartment they share in Augusta with two teammates. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)

Only enough to eat

Barb Rothstein used to stay up late after her husband went to bed, opening beers and listening to the young men's stories.

Barb and Bob invited the first of the players on the Norwich Navigators, at the time a New York Yankees Class-AA affiliate, to live rent-free in their Connecticut basement in 1996. Two years later, after visiting a few Latin Americans prospects' apartment shocking for both its grime and the landlord's price gouging, there were a dozen players and two wives spread through the house on futons, a mattress in their living room, sharing a room with their son.

"I'm not the warm and fuzzy type," Barb would say much later. "But there was something about their living situations that I just couldn't stand."

Some of the tales common on the minor league circuit are amusing: how smaller prospects sometimes climb into the team bus's luggage bin to sleep, the way a good meal on the road is a jug of peanut butter before flies or sweaty fingers contaminate it, that it was a good bet the team's bat boys were paid more per hour than the players.

"I would be very confident to say that anyone working in that stadium was making more than we were, no matter what job they had," said Brett Newsome, a former Nationals farmhand and one of dozens of current and former minor leaguers interviewed for this story. Newsome is among the co-plaintiffs in the lawsuit against MLB.

 Paré opens a box of eggs as Sonabend eats an apple with peanut butter in their kitchen. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)

Players travel with air mattresses, sometimes the only constant in a life of change, and essentials aren't easy to come by. One former first-round draft pick said teammates often asked him to "over-order" baseball equipment from sponsors and distribute the extras within the clubhouse. Luxuries are even rarer: A trick known throughout the minors is to buy a television from Wal-Mart, use its box as a stand and return the TV on the 89th day of a 90-day return policy for a refund.

Other stories are sad. Many of the Dominican players had been discovered in their early teens by buscónes, or searchers, the unlicensed scouts who work on commission and compel young and hopeful athletes to abandon their educations to play baseball full-time. The controversial system, in which players guarantee the buscón up to half of any future signing bonus in exchange for exposure to major league teams, is an inexpensive way for franchises to expand their scouting networks and for poverty-stricken families to go all-in on a high-risk gambit.

If a player does eventually sign, he is sent to some faraway outpost to begin the climb through baseball's ranks. From there they attempt to gain footing in a new culture and are taught to play ball without complaints while nonetheless sending portions of their meager earnings to their families back home.

Difo said he made between $400 and $500 every two weeks — or, he said in Spanish, "only enough to eat" after sending his mother a couple hundred dollars from each paycheck – until his salary multiplied six-fold when he was added in 2014 to the Nationals' 40-man roster. Another former player, the Venezuela-born pitcher Jose Mejias, signed with the Philadelphia Phillies at age 16 and spoke so little English he only felt comfortable communicating with hand gestures. After a few months, teammates started calling him "El Mudo," or The Mute.

John Wesley, a former minor league player and pitching coach, said he used to sneak water to Dominican players because their apartment's tap output was brown and the young men could not spare $1.50 for a bottle. "These poor kids," said Wesley, who coached in the Toronto Blue Jays system. "It's a pyramid scam: Everything goes to the top. Nothing comes down."

The Rothsteins, one of many host families who offer housing to minor leaguers, fit dozens of players in their 2,000-square foot house until a few years ago. Barb said they came to love their guests, and when one player moved up the ladder or gave up the dream, another took his place.

In 2008, after the Giants took over the Norwich team, a tall 24-year-old pitcher named Garrett Broshuis moved in. He was from small-town Missouri and bookish, and like Barb, he too collected stories.

Every once in a while, as he and Barb shared a few of their favorites, he'd wonder aloud if the system would ever change.

Challenging a system

Broshuis's office window overlooks downtown St. Louis and the Mississippi River, a wall decorated with reminders of an old life and a new one: his rookie card next to his admittance to the Missouri Bar Association.

"I still love the game," Broshuis said, though a decade after signing a contract to play professional baseball, he was declaring war on it. In February 2014, he filed the lawsuit against MLB, its 30 franchises and former Commissioner Bud Selig. In it, he referred to the league as a "cartel."

 Attorney and former minor league baseball pitcher Garrett Broshuis in his St. Louis office this month. (Whitney Curtis/For The Washington Post)

A former all-American at Missouri, he had tried, years earlier, to keep quiet and play. When a group of fans in Norwich watched him push-start the broken-down pickup he shared with a teammate, he shook it off as paying his dues. When he invited his then-girlfriend to his meager apartment, finding a room flooded by a neighbor's toilet upstairs, he assured himself brighter days awaited.

He chronicled his experiences in articles for the Sporting News, though he squashed the grittier anecdotes and submitted the entries to the Giants for approval. But as the years passed, the stories ate away at his resolve: the Venezuelan teammate who struggled each month to send $20 back home to his pregnant girlfriend, the young pitchers worrying each month about how they'd pay their student loans.

He was told by team officials that he was lucky to play, that the system had been in place for decades, that if he wanted to make more money, he should get better.

Four days after his final game in 2009, he took the Law School Admission Test and was later accepted into St. Louis University's law school. He spoke with professors about a long-term plan to challenge a system that succeeded in part because the hopeful and desperate athletes continued to accept it for one prevailing reason: They always had.

MLB filed an answer to the suit last year, denying the allegations in Broshuis's complaint. A league spokesman declined an interview request for this story, referring The Washington Post to a June statement comparing players to "artists, musicians and other creative professionals who are exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act."

"Like those professionals," the MLB statement went on, "it is simply impractical to treat professional athletes as hourly employees."

Ways to cut costs

Paré was on his 38th consecutive hour awake — games on consecutive nights and in stadiums 426 miles apart, one pitch to the head in the first one, a nine-hour bus ride in which he wasn't allowed to sleep because he was being evaluated for a possible concussion — and now it was approaching midnight.

He put the leftover chicken and lasagna into the fridge, and when he opened the sliding pantry door it fell off the track.

"Believe it or not," he said of the apartment, "the last place was worse."

In this complex west of town, roughly 10 units are filled — packed, in some cases — with GreenJackets players and coaches. In here, the air conditioning rumbles and the front door must be slammed to close; Paré sat on carpet singed in places by a previous tenant, examining the lens on his video camera.

Matt Paré prepares a five-egg breakfast. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)

All four players in this second-floor apartment hold second jobs at least part of the year. Connolly works construction during offseasons, McCasland is a substitute teacher and Sonabend spends part of the morning hours organizing online inventory for a pharmaceutical company. Neither pays especially well, but it's enough financial oxygen to keep the dream alive.

Paré makes YouTube videos that poke fun at the plight of a "homeless minor leaguer," a light-hearted look at the lonely hours and inelegant lifestyle the common fan rarely sees. "You can sponsor a player right now," he implores viewers in one video inspired by those old "Save the Children" ads. Paré ends most videos by soliciting donations, and a good month — he collected $83 in July — means he doesn't have to negotiate food prices at Waffle House.

A 26th-round draft pick out of high school by Houston in 2009, Paré elected to play at Boston College rather than accept the Astros' offer, which he said included a $200,000 signing bonus. He tore a meniscus as a sophomore, and scouts never viewed him the same. He wasn't drafted after his junior and senior seasons, but after a tryout in June 2013, the Giants offered him a contract — this one offering $1,000 to sign.

He met Sonabend, another undrafted former college catcher, at a voluntary camp last year before spring training. They traded stories and agreed that luck and persistence had led them to the professional ranks. Sonabend reached Class-AA Richmond last season, collecting a salary increase because of service time at a higher level, and this spring they were assigned to Augusta. Sonabend and Paré agreed to room together with Connolly and McCasland, collaborating on ways to cut costs: Paré sleeping in the dining room because the other residents pay for the Internet, Sonabend buying eggs a few times a week in exchange for use of Paré's SUV.

Evenings are spent at the ballpark or at fan events; Paré has perfected the art of asking boosters for donations. This year the roommates have scored eyedrops, a few jugs of coffee, laundry detergent, a sofa and a potholder set.

As Friday turned to Saturday, Paré not yet able to wind down, Connolly and McCasland came in through the front door and one of them wrestled it closed.

"I brought lasagna!" Paré announced, but his roommates had stopped at a restaurant on the way home.

Connolly wished he had known.

"That could've saved me some bucks," the 24-year-old pitcher said.

Paré returned his attention to the camera, a few ideas in mind for new videos, and Connolly approached the pantry. The door again fell off the track, and Connolly slammed it.

"This whole place is a joke," he said, and all Paré could do was laugh.

Waiting for the phone to ring

Paré was living rent-free in a cousin's spare bedroom last fall when the email arrived: "The purpose of this Notice," it read, "is to inform you of the existence of a collective action lawsuit against Major League Baseball."

A group of former minor leaguers had formed a movement against the league, and hundreds more were adding their names.

He thought about it and talked to people he trusted. He read articles about the attorney who had once played for the same organization now leading a charge against MLB. Paré wondered if, like the 1968 uprising that ultimately led to free agency, a victory here would be good for the game.

And in the end, he couldn't be certain it would. He believed the Giants (who through a spokeswoman declined to comment for this article) and MLB had, all told, been good to him. Around 2,300 current and former players would opt-in on the suit, but Paré would not be one of them. He didn't want to take a side.

He reported for spring training last February, reconnecting with Sonabend and Connolly, who also received the email but refused to add their names.

"If I signed it," Connolly said, "it would almost be like me not appreciating the opportunity."

Sonabend saw it similarly.

"I knew what I was getting into," he said, "and I worked for it anyway."

Last month, a California magistrate judge stripped the suit of its conditional class-action status. A setback, Broshuis admitted, but earlier this month the same judge granted a request to reconsider the class certification; a hearing is scheduled for Dec. 2.

For now, Broshuis and the 41 co-plaintiffs wait, and for different reasons so do the young men in the apartment in west Augusta: Paré increasingly realistic about his baseball fate, Sonabend seeing how a former baseball castaway can climb, Connolly defiantly hopeful that the phone will someday ring, a voice on the other end inviting him to a higher level in the game and a better lifestyle.

"It's only going to be a couple years and you filter out," Connolly said, "or you get that paycheck everybody dreams about."

Early on a Saturday afternoon, another game a few hours away, Paré dressed for work. Sonabend joined him in the den, and they collected their bags.

Sports Daily newsletter

Sports news with a focus on D.C. area teams.

"Is Mike pitching?" Paré asked. "Who's pitching?"

Sonabend shrugged.

"Ready?" he said.

"I'm ready," Paré said, and they walked into the midsummer sun, through a door that didn't want to close.

 A baseball on Garrett Broshuis's desk in St. Louis. (Whitney Curtis/For The Washington Post)

Kent Babb is a sports features writer for The Washington Post.

  Follow @kentbabb

Jorge Castillo writes about the Washington Nationals.
  Follow @jorgeccastillo

 How To Get By In The Minors On $1,500 A Month tag:www.checkswing.com,2016-08-23:2099111:BlogPost:348472 2016-08-23T19:15:21.000Z Will Laurence http://www.checkswing.com/profile/WillLaurence

How To Get By In The Minors On $1,500 A Month

Hannah Keyser…

How To Get By In The Minors On $1,500 A Month

Hannah Keyser
 Yesterday 12:53pm

 Illustration by Sam Woolley

Matt Paré, a catcher with the San Francisco Giants' Single A affiliate in Augusta, Ga., doesn't seem to mind sharing a two-bedroom apartment with three other guys. "Since half the time we're on the road, it's only 15 days a month," he says. On the road, he shares a hotel room with just one of those roommates. This lack of personal space isn't especially tragic, but it's a far cry from the glamorous lifestyle you might imagine a professional athlete to lead.

While big free-agent contracts and first-round signing bonuses get the headlines, for most players the reality of playing baseball is very different. There isn't a lot of money to be made playing in the minors—monthly salaries can be as low as $1,100—and the problem is getting worse over time. (Once inflation is accounted for, minor-league salaries have lost more than half of their value over the last 40 years, during which time major-league salaries have increased by 2,500 percent.) Take into account that something like 17 percent of draftees and even fewer international signees ever make the majors, and you end up with a bunch of dudes out there playing professionally and subsisting on shockingly low salaries.

Thanks to a still-pending class-action lawsuit filed by former minor-league ballplayers in 2014 and an outrageous bill recently proposed in the House of Representatives, more and more people are taking notice of all of this, but it can still all seem rather abstract. In an effort to better understand these salaries have on real people—and lightly inspired by Refinery29's Money Diaries—we talked to a real minor leaguer.

Matt Paré, a 26th-round pick in the 2009 draft who's currently catching for the Augusta GreenJackets, tracked his spending for one week recently. It was a representative one, during which he played three days at home and three days on the road, and had one off day. Here's what we learned:

<source class="ls-small-media-source" media="(max-width: 599px)"></source><source media="(max-width: 1487px)"></source><source/>
 Illustration by Sam Woolley

Income

Like most Single-A players, Matt makes $1500 per month. After taxes are taken out automatically, that works out to $614.25, paid twice monthly. Players are not responsible for paying for health insurance. Paré is only paid during the season, not for the offseason or for spring training. As a relatively low pick, Matt got a $1000 signing bonus which he says ended up around $600 after taxes. For road games, he and the other Single-A players get $25 per diem.

Matt also has a Youtube channel that he's trying to monetize. Right now, he brings in $71 per month through a crowd-sourcing site tied to the channel.

Housing

During the season, Matt lives with three other teammates in a two-bedroom apartment in Augusta. Two of them share a room, one guy gets his own room, and Matt sleeps in the living room. They split the rent equally, each paying $227.25 per month, but the housemate with the single room covers Internet and cable.

"I didn't want to pay more," Matt explains. "I said I'd gladly take the living room."

Sometimes, though, the extra cost is worth it. When we spoke, Matt's girlfriend was visiting from out of town. "I helped pay for some of the cable bill this month," he said, "so I could take my roommate's single room, so we're not sleeping in the living room together. Just so we could have a little more privacy."

This past offseason, Matt moved to San Diego from Boston, where he went to school. In Boston, he taught baseball in the offseason but "was kind of just sick of the cold." For his first offseason in San Diego, he lived with a cousin, who let him stay for free in exchange for help training her English bulldog.

This year, Matt and his girlfriend plan to get a place together in San Diego, where he'll need a more formalized offseason gig to make rent. He says he's "definitely" concerned about contributing to their shared household expenses, but that he's going to be able to do so.

"I've looked into a bunch of things to do this offseason," he says. "Dog walking, being a substitute teacher, there are so many different things you can do in the offseason for a job. Be an Uber driver. Do Postmates, or something else that's less stress on your car. Or teach baseball lessons."

Clubhouse Dues

The cash demanded of most minimum wage minor leaguers to cover the clubhouse attendant's salary isn't an issue for Matt, at least not at home. "The Giants are actually really good about this," he says. "For the first time this year we don't have to pay clubhouse dues at home."

He still tips the clubbie—$10 for every home series—both because it's accepted standard practice and because it ensures he can have early dibs on the leftover food from the catered spreads on game days. On the road, he still owes $8 per day in dues in addition to a tip for the local clubbie ($5 at the end of the series).

Matt credits the Giants' concession on this issue for a future trickle-down impact on the overall farm system.

"That's how you get the homegrown talent."

Food

In addition to getting rid of home clubhouse dues specifically, Matt praises the Giants' treatment of minor leaguers generally. And with salaries so low, this primarily refers to providing free food.

"I feel like we live like kings when we're at home," he says. "We get two meals per day that are catered by Whole Foods. And there's a lot of leftovers, so I'll wait around till after everyone's eaten—I'm not gonna take food when everyone hasn't eaten—and I'll grab a couple things that I can use for breakfast in the morning. That way I don't have to go out for a meal before I go to the field."

When he's at home in Augusta, Matt eats five eggs with whatever leftovers he snagged the night before ("quinoa or vegetables") for breakfast. For the week he tracked his spending, the eggs were already purchased—he and his roommates buy eggs in extreme bulk to accommodate the roughly 65 eggs they consume each homestand—and lunch and dinner were provided by the team. For the first two days of the week, he spent no money at all.

On the third day, he went to Whole Foods for lunch, and to stock up on ingredients for bulletproof coffee, requiring him to splurge $34.88 for stir-fry, MCT oil and butter.

His off day cost $28.93 for lunch at a Mexican food restaurant and a 70th birthday for the team's bus driver.

Without the Giants' careful catering, road trips are much more expensive, although offset by his per diem: a $16 lunch, a $17 late night pizza delivery, another lunch at $11.24, and $8 towards a team getaway meal at the end of the series.

Total

All told, Matt spent $155.05 over seven days. Add in a quarter of the month's rent, and that brings us to roughly $212.05 for the week. And that's how you make it as a minor leaguer.

 States Adopting New Pitch Limits For High School Pitchers tag:www.checkswing.com,2016-08-16:2099111:BlogPost:348418 2016-08-16T13:57:06.000Z Grant Clifford http://www.checkswing.com/profile/GrantClifford
States Adopting New Pitch Limits For High School Pitchers

August 15, 2016 By J.J. Cooper

On Monday, the Georgia High School Association adopted new pitch count rules that will take effect for the 2017 season.

It's a decision that high school associations…

States Adopting New Pitch Limits For High School Pitchers

August 15, 2016 By J.J. Cooper

On Monday, the Georgia High School Association adopted new pitch count rules that will take effect for the 2017 season.

It's a decision that high school associations around the country will be making in the coming months after the National High School Federation announced that states must implement pitch count limits for high school pitchers. In the past, most states have relied on innings limits.

The National High School Federation has left each individual state organization to create its own pitch limits, but it has required all 50 state federations to create pitch limits of some sort before the 2017 season begins.

Georgia's new rules will limit any varsity pitcher to no more than 110 pitches in any outing. Pitchers will be able to finish facing their final batter even if that means they go beyond 110 pitches. The new rules for Georgia will also mandate three days of rest after any outing of 86 or more pitches, two days of rest after 61-85 pitches, one day of rest for 35-60 pitches. Pitchers who throw less than 35 pitches can pitch again the next day. According to the Macon (Ga.) Telegraph, pitchers would also be limited to no more than 120 pitches in any postseason tournament unless the series was extended because of poor weather.

The Georgia regulations are less strict than those recommended by USA Baseball's Pitch Smart guidelines that were developed with input from Major League Baseball and doctors. Pitch Smart recommends that no 17-to-18-year-old should throw more than 105 pitches while 15-to-16-year-olds should be limited to 95 or fewer pitches. Pitch Smart's guidelines also recommend four days of rest after any outing where a pitcher throws more 76 pitches. GHSA's new rules would allow a pitcher to return after only two days off if they threw 75-80 pitches.

Arkansas has also recently adopted pitch limits. The Arkansas Athletics Activities board's new rules limit pitchers to 110 pitches in any outing. Pitchers throwing more than 86 pitches they are required to have three days of rest before pitching again. Those throwing 61-85 pitches have to have two days of rest, while pitchers need one day of rest after throwing 31-60 pitches.

Some states had already adopted pitch count limits before the NHSF's mandate. Alabama went from having very lax innings limits to being ahead of the curve in adopting pitch limits last fall. But the majority of states have depended on innings limits. And those limits have often given pitchers and coaches the leeway to throw a heavier workload than any big league pitcher would be allowed to throw today. As Minnesota State High School League associate director Kevin Merkle noted to the Grand Forks (N.D.) Herald, the old rules in Minnesota allowed a high school pitcher to legally throw 35 innings over a seven-day period.

In Kansas, a pitcher threw 157 pitches in a 10-inning outing in the playoffs last spring. He and his coach were suspended because the 10-inning outing exceeded state rules that at the time limited pitchers to nine innings in any one game. But if he had been pulled after the ninth inning, he would have been within Kansas' current guidelines. No major league pitcher has thrown more than 125 pitches in any outing this season.

The push for pitch counts to replace innings limits has been going on around amateur baseball for much of the past decade. Little League Baseball replaced innings limits with pitch counts in 2007. In recent years, USA Baseball, Perfect Game, Baseball Factory and multiple summer college collegiate leagues have adopted Pitch Smart's guidelines as far as days of rest and pitch limits.

Read more at http://www.baseballamerica.com/high-school/states-adopting-new-pitch-limits-high-school-pitchers/#7E7hQ3PULlX8Bfkg.99

Read more at http://www.baseballamerica.com/high-school/states-adopting-new-pitch-limits-high-school-pitchers/#7E7hQ3PULlX8Bfkg.99
 Ideal Hitter? tag:www.checkswing.com,2016-08-10:2099111:BlogPost:348309 2016-08-10T00:30:00.000Z Bill Stanton http://www.checkswing.com/profile/Bill
Kris Bryant, a Cub in the Image of the Game's Ideal Hitter

By TYLER KEPNER

MAY 10, 2015…

Kris Bryant, a Cub in the Image of the Game's Ideal Hitter

By TYLER KEPNER

MAY 10, 2015

 Chicago Cubs third baseman Kris Bryant, whose father led him to emulate Ted Williams, led the minors in homers last season with 43. Credit Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press

ST. LOUIS — The first thing Ted Williams told Mike Bryant was that he was late, because he was only 10 minutes early to their practice session. The second thing he told him just may help end the most persistent streak of failure in professional sports: the championship drought of the Chicago Cubs.

Bryant was an outfielder in the Boston Red Sox system, destined to last only briefly in the low minors. The game would spit him out after two seasons, 1980 and 1981, and send him home to Massachusetts with a .204 average frozen for all time. Before he left, though, Bryant absorbed a principle from Williams that he would never forget.

"We're going to learn how to do two things," said Williams, the Hall of Famer whose famous mission was to be the greatest hitter who ever lived. "We're going to hit it hard and we're going to hit it in the air."

Bryant never properly applied that. He managed just four home runs in nearly 400 plate appearances, unable to handle the failure embedded in the game. But it made perfect sense: Pitchers throw the ball on a downhill plane, so hitters must swing up to meet it squarely. Swinging down on the ball, or even with it, produces ground balls. Pitchers want those. Hitters want home runs.

A decade after the Red Sox cut Bryant, his son Kris was born in Las Vegas. By the time Kris was 5, Mike Bryant said, his talent was astounding: He swung a 31-inch bat and could launch balls high into the air.

Bryant ran an outdoor furniture business that demanded most of his time. He sold it when Kris was 8 to take a 9-to-5 job, with weekends off. He was determined not to miss the baseball development years of Kris and his older son, Nick.

An outdoor batting cage, with lights, went up in the backyard, and Mike Bryant would point to an area high in the cage as a target. Photos and statistics of Williams were essential teaching tools, and Williams's manual, "The Science of Hitting," was gospel. The boys earned college scholarships, and Kris would leave the University of San Diego as the No. 2 overall draft choice, by the Cubs, in 2013.
 Photo

 Bryant, right, with his teammate Dexter Fowler after hitting his first major league home run Saturday. Credit Mike Mcginnis/Getty Images

Kris Bryant was in Stockton, Calif., for a tournament that spring, and met with Cubs officials in a hotel lobby before the draft. They spoke for an hour and a half on the finer points of the swing: leverage, the strike zone and the challenges Bryant would face as a hitter with long arms and a 6-foot-5 frame.

The Cubs' top baseball executives, Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer, grew up in New England and had worked for the Red Sox. They loved that Bryant was raised on the wisdom of Williams. But mostly they loved that in a game trending toward pitchers, Bryant was a polished, and unapologetic, slugger.

"He knows that when he hits it clean, with the right swing, it's a homer," said Hoyer, the Cubs' general manager. "Most of the guys, their fly balls often don't go out, so, therefore, you want guys to hit the ball true, hit it low. Someone like him, that's his swing path. It'll go out if he hits it."

Bryant, a third baseman, led the minor leagues in home runs last season, with 43. He opened this season as Baseball America's No. 1 prospect, then hit .425 with nine homers this spring. The Cubs delayed his arrival in the majors until April 17, which gave them another year of control until he could become a free agent.

Bryant addressed the issue playfully in an ad for Red Bull, with fans debating his status while Bryant toiled in the minors, in Iowa. The spot ends with Bryant boarding a bus bound for Chicago — while pulling a goat, the symbol of the curse on a franchise that has not won the World Series since 1908.

"For me, it's about having fun," Bryant said here last week, before a game with the Cardinals. "I can look back on this whole service-time thing and the whole spring training debacle and just laugh at it and realize that I'm in a good place right now. I'm playing in the major leagues for the Chicago Cubs, and not many people can say that. I'm extremely thankful for where I am."

The Cubs, who host the Mets at Wrigley Field on Monday, are in second place in the National League Central, at 15-15. Bryant went 0 for 5 in Sunday's 3-2 loss to the Brewers, dropping his average to .259. In 21 games, he has one home run, 17 walks, 30 strikeouts and an on-base plus slugging percentage of .810.

Without much power, Bryant has shone in other ways. He drew four walks in a game last week in St. Louis. He also scored from first base on a double to left field, and from second on a double-play attempt with one out. But pitchers are giving him little to mash, because his reputation preceded him to the majors.

Photo

Mike Bryant has an indoor batting cage where he analyzes swings at his home in Las Vegas. Credit John Locher/Associated Press

"He's being pitched to like he's a triple crown winner," Mike Bryant said last Friday. "It's amazing. I've watched every game. He's seen 374 pitches, and I've seen every single last one of them, and I can tell you, unequivocally, he's gotten one pitch he could hit out of the yard that he'd be comfortable swinging at."

That pitch, Mike Bryant said, was a fastball on a cold night in Pittsburgh that went for a double. Soon enough, he is convinced, the home runs will come. The steady diet of breaking balls will help pitch recognition, and Kris's discipline — and the dangerous Anthony Rizzo behind him in the lineup — will eventually get him more fastballs.

The strikeouts may always be part of Bryant's game, a trade-off for working deep counts and waiting for pitches he can drive, a tenet of Williams's philosophy. Mike Bryant has studied numbers and trends, and shared the results with Kris. The smart strategy, they believe, is to emphasize fly balls and the damage they can do.

"My goal every game is to go out there and hit the ball in the air four times," Kris Bryant said. "If I do that, I'm accomplishing my goal. I can't control if I get a hit out of it. I can't control if it's going to go over the fence. I just can control that if I put the right swing on it, it's going to go in the air, and I'll let the elements take care of themselves."

Bryant is fully invested in the Cubs' teachings. Asked about the high expectations that come with the hype, he recites a favorite saying of Manager Joe Maddon: Never let the pressure exceed the pleasure. He works closely with the team's hitting coach, John Mallee, who said Bryant already knew how to drive the bottom half of the ball to create maximum backspin.

"Once you understand the story of the pitch, you understand the story of the bat path," Mallee said. "He understands both: the trajectory of the ball that's coming in and the story of the path. And he had that coming in."

He had it, of course, from his father, who works as a sales representative for a chemical company but also now serves as a private instructor to 100 hitters. Kris used some of his $6.7 million signing bonus to build an indoor cage at the house — 15 feet high, with heavy-duty netting, workout equipment and video cameras.

Mike Bryant said he considered Maddon a baseball genius, and his hitting theories seem to align with Mallee's. But he remains his son's foremost guide. He has told Kris not to worry if he slumps, because Mike Schmidt hit .196 as a rookie. He fearlessly compares Kris in public to Miguel Cabrera, an actual triple crown winner — "only with a better arm and more speed."

As soon as he said it, he issued a qualifier; maybe that was just a father's pride talking. But the industry, and the opposing pitchers, cannot all be wrong. Kris Bryant arrived in the majors a bit late, but that was all business. His career, like the swing path he shares with his father's famous teacher, is on its way up.
 Yanks are being spiteful tag:www.checkswing.com,2016-08-10:2099111:BlogPost:348307 2016-08-10T00:24:02.000Z Ken Jacobi http://www.checkswing.com/profile/KenJacobi
With CCU as National Champions the season has now moved to the lull before the (fall) storm... we can talk some Yankees. I saw this great article and was curious on people's thoughts... are the Yankees being "sore-losers" here?…

With CCU as National Champions the season has now moved to the lull before the (fall) storm... we can talk some Yankees. I saw this great article and was curious on people's thoughts... are the Yankees being "sore-losers" here?

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/yankees/yankees-spiteful-petty-deny-a-rod-shot-700-homers-article-1.2742925

@Goingw_thePitch

"Going with the Pitch" available on Amazon
 A Day in the Minors... tag:www.checkswing.com,2016-08-10:2099111:BlogPost:348094 2016-08-10T00:01:48.000Z Markus Darnley http://www.checkswing.com/profile/MarkusDarnley
I saw this online and watched to share it with CheckSwing.

--------------------------------------

https://medium.com/@JasonmEsposito/jason-esposito-e2ed2d05344f#.pdw93dwm…

I saw this online and watched to share it with CheckSwing.

--------------------------------------

https://medium.com/@JasonmEsposito/jason-esposito-e2ed2d05344f#.pdw93dwm

The View

The bus rides. The hotels. The food — peanut butter and jelly, "if you don't like it, play better," as the saying goes. We are infamous, every major leaguer has been through it, but what isn't chronicled is our optimism and work ethic. It's a struggle, it's a grind, but the pessimism surrounding the minor leagues is what makes it feel like a dungeon.

The best part of being a professional baseball player is getting to do what I love. But, I can't speak for everyone, for each player's goals may be completely different than my own.

Here's my story, what I know, what I feel: my Minor League Baseball journey.

You get lost, that's for sure, if you're not a first round pick with a card deal and tons of hype. You're forgotten, i've been there.

What's The Worth Of a 17 Year Old?

I was drafted in the 7th round out of a Connecticut high school — Amity High School. I was 17 and I had an agent. He asked me to put a number on my worth, on my value. How was I supposed to know the answer to that as a 17-year-old kid?

To my parents I was worth 10 million dollars, but that's unrealistic for 99%. I remember sitting in my room playing Xbox — I can't remember the game, but that's probably because the controller cracked the glass of my TV, which blinded that part of my memory.

We were on the phone for 30 minutes — my "advisor" and I (You cant call them "agents" or else you jeopardize your NCAA eligibility). He asked repetitive questions, "Would you sign for $300,000?" he asked.

"Um, I don't know, I would, I mean that's a lot of money." I answer with confusion

"Well, you have to tell me a number so I can tell the teams." Now he's getting impatient with me.

"You are the agent, aren't you supposed to tell me?"

Now, I am getting aggravated.

"But, I work for you."

"Yeah, but this is my first experience how am I supposed to know?

"Jason, tell me what to tell them!"

He's getting angry with me, I couldn't believe it. This guy is getting frustrated with a 17 year old kid, because I could not put a number on my life and my baseball talent. I hung up the phone, infuriated. That's when the Xbox controller went through the TV.

"What's wrong, Jay" My parents came in utterly confused."

"Mom, this guy wants me to put a number on my life, I don't know, I don't even want to be drafted anymore, I just want to go to college."

My Draft Story

A week later, I got a phone call from the Kansas City Royals. I was in school. In English. The teacher answered the phone that rang in class.

"Jason, the principal wants to see you," she said surprised.

I walked into the office, the principal handed me the phone, "It's for you," he said.

What is this going to be about, I thought something happened to someone in my family. I was petrified of the person on the other end.

It was my mom: "Jason…" with a tone I've never heard before, like my life was about to change after what she was going to tell me.

"Yeah, Mom?!" I'm nervous. I never wanted to be back in English class so badly before.

"The Royals just drafted you in the 7th round, they offered you $1million dollars."

"Oh my god, they offered me 1 million dollars?!"

I hung up the phone, that's all she had to say, she started crying and said, " I will see you at home, babe."

Is this real? Is really happening to me? I walked back to class in shock, some kid from Bethany, CT where everyone says there are more horses than people, was just offered 1 million to play baseball

After further negotiations and a visit from my future head coach at Vanderbilt University, Tim Corbin, I decided to turn down their offer. An offer of which jumped to $1.5 million.

My First Day In The Minors

Three years later, I am on a bus heading to North Carolina as a member of the Delmarva Shorebirds — the Low-A affiliate of the Baltimore Orioles. It's my first road trip; it's my first professional game.

You become accustomed to things, for three years I rode coach buses in college so it wasn't new, but only if the trip was shorter than six hours. Seven hours or more we literally took a country music star's sleeper bus to our road trips.

The bus was better than our dorm rooms. Black leather horseshoe couch in the back with two 32 inch TVs, 13 memory foam mattress bunks per bus with TV's in each bunk (our team was split into two busses), stocked refrigerator — sodas, water, Gatorade and muscle milks, Snacks — animal crackers, peanut butter crackers, and Gatorade protein bars. Everyone got a bed; no one went hungry. It was absolutely the way to travel.

I'm sitting on the bus towards the back with Jerome Pena. He was the same age and had just been drafted out of Texas Christian University, been to the College World Series in 2010 and we had a lot in common — we were "college guys".

I brought headphones, but how much music do you really want to listen to for an eight-hour trip? I wasn't hungry because I had just eaten before I got to the stadium prior to our bus report time, but what troubled me was once I got onto the bus: there was nothing but seats. No food, no refrigerator, no amenities, just 40 guys and their thoughts.

I brought chips, but how unsatisfying. I hoped, I prayed we would stop, because I feared starvation. They had a cooler full of waters, but I saw them dump one case of waters inside, so 24 waters for approximately 40 people on this bus. I had to snake one early or else I wouldn't be able to have one.

Adapt Or Perish

These are the characteristics you must adopt. Its dog eats dog. I was abrasive, but I wasn't about to get eaten. So, I ran up and I grabbed two waters before we even started moving. One for me and one for Jerome, but I called him, "Pena". We had been together in instructional league prior to the 2012 season and we instantly formed a bond.

Once we started moving, we started talking — Pena and I.

"Bro" I said. "This is crazy, it's so different from college."

"Dude, its unbelievable." Pena said with immediate understanding.

I am getting uneasy and homesick at this point. We are both nostalgic.

"Well, there isn't much we can do man, just sit back and relax", I said.

We both agreed. Pena is the guy you want in a foxhole with you, the guy that makes every situation fun. We feel asleep, I think at one point I was even sleeping on his shoulders because, I had the aisle, and you do what you need to do to find a comfortable position for your body to find rest in.

The Lonely Low A Downgrade

Everyone did the same, the bus got quiet, the cards stop being shuffled, and the iPad's shut off from, "Subway Surfer". It was quiet, if you weren't sleeping you were thinking — what am I doing here. I am a professional baseball player, yet I feel so far away from my dream of playing in the Major Leagues.

We woke up.

"Pena…I think we're here."

"Really?! Finally, I'm so tired. I barely slept!"

This is the norm — I assumed, because I felt the same way. We grabbed our stuff, our lives — mostly everything we owned and got off the bus, and waited in line to get our room keys at the Quality Inn — it was cheap. We were just Low-A players. But it was a huge disappointment, I usually stayed at Hiltons, Marriott's, and Embassy Suites in college, but its Low-A now, I have to get use to that. It became one of my biggest struggles, adjusting. Adjusting to the sights, sounds and personnel.

It was different, we all wanted to do better than one another — even if we won our games, if you didn't get a hit, you were miserable. Its self-centered, its not a team game anymore. You try, you make it about winning, but its not the same camaraderie as you get when you break a huddle after practice, screaming "OMAHA!." It wasn't the same as seeing your brothers next to you, fighting to win, to get Vanderbilt University one game closer to a National Championship.

All things considered, I made friends, I made ever-lasting friends in professional baseball, Jerome Pena is one of them, but every year in college I had 35 brothers on my team and I know they felt the same.

The First Day Of The Rest Of My Life

We stepped out of the hotel the next morning; got on the bus, load everything up for our first game, my first professional game. We pulled to an old stadium, it had great character, brick façade on the outside, lively colors accentuating the home team and I remember stepping off the bus feeling scared and alone. My brothers weren't with me; I was with strangers. I met these guys a month prior in spring training, it's hard to create relationships in that time — at least for me it was.

Next, we walked into the stadium on the first base side and I saw a HUGE blue wall all the way around the outfield, as we made our way to our clubhouse on the third base side. The grass was green, infield dirt looked smooth but, the raggedy net behind home plate protecting the fans was what screamed Minor League Baseball. In college we dressed at the hotel and walked into the stadium with our uniforms all ready to go. This was already out of my comfort zone, but I was doing my best to stay afloat.

As we get into the clubhouse, I stopped in my tracks; it was nothing more than an unfinished basement. Literally. I almost called my parents and told them, "I can't do this — this isn't for me." The locker-room was a square, wooden lockers two feet wide, side by side. The floor — concrete, the ductwork was exposed and leaking pipes were dripping onto the floor.

This was a lot for me to handle all at once. I had emotions running through each part of my body, paralyzing emotions: fear, loneliness, negative thoughts, my mind was a hurricane of pessimism and I was preparing to go out and face professional pitching as one of the organizations top prospects.

The Take Away

How do I perform up to expectations? It's baseball, a job now — I should be lucky, but there was more to it for me. I was struggling with everything off the field and on the field all at once. These are the obstacles the general public doesn't see, doesn't understand and to a certain degree find it hard to relate to.

It's not glamorous or glorious, but it's a chance, an opportunity for growth like any other job. You work hard, you produce, you succeed — you get to the next level. It's not given, its earned. I — we as Minor Leaguers deserved the PBJ's, the long bus rides, the cheap hotels, right now. I deserved it, because I needed to earn that respect and the ultimate title of a Major League Baseball player because those that came before me did and those that will come after me must.

Altogether, Jason Esposito is a former 1st round pick, Vanderbilt Baseball standout, and professional baseball player. He is the founder of Esposito Baseball Systems, in Southlake, Texas. You can find Jason on

Twitter: JasonEsposito

Instagram: JasonMEsposito

Facebook :https://m.facebook.com/EspositoBaseballSystems/
 Looking for serious players for Spring/Summer League 2017 in Westchester County tag:www.checkswing.com,2016-07-26:2099111:BlogPost:348168 2016-07-26T15:30:00.000Z Joey Coschigano http://www.checkswing.com/profile/JoeyCoschigano
The Westchester Legacy are a men's baseball team 21+ over who play double headers Sunday mornings around Westchester County, NY in the Tri Counties Men's Baseball Association (TCMBA). We are looking for well rounded ballplayers who would mesh with the rest of our team. We are searching for players who will be dependable, dedicated to the team as well as have the ability to put in the practice to make themselves better. We are competitive, hard working, and professional with our bench…

The Westchester Legacy are a men's baseball team 21+ over who play double headers Sunday mornings around Westchester County, NY in the Tri Counties Men's Baseball Association (TCMBA). We are looking for well rounded ballplayers who would mesh with the rest of our team. We are searching for players who will be dependable, dedicated to the team as well as have the ability to put in the practice to make themselves better. We are competitive, hard working, and professional with our bench demeanor being the same. We play to win at all times, but with the understanding that it takes a team effort to do so. If this is something you are interested in and feel you are a great fit for this team, please don't hesitate to contact us to set up a tryout. email@example.com
 Problems with parents: High school coaches speak their mind tag:www.checkswing.com,2016-07-22:2099111:BlogPost:348163 2016-07-22T17:02:08.000Z Bill Stanton http://www.checkswing.com/profile/Bill

Problems with parents: High school coaches speak their mind over often tense relationships

Parents complaining -- whether it's against coaches, umpires or even members of their own team -- can be a problem for coaches. (Julie…

Problems with parents: High school coaches speak their mind over often tense relationships

Parents complaining -- whether it's against coaches, umpires or even members of their own team -- can be a problem for coaches. (Julie firstname.lastname@example.com)

By Paul Beaudry | email@example.com
on July 19, 2016

PROBLEMS WITH PARENTS: COACHES SPEAK THEIR MIND

Coaches have their say about problem parents

Parents' view: Try more communication and inclusion

The results of our survey

Coaches reveal their worst experiences

Some of the memorable parents in a prep writing career

They see through you when you cozy up for other reasons, they have your child's best interest at heart, they despise the travel ball mentality as much as they do helicopter parenting and, believe it or not, are happy to talk to you as long as it doesn't involve playing time for their children.

And they don't believe children are entitled to anything on the playing field -- they have to earn it.

They are the high school coaches of Alabama and it's their chance to tell you the problems they have with some parents – just as some parents are quick to turn to a principal or administration when they don't get the answers they want.

"I think 80 percent of the parents in our district are good, 15 percent have a different perspective and five percent give no support -- and the greatest thing in the world for that player (with no support) is to be in our program," said Janet Latham, who retired as athletic director for Athens High School and is a former Central Board member for the Alabama High School Athletic Association.

"As AD, I got more complaints about coaches not developing a child for the next level, or making (the player) hate the game. It's a parent's job to worry about their child … and the coach and AD's job to look at the sum of all parts and those two objectives aren't always in tune. When it all comes to an understanding is when greatness happens."

Parents are often proud of their children's accomplishments, especially when it ends in a state title as these Ramsay fans were in the 2006 girls basketball finals. But a winning team doesn't always equate to parental joy.(Linda Stelter/AL.com file)

In May, AL.com invited roughly 1,300 coaches around the state to participate in a survey on their relationships with parents, players and their own administration. More than 300 responded to our questions and could expand their answers if they chose.

The biggest problems? The sticker shock when AAU/travel ball mentality doesn't occur in high school; playing time; pushing for the next level; and helicopter parents who want to solve their child's problem at the expense of another player or the program. And no one is entitled to anything.

"I read an article the other day where an older coach shows up at a baseball convention with home plate as a necklace," said Mountain Brook boys soccer coach Joe Webb. "And he asks the coaches if they know how wide the plate is for T-Ball. And coach-pitch, and youth ball, and high school and so on. And the answer to all is 17 inches.

"The point he makes is when kids have a hard time getting the ball over the plate, we don't expand it. Either they figure out how to get the ball over the plate – and coaching plays a large part – or they move on to another position or sport. Everyone wasn't made to do everything. I was an example. I played football until my sophomore year of high school and switched to soccer because it was better for me."

PLAYING TIME

Most coaches have a simple solution to deflect conversations about playing time – they won't talk about it with the parent, but they will with the player.

"We have a parent meeting at the beginning of the season, and we discuss what we will and won't talk about," said Parker baseball coach Tyrus Moss. "Do not question playing time, coaching ability or the assistant coaches. If you do, you can take your son right then. You run your house, let me run mine."

Coaches aren't the only ones who face the wrath of some parents; harping against officials can also contribute to friction in a program.(Tamika firstname.lastname@example.com)

Coaches will tell you that a player determines the playing time with their work in practice. Hoover girls basketball coach Krystle Johnson makes it a point to invite parents to practice so they can see what their child is doing – or not.

"Sometimes, that's an advantage," said Johnson, who returned to her home school this season after coaching at Huntsville. "If you tell a parent that their daughter doesn't handle pressure well, they might not see it. But if they come to practice, they might."

Recently retired Vestavia Hills boys basketball coach George Hatchett likes to tell of the season he coached the son of SEC commissioner Boyd McWhorter.

"I never saw him all season, and he came up to me at the end of the year, introduced himself and said he appreciated the effort," said Hatchett. "He let you do your job. I mean, no one wants their child mistreated, but if your only complaint is playing time? The player determines that."

It's a matter of perspective. A frequent coaching complaint is that many parents want their child and the next best group (size depends on the sport) to play, where a coach has to look at what's best for all.

"I don't have a problem discussing playing time, as long we we don't bring anyone else's children into the conversation," said Davidson football coach Fred Riley. "We're not going to compare children; we're not going to talk about another child, but what your child has to do to get better."

Part of what makes Hazel Green's Tim Miller a successful coach is a balance between individual player and program, and how to meld the two together.(Dennis firstname.lastname@example.com)

And just so you know, it's not only at the high school level. When Hazel Green girls basketball coach Tim Miller was an assistant women's basketball coach at Alabama, he would see parents of players in different sports go into coaches offices to complain -- and even athletic directors Mal Moore and Bill Battle.

AAU/TRAVEL BALL MENTALITY

It's the coaches' most common complaint, and much of the reason behind playing time complaints from parents.

There are varying degrees of "travel ball" away from the high school setting, and some private, travel programs have no intention of following that model. Usually, it's led by parents who try to find off-season competition to stay sharp. However, for elite players, or for those who want their kids to become elite, highly competitive travel is often considered a requirement, not an option.

For those in the second category, parents spend their money with an expectation of more playing time -- more at-bats, more touches, more kills, more plays -- more exposure. Players get "more": generally due to a reduced roster size, not because of more practice or more emphasis on fundamentals. Travel programs are a business, where wins mean exposure, publicity and more parents paying for their child to get into a successful program. If it means different treatment for better players and their parents or more emphasis on tournaments, so be it.
 View on YouTube

When the player gets to high school and is fighting for playing time, the parent can't or won't understand how their child can be struggling when they come from an "elite" program, where they had inflated playing time and star status. The return on investment is diminished and they take it out on someone – usually the coach. And when they try coaching from the stands at the high school level, it can confuse the player and create more friction.

"I think the more invested the parent is, the louder they can get," said Latham. "The ones who are going to complain are the ones who have spent the most money and perceive they aren't getting a return."

Another part of the problem is the year-round push in a sport. The three-sport athlete is the exception rather than the rule as parents often push their children to specialize in one sport.

Count recently retired Bob Jones softball coach Kent Chambers among those who feel multi-sport athletes have an advantage over those who specialize in just one.(Hal Yeager/AL.com file)

"If you're pitching 12 months a year, your shoulder is going to wear out," said retired Bob Jones softball coach Kent Chambers. "You can play other sports to rest the muscles in your arm and such, but you're still in shape. There was a push from college coaches 15 years ago for students to play one sport, but now there's a push back in the other direction to play more than one because those athletes are well rounded."

Vigor baseball coach Jason Outlaw, who resigned after this season, likes to say he's from the "John Smoltz camp," referring to the former Atlanta Braves pitcher who was an all-state basketball and baseball player at Lansing (Mich.) Waverly -- to the point where he discussed playing both in college with Michigan State.

"Sometimes we forget rest is as important to success as anything," said Outlaw. "As a parent, you want to raise a well-rounded child. Too much can be too much. If they want to play 200 games a year because they want to, bless them. If they want to do it because you want them to, then it's a different area."

But those programs also offer a major upside.

"I think AAU is good for kids, I do," said Miller. "I can't take my team somewhere with 400 college coaches there, so it's good exposure. I have a good relationship and can call up the coach and ask how it's working out. For exposure, it's great. For development, not so much. There are a few who will develop players, but the majority don't."

NEXT-LEVEL TROUBLES

Not long ago, players went to summer camps at colleges to show off what they could do. In most sports, that's not the case any more. Parents and players want to know if they're ranked as a recruit, who is looking at them and what they have to do to be seen -- and they want it now if not sooner.

"As AD, I would get more complaints about not developing their child enough for the next level," said Latham. "They think that sports is the out to get to college and athletics is the only way they can get in because they can't make the grades or they don't have the money. So they put the pressure on the high school coach."

Riley feels that parents can put too much pressure on their children to use athletics to get to the next level.(Mike Kittrell/AL.com file)

While driving through Birmingham earlier this summer, Riley was eating at a restaurant and overheard a couple and their sons talking at another table.

"These short, stocky, stumpy sons had just come from Samford's football camp and they were talking about what camps they were going to next to be seen," said Riley. "I thought 'they better learn to video because they aren't going to get scholarships.' I felt bad for whoever their high school coach was. Expectations aren't realistic and it puts pressure on the kid. Then when they don't make it, it's 'not your fault, darling, it's the coach's fault. They didn't promote you enough.' The message you deliver is it's someone else's fault."

AHSAA Executive Director Steve Savarese likes to remind anyone who will listen that less than five percent of all athletes will receive an athletic scholarship and less than one percent of that group will play professional sports.

The odds aren't a deterrent for many, not with the soaring cost of higher education. And it's a lot of the drive behind specialization as many parents push for their children to concentrate on one sport for the next level. But for some it's a challenge to overcome and many do it thanks to society's push to instant gratification. The information highway and social media can help attract players, but it also often inflates the worth.

"Parents are putting more out there with AAU and scouting services where kids want to be ranked," said Johnson. "There's so much hype around players. Back then, you had to play to college to show someone what you could do. Now, if there's one good camp, kids can be ranked before they even get an offer to play in college. People want that quick return, they expect something back quickly."

And this just in, college coaches pay attention to how the parents act.

PARENTS BEING PARENTS

One coach has had a brick thrown at them and an assistant, and had to have a restraining order put on the same parent when he threatened to shoot them over his child's playing time – then went out to the car to get a gun. Another had a parent volunteer to help and had to dismiss the volunteer when they played favorites – a move that saw the player blossom after the stress was removed.

Most coaches are happy to have parental support but, when it comes to doing their jobs, prefer that parents remain in the background.(Paul email@example.com)

"Parents always want to communicate with coaches and coaches never want to," said Outlaw. "From a coach's perspective, some feel that when they open up that line of communication, it almost gives a parent a green light to offer suggestions or to put pressure on other things. Any time a parent comes to a coach, it's almost always with a negative and we get bombarded with negativity a lot."

And the coaches have a point. They are professionals, hired by schools to teach a sport, and they do it for little money – for example, the supplement for a head football coach with 15 years of experience at Jefferson County schools in suburban Birmingham maxes out right around $7,800; a volleyball coach with the same experience is $4,000. Not long ago, the same district paid its coaches an extra $1,500 per year for athletic director duties.

Head football coaches in Mobile County Public Schools earned $7,345 in 2015-16; football assistants and varsity head coaches in other sports earn $3,491 with all coaches earning between $100-200 per playoff round.

"We know your concern is your child, our concern is the whole program – including your child," said Latham. "The bottom line is that if the parent feels like their kid is being treated fairly, they usually aren't going to complain."

Parents want to know why their child isn't playing, and often the child doesn't want to tell them they aren't meeting the coach's defined expectations with effort or talent, are only playing because the parent wants them to, or even that the child is happy just being part of the program.

"The kids get it, sometimes the parents don't understand," said Moss. "They don't like freshmen playing over seniors and such. I'm going to play the best athlete."

Webb tells of an instance where he wanted a goalkeeper to do things a certain way, and when he didn't Webb pulled him from the game. A few minutes later, they were joking on the sideline and after the game, the keeper helped Webb carry equipment. But that wasn't what the parent saw.

"Mom came to school the next day and chewed me out," said Webb. "After she went on, I asked if she talked to her son. It sounded like a record skipped and scratched; she immediately stopped what she was saying. I went on to say the player and I had no problems. We were laughing and things are fine.

"She said 'Well, it embarrassed me,' and I said 'I don't coach you.' So she went, pulled him out of class, asked him if things were OK, then came down the hall and said she was sorry. It was already handled by the time she got to me, but she didn't ask the player first. Conflict resolution is a lost art. We laugh about it now, but at the time it was a big deal."

Often, players would like more playing time, but they also prefer to be part of the program and know their role in it matters to the overall success.

Sometimes, problems with parents and coaches are set aside when a team is winning. But success doesn't guarantee contentment.(Jeff Roberts/AL.com file)

"Do players get treated differently at practice? Yeah, but it depends on what their roles are," said Miller. "That's all part of getting the player to buy into the program. The kid might tell the parent 'this is my role'; the player might buy in, the parent might never buy in."

It's not just playing time; strategy (which often comes back to playing time) plays just as much of a role.

"In football, everyone is convinced they know it because of the saturation of the game," said Riley. "They watch ESPN and Gameday, so if (Kirk Herbstreit) said it, they know it. I had one mother tell me she was a cheerleader in high school so she knows football. My father once told me that I could take care of this if we would just run the plays that worked."

But every once in a while, a parent and player finally get the message. It might not be right away, but the eventual reward is worth it.

Riley tells the story of a mother and son who came to see him five years after the student graduated. Riley didn't remember the player at the time, but remembered the incident.

"'Five years ago, you booted me from the team because I didn't apply myself and put forth the effort. And because of that, I graduated from high school, joined the military and now I'm doing (whatever) and it goes back to that day," recalled Riley, who once benched his own child. "Lessons you tried to teach me they taught me in the military. You're the only person who had the courage to tell me fair wasn't good and good isn't great.'

"This stuff that's been taught in the last generation – if you tell someone they're good enough, they'll become it – is hogwash. Self-esteem doesn't come from playing sports, that's accomplishment. We've raised a generation of kids who have no idea what excellence is. Excellence comes from failing. You've got to fail and bump and bruise and scrape. Life's not a participation trophy. Too many people get told fair is good, good is great, and great is excellent. And it isn't."

 THE NEXT PRO BASEBALL TRYOUT IS TUESDAY 8/9/2016 AT 9AM SCOUT KEVIN BARRY tag:www.checkswing.com,2016-07-18:2099111:BlogPost:347884 2016-07-18T01:36:03.000Z HENRY MUNEVAR http://www.checkswing.com/profile/HENRYMUNEVAR
AGES 16-23 ONLY NO OLD PEOPLE. SHOW RESPECT FOR THE GAME AND WEAR A BASEBALL OUT FIT. MET KEVIN A LONG TIME AGO WHEN HE WAS A NORTH EAST SCOUT. I BROUGHT A PERSON TO HIT GROUND BALLS AND HE ALSO HAD MANY CLIENTS FOR KEVIN'S PRO TRYOUT. I STILL HAVE THE PICTURES OF THAT DAY. THE TRAINIER WAS RAFAEL MONTERO WHO I HELPED HIM WHEN HE WAS YOUNGER TO GET INTO THE BROCKTON INVITATIONAL. OUT OF 120 PLAYERS AT THE 3 DAY BASEBALL EVENT RAFAEL WAS THE MVP OF THE TOURNAMENT. I SHOWED HIM OVER LOAD…

AGES 16-23 ONLY NO OLD PEOPLE. SHOW RESPECT FOR THE GAME AND WEAR A BASEBALL OUT FIT. MET KEVIN A LONG TIME AGO WHEN HE WAS A NORTH EAST SCOUT. I BROUGHT A PERSON TO HIT GROUND BALLS AND HE ALSO HAD MANY CLIENTS FOR KEVIN'S PRO TRYOUT. I STILL HAVE THE PICTURES OF THAT DAY. THE TRAINIER WAS RAFAEL MONTERO WHO I HELPED HIM WHEN HE WAS YOUNGER TO GET INTO THE BROCKTON INVITATIONAL. OUT OF 120 PLAYERS AT THE 3 DAY BASEBALL EVENT RAFAEL WAS THE MVP OF THE TOURNAMENT. I SHOWED HIM OVER LOAD TRAINING. ANY ONE WHO WANTS A SWEATY WORK OUT COME TO BOSTON AND SEE IF U CAN HANDLE 10 MIN OF OVER LOAD TRAINING. BRING PLENTY OF COLD WATER AND A DOCTOR AS THIS WILL BE THE HARDETS WORK OUT U HAVE DONE. I GARANTEE IT!!!!!! I WOULD PROVIDE THE CELL PHONE FOR KEVIN BARRY BUT SOME PEOPLE SAY THE WRONG THINGS TO THE SCOUTS. THIS IS NOT CHILDREN'S BASEBALL WHERE ALL GET A TROPHY. THEY NO LONGER SIGN PLAYER'S ON THE SPOT. THEY WILL RESERCH AND FOLLOW IF THEY LIKE YOUR BASEBALL SKILLS. YOUR HARVARD DEGREE WILL NOT HELP U.

 ASK FOR SCOUT KEVIN BARRY TELL HIM HENRYSBASEBALL SENT YOU. YOU CAN ALSO SEE US ON WWW.YOUTUBE.COM

NORTH IOWA AREA COMMUNITY COLLEGE, 313 15TH ST SE, MASON CITY IA 50401
 Man Amongst Boys: The Oral History Of Bryce Harper's Record-Setting Junior College Season tag:www.checkswing.com,2016-07-17:2099111:BlogPost:347882 2016-07-17T20:17:04.000Z Bill Stanton http://www.checkswing.com/profile/Bill

July 12, 2016 Mike Piellucci

Man Amongst Boys: The Oral History Of Bryce Harper's Record-Setting Junior College Season…

July 12, 2016 Mike Piellucci

Man Amongst Boys: The Oral History Of Bryce Harper's Record-Setting Junior College Season

In 2009, Bryce Harper's prodigious talent and mammoth frame made him a Sports Illustrated cover boy as a 16-year-old sophomore at Las Vegas High School. That same year, while competing in a high school home run derby, he smashed a 502-foot home run—with an aluminum bat—at Tampa Bay's Tropicana Field, longer than any home run recorded in the ballpark's history. The resulting video made him a viral sensation. An ESPN E:60 feature soon followed. It was unheard of exposure for a high school baseball player.

All of it served as confirmation for what those in baseball circles had known for years: Harper was a once-in-a-generation, franchise-defining talent. The only question was which team would receive the opportunity to draft him after he graduated high school two years later.

That's when Bryce Harper did the most unprecedented thing of all. That spring, his family learned of a loophole in the draft system. If he could get his GED, he would be able to directly enroll in junior college, and declare for the draft a year sooner. Following the conclusion of his sophomore year, he enrolled at the College of Southern Nevada, the local school that was a short drive from his house. It's believed that no one has attempted this before or since.

At Southern Nevada, the 17-year-old Harper would play with and against players up to five years older than him, while he was still navigating how to get his driver's license. Harper joined a team considered among the most talented in the country at any level. More than that, they were unusually close. Adding Harper gave the team a chance of winning the Junior College World Series. They would reach the precipice of that goal, and Harper would perform unimaginable feats, as well as become embroiled in one of the first controversial incidents of his baseball career. Along the way, Harper's teammates came to know and understand the greatest baseball talent of his generation in a way that few have since.

"He was just a man amongst boys out there," says Danny Higa, CSN's starting shortstop. The youngest player on the field made children out of his competition.

What follows is an oral history of that season, as told by 19 of Harper's teammates and coaches from the College of Southern Nevada. Each is listed by his role on the team at the time, and, when applicable, his year in school.

Before he was a Washington Nationals outfielder, Harper was a catcher at CSN. Photo by Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports.

Sean Larimer, Undergraduate Assistant: I think it was actually suggested on a comments section on the Internet. His mom ran by it and saw he could get his GED by graduating early from Las Vegas High School and be eligible for junior college.

Cooper Fouts, Catchers Coach: The fact was the high school baseball situation wasn't very healthy for him at the time. One, it wasn't competitive enough for him, and two, it wasn't healthy because of the way people treated him. There were people who tried to hurt him at times. It was a negative environment for him at that time.

Larimer: So they reached out to [Head] Coach [Tim] Chambers and I think it was in the middle of the summer, the summer started to progress and it came true. His older brother actually transferred back from Cal State Northridge and that made it more of an easier decision for them to be able to play together again.

Scott Dysinger, Sophomore, Second Baseman: Chambers had called me that summer before it happened...to have my thoughts because I was the team captain that year. Just kind of wanted to know what my thoughts were and how the team felt about it. I was all for it. Someone that's going to make our team better, I'm all for them coming to play with us.

Ryan Scott, Sophomore, Catcher: He was on the cover of Sports Illustrated and I saw that in Maine, actually, visiting family that summer. It got shipped to my grandma's house and I saw it and I was reading the article and it said Plans to enroll in junior college the following year. I started doing the math. I'm like, Hold on. Junior college. Las Vegas. There's only one. And pretty soon, I found out that it was the one.

Marvin Campbell, Sophomore, Left Fielder: The way it unfolded, big picture-wise, it was kind of the perfect shape for him. He'd be at home, he had me — he's known me forever — kind of as a big brother. His real big brother, Bryan, was coming back. He had Donnie Roach, Scott Dysinger, Trevor Kirk. We had a bunch of hometown guys who knew him. It's not like he's going to go somewhere where guys are going to envy him, just trying to make it harder on him. It was just very natural. Come aboard, we're going to have something special here. So the transition was just super easy for him and it was kind of — I'm not going to say safe, but the way everything unfolded was a perfect fit. I don't think we could have had a better kid coming in, a better group of guys around him. It just made everything so smooth for everybody.

Most of CSN's team had heard of Harper long before the national media caught wind of him. He had long been playing above his age group so, whether they had played with him or against him, it seemed as though everyone had a Bryce story by the time he made his way onto campus. In Las Vegas, Bryce Harper was already a legend.

Dysinger: Just how hard he hit the ball. I had never seen anything like that. Playing in my age group, four years ahead of him, at eleven at the time, there was no one that even compared at that time to what he was doing at seven. He was a freak.

Campbell: Even on our little league teams, he was probably around seven or eight, coming out practicing with us, playing catch, taking BP, doing everything that we were doing. [He'd] hold his own and be better than half of the other guys even out there. So that's kind of where you started to see he wasn't going to play with his age group, that this was going to do him no good.

Fouts: He was 12 years old, hitting home runs with a wood bat [practicing] at CSN at that time. There was a time where he took BP one summer and he hit five straight out with a wood bat. He was 12 years old. Going to be a seventh grader.

Kenny McDowall, Swingman: When I was a senior in high school, that was the first time I saw him. We played against Las Vegas High School and he was pitching for them and he was sitting 93, 94, the whole game. I was an asshole, I was like, who is this guy? And [my teammates] are like, You don't know who that is? That's Bryce Harper. Well, Jesus, he's huge. How old is he? He's a freshman, dude! He's 14. I was like, what the fuck? He looked the same size, man. He's 6-3, 210 probably, throwing faster than I'd ever seen and a monster in the box.

Larimer: I really started to notice his freshman, sophomore years of high school... I was watching the regional championship game and Vegas was actually playing Green Valley High School and Bryce hit an opposite field home run at Vegas over the 375 sign in left center. An opposite-field home run that literally cleared the parking lot out there. Cars can park on the street and it went right over my car. I don't know what more you can say.

Along with Bryan Harper transferring home from Cal State Northridge, the Coyotes added two more Las Vegas natives to the pitching staff, Donn Roach (Arizona) and Aaron Kurcz (Air Force). They joined a group that also included starters Chasen Shreve and Joe Robinson, and swingmen Tyler Hanks and Kenny McDowall. All seven would be drafted after the season.

Meanwhile, Trent Cook, a returning Mormon missionary, joined the team for his sophomore season. He combined with Marvin Campbell to serve as Bryce Harper's lineup protection and form the heart of the order. All told, it was a veteran-heavy roster that had the makings of a special team. CSN was stacked, and set their sights on winning the Junior College World Series.

Taylor Jones, Freshman, Reliever: Every single guy on the team could have been a starter on any other team in the country. We had guys that didn't get to play as much or barely got any playing time, but they knew their role. If I was only going to come in and face one left-handed batter all weekend, then that was my role.

Campbell: There wasn't one set person on that team who was, like, I'm the captain, I'm the guy, it's going to be my way. Everybody policed everybody. Everybody held everybody accountable. If I didn't have it, [Dysinger] had it. Or Bryan had it. Or Trevor had it. [Cook] was Pops. He was older than everybody. That's Pops. Grandpa Cook. He was going to come in and he was super calm. Everybody kind of had their own niche with that team that made us grow so much closer.

Trevor Kirk, Sophomore, Right Fielder: A lot of the better players that were around my junior and senior year ended up going to CSN. It was funny, we played the high school All-Star game and a lot of those guys were CSN signees. It's sort of cool to see. It was a pretty local team and I think that helped with the camaraderie of the team, because everyone knew each other.

Campbell: They took away hell week for that season because guys are out there a week, two weeks before we were supposed to report. Already hitting in the cage. Already running at the field every day. It was just stuff that we did. Meet us at the field at 8 o'clock, 10 o'clock, we're going to get a little workout in. We flipped to each other, played catch, do what we had to do because we were like We're going to take this seriously. This is our year.

Still, Harper's transition from high school to college wasn't entirely seamless. It was one thing to play up a grade level on travel ball teams, and another to compete against college athletes on a daily basis. Compounding matters was a summer-long stint with the USA Baseball 18-and-under national team (which also included Manny Machado). While the rest of the team arrived to fall camp refreshed, Harper showed up without ever taking a break.

Campbell: The tone coming into it was, especially from the sophomores and older guys, OK, you're going to come in here, you're going to work like everybody else. We're not going to treat you any different. You're the young guy, so we're going to rag you like you were a typical freshman coming in here. You're not going to get special treatment from us. We might come at you even a little harder just because we're going to demand a lot out of you. And he understood it... It took him a while when he came back from Team USA. He had lost a lot of weight. He kind of just looked tired.

Ray Daniels, Freshman, Outfielder: Before we even started, going into that fall, our head coach Tim Chambers made him take practices off just because he'd been going nonstop his whole entire life. He wanted him to take a few days off and it looked like it killed [Bryce].

Campbell: When he came in that fall, he struggled. He got beat up. You're facing Aaron Kurcz, who is in Triple-A right now. Donnie Roach has had big league time with a few teams. Chasen Shreve's in the bigs right now with the Yankees. Joe Robinson had played a couple seasons in the Dodgers organization. Bryan's in Triple-A with the Nationals right now. He's coming in facing guys off his own staff, his own team. I remember Roach just carved him up one day. Carved. Him. Up.

Scott: I was catching [during fall camp] and, of course, in high school in they're either walking him or throwing him different stuff, but I made sure we were throwing pitches that probably weren't being thrown in high school. In different counts, throwing him pitches that maybe — a 3-1 changeup or something.

Dysinger: Seeing good arm after good arm took a toll on him at first, because he wasn't necessarily used to that. There was a little bit of a learning curve and adjustments that needed to be made. I think, at first, he kind of thought Wow, I don't know if I can do this. But clearly it didn't take long to get over that, maybe a week. I'm sure to him, it seemed like an extremely long time but it was noticeable.

Campbell: I told him, Dude, don't change. Don't try to do anything different. Just play your game and you're going to have success... That fall, we faced Cypress or Fullerton Community College came down and played us. And he just went off, had a great weekend and that set the tone, and that was at the end of the fall. That kind of set the tone for him coming into the spring. I can do this. I can have the success. I told him, You're not going to face a better staff in the country than right now what you're facing in practice.

The 2010 CSN Coyotes. Photo Courtesy of Drew Farrar, CSN Athletics.

It was hardly surprising to see Harper once again acclimate to higher-level competition. Everyone on the roster, including the players who had not played with him, expected as much. What those who didn't know him came to realize was that Harper also possessed maybe the team's most voracious appetite for work. His status as a top-three pick was virtually guaranteed, barring injury, and he seemingly had every incentive to coast through the season. Instead, he poured himself into helping his new teammates win as many games as they could together. They found his intangibles to be as impressive as his physical abilities.

Daniels: [He gave] everything he had, 100 percent, all the time. If he had an off game in the first game of a doubleheader, he would go right into the batting cages, him and his dad. He'd just start taking hacks, over and over and over again, to fine tune his swing.

Fouts: There were times when I made him throw up in a workout. There was a time when he did a leg workout that he couldn't drive home. He had to call his mom to come pick him up. But he didn't bitch or complain about it.

Jones: I used to start the Tuesday games in intersquad. Those were probably the best games we had all year, honestly. It wasn't like starters versus the bench players. Those were legit games because everybody could play. My first time facing him, one of my pitching guys was right behind the mound and he was my buddy. He said, You won't throw him all fastballs. I sure will! No you won't. I threw him three straight fastballs, strike him out. Next time up, he says, You won't throw him three more straight fastballs. You bet your ass I will. Strike him out and as I'm walking back into the dugout, before Bryce went to take the field, he met me at the first base line, gave me a hug and said, Thanks, TJones. Thanks for challenging me, man. From that point on, I never threw [him] any breaking balls or anything.

Roach: We were at Southern Idaho and for some idiotic reason their bullpen in right field is surrounded by like a four or five-inch concrete wall to hold the bullpen in. But it's in play for some reason. I remember him going for a fly ball and sliding into it. I'm like, What is this idiot doing? You're going to blow your knee out for a foul fly ball and risk of millions of dollars.

Trent Cook, Sophomore, First Baseman: Immediately, everyone thought, Uh oh. That's bad. Is he going to be hurt? Does it jeopardize the season? The plans going into the draft? That right there proved to me that, yeah, it was about him getting to the major leagues sooner — there was stuff to do for himself, we all understood that. But at the same time, going all out for a ball like that to potentially, possibly jeopardize his season by sliding into the wall — it's something that he didn't really need to do, but he was just giving 100 percent all the time. That just proved that team was important, too, and winning was just as important as his own personal achievements.

But while they were all teammates, everyone soon realized that Harper had no equal on the field. Even then, the stories of his physical dominance are legion, and jaw-dropping.

Scott: Early on in the fall, I'm thinking, Hey, this is my competition for the spot and that's how I treated it, like [he was] any other guy. But after a while, I had to remind myself I'm not Bryce Harper. Trying to keep up at that level, just, you look at the major leagues and there's nobody doing it there now, either. So I just had to be realistic and understand that he's pretty special.

Tyler Iodence, Redshirt Freshman, Reliever: The pitchers would shag BP and I'd go out behind the fence just to shag the balls. You know with Bryce that he was going to hit them over the fence, so we'd just stand out there and wait for him.

Danny Higa, Sophomore, Shortstop: His BP, it was funny because the other team would stop what they were doing and watch this kid. It's like, we're playing this other team and you would think they'd be getting ready, but they're watching him take BP.

Matt Medina, Freshman, Infielder: It was almost like we couldn't wait for him to come up. When Bryce was on deck, if we had runners on or he was up, we knew we were about to score or something special was going to happen

Fouts: Honest to God, if you asked 35 guys, you might have 35 guys come up with 35 different answers. There are that many examples. I'm sure we're all forgetting a lot of things that were washed away in memory, too, that he did.

Kirk: I remember our first game. I was on third base talking to Chambers, the head coach. They were trying to intentionally walk him. I literally was not even looking at home plate and Chambers and I were talking back and forth, and next thing you know, you hear a crack... And he hit a ball out of the strike zone — that was basically supposed to be a pitchout, for an intentional walk — and he hit it to deep left field.

Kyle 'Kaz' Smith, Freshman, Catcher: It was a home series, a Friday night game and he took a ball over the batter's eye, dead center [home run]. It was a line drive. I remember Cooper Fouts was standing right there and he goes, That is the farthest ball that's ever been hit in this stadium and it was dead center, in the wind.

Fouts: We were playing Cypress Junior College in the only metal bat game we played all year until we got to the district championships in Lamar, Colorado. We're playing at home and, again, they're a California junior college so they play with metal, so we played with metal. Wind was blowing out to left field. He generally hits with an open stance. I saw him get up there with a closed stance and hit a high pitch out to left field. As though he said, I'm going to hit it that way, no matter what. There's nobody else I've ever seen be able to do that. I've played with big leaguers, I've played with a lot of great coaches, a lot of very talented kids who were drafted but there's nobody even close to [doing] that. He had the raw, physical, God-given ability to just sometimes do as he pleased. What nobody else could.

Casey Sato, Sophomore, Utility Man: The defining Bryce moment for me was the regional finals to get into the World Series. We had gotten beat like 25 to 18 in Game 1, and they had to beat us twice on that Saturday. They beat us pretty good in the first game, so we got to play a true elimination game — Game 2 — and he ended up going six for six with four home runs, a double and a triple.

Campbell: He'd be in a game and we'd be standing on deck in between innings, kind of just talking and going over the pitcher and what he's got. And he'll go, Hey, watch this. I'm gonna get him. I'm gonna get him. Watch this. Alright, let me see it, Harp. Let me see it, Mondo. And he'd go up and — Got him! I'm just standing there kind of laughing, like, Alright dude. Give him a little high five.

McDowall: Everyone I play with in indy ball, I tell them Bryce is my catcher, because they brag about their catcher in college. Yeah, I had a pretty good catcher. Yeah, Bryce Harper was my catcher. They'd be like, What?! I don't think I had a passed ball all year. He threw out every runner that tried to run, half of them from his knees. Just 95 across the diamond.

Scott: Some throws he would make [from the outfield] were pretty impressive, because he would let it go. I remember he would try to throw everyone out backdoor at first base, so any time there was a ground ball in the outfield, I had to line myself up to back up a throw at first because I knew it was coming. I mean, everyone.

Jones: There'd be times where he'd hit a ball like right to the left fielder. The left fielder would just jog in to get it and he'd be on second, sliding into second and get a double off of a routine single. He could tell they had to make the perfect throw and the perfect tag to get him out, and he knew by him putting the pressure on, not everybody would be able to do that.

Campbell: I ended up hitting 15 home runs that year and Chambers would talk about it all the time. Marv, you broke the single season record at CSN. You hold that record. But it just so happened Bryce Harper played on your team that year, too. I think it was like 11 or 12 and at one point, I was leading the team with like three. I had a weekend where I hit five and had the single-season record for home runs in a weekend, or whatever it was. It was five. Bryce came back and broke that later and hit six. My freshman year, I had a game where I hit two grand slams in a game and had eight RBIs. Bryce came back, sophomore year, and broke the record for RBIs in a game — I think he had 10, when he went for the cycle [in home runs]. It was that friendly competition. Nobody was going to out-do him. He wasn't going to let it happen. I'd come up and hit a homerun — if he was hitting behind me, I'm going to hit one farther. If he hit a double, I'm going to hit a triple. That was just him.

Roach: Now that I've played through highest levels of baseball and seen grown men hit the ball, I think back to what he was doing and that's when I realize how impressive he was. The way he was hitting the ball. He's hitting balls still going up to the opposite field, over the scoreboard.

Fouts: I've coached first-round picks and I don't know if I'll ever coach a 1-1 again. If I'm lucky, that'd be great. But I have a hard time believing there will be a 1-1 that is that. You're seeing it against the best competition in the world, and you're seeing him be the best in the world. I just don't believe God has made another one of those right now.

Bryce Harper, making baseball fun since 2010. Photo by Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports.

Harper's season defied every possible expectation. In 66 games, he finished the year batting .443 with a .526 on-base percentage. His slugging percentage of .987 was more than 300 points better than the team's second-place hitter, Cook. Prior to 2010, the school's home run record was 12. Harper smashed 31, more than the team's second- (Campbell, with 15) and third-leading (Cook, with 11) hitters combined. The overwhelming majority of those were with a wood bat. He also added a team-leading 20 steals.

Harper also won that season's Golden Spikes award, which goes to the country's best amateur baseball player. It was the first time in 20 years and only second time ever that it was given to a junior college player. All told, he led the team in 10 different offensive categories and set six school records that still stand today.

But his notoriety came a cost. Already a celebrity, Harper exploded into even more of a phenomenon over the course of the season. It had been years since anyone had seen a prospect even close to his caliber, and none of them had walked Harper's unprecedented career path. Accordingly, the demands and pressures that he dealt with were among the most unique any teenage athlete has ever faced.

Sato: You'd see his immature moments and you'd see his mature moments. There were times when he would get a little more angry — he'd throw a helmet or throw a bat or whatever. But in other times, he was mature with the way he approached practice or he approached all the media. The most mature moment I saw out of him was, we were at the College of Southern Idaho and when we'd typically play, we'd play a doubleheader on Friday and a double header on Saturday. After the games on Friday, the umpires came up to our bus with a box of balls to get him to sign. These are the same umpires that are then going to be calling our game tomorrow. He's kind of stuck in this really bad predicament where it's like, he shouldn't have to sign the balls, but if he doesn't then are calls going to go against us the next day? He ended up signing the balls and he didn't complain it. He just did it.

Dysinger: You could tell after, What am I supposed to do? You did the right thing. Just sign them and keep your head down and you show up and you play.

Taylor Larson, Freshman, Reliever: When we played at Salt Lake CC, after the weekend we had tickets to the Jazz and Lakers game, so me and my family took Bryce to the game. And the whole time we were there, it's, Oh my gosh, it's Bryce Harper! It's Bryce Harper! It's Bryce Harper! The next day, we went to the Apple store to get him a new phone and people in there are bugging him, taking pictures, wanting autographs. He was always good about it. He would take the time to talk to the kids and take pictures with people and sign autographs.

Higa: We would go to other teams' fields and I swear there were people from that city who'd come to watch Bryce and not the team they'd be rooting for. We would get done with the game and there would be a line like 30 to 50 people wanting his autograph. The whole team would be sitting in the bus, waiting for him to get done signing autographs.

Fouts: I remember going to Grand Junction and trying to get him out of Grand Junction after our first or second game because I think we played the night game our very first day. Trying to get him out of there was a madhouse. The next day, we played a day game with Iowa Western and just trying to get him out of there was just an hour, hour fifteen, hour twenty-minute process. Easily. We had a couple of our coaches who were just beside him all the time. It was just never going to end.

Cook: People always hounding him. People always booing him. Telling him he's doing the wrong things. Telling him he should have stuck it out in high school. And then you'd just go out there and he just knew he was the best player at all times on the field. He'd go out, go 4-for-4 in a game. Hit four home runs in a game, and prove the doubters wrong. That's something, from a physical standpoint, he had all the assets from a physical standpoint and the mental standpoint that most of us didn't have... I've been in the spotlight before and I've told myself, I can do it, I can do it, I can do it. But for some reason, those demons get the best of me more frequently than they would for Bryce. It's hard to explain or put it into words. He was on a totally different level.

Dysinger: There were times when he acted younger, as he should. We expected it. We didn't want him to be some college kid. We wanted him to live his life still. He went to his prom and things like that. He didn't really have a choice about growing up but he was definitely far ahead of his years.

Fouts: He just wanted to be a kid and yet he knew he couldn't be. He knew he had to be somebody else. But when it all comes down to it, when you let your guard down, you still want to be able to just relax and be who you are and be a kid and be 16. People wanted him to be 20. Well, he wasn't 20. He hadn't experienced that part of life yet.

CSN finished the regular season 41-15, with a 23-9 roster record in conference. After winning their regional in Lamar, Colorado, they clinched a berth in the Junior College World Series in Grand Junction, Colorado. It was only the program's third appearance in 15 seasons. The Coyotes were seeded third and breezed through their first three games in the double-elimination tournament, blowing out their opponents by a combined score of 43-13.

In the fourth game, they were pitted against top-seeded San Jacinto College, from Houston. It was the matchup they had anticipated all season. It would become known for one of the first controversial incidents of Bryce Harper's career.

Larson: Going into the World Series, we knew we were going to win it. We knew there was no way anybody could beat us.

Sato: I just remember that game in general was a game we had circled. San Jac was kind of like a rival of ours even though we never really played that much. It was a team that, I think emotions were running pretty high with that game. It was like, Hey, if we get past these guys, we're sitting pretty for the rest of the tournament.

Higa: I think I'll remember that day until I die.

Campbell: I remember when [Bryce] came to the dugout after the first inning, and you could see him and our catchers' coach kind of somewhat going at it. But you could hear the conversation and you understood: They're not going at it. The home plate umpire pissed him off. And it was [when]he went out, and our catchers always did, introduce themselves. Hey, I'm going to be catching the game tonight, what's your name? This is who's on the mound, this is what he throws. Kind of give the home plate guy a heads up. That's what he did. He did his regular thing

Larimer: The umpire basically started antagonizing him and said, I heard you can hit, now let's see if you can catch. The game kind of progressed and there were one or two other comments made by him.

Campbell: There was a borderline pitch. Bryce caught it and kind of held it. After[wards] he pulled back, just turned slightly to ask him where it missed and the umpire told him, Don't look back here. Don't turn around and talk to me.

Kirk: It seemed like people were always on him. People wanted to get under his skin. There were umpires that wanted to get their name out and it seemed like that was everywhere.

McDowall: [His next at-bat], he got rung up looking. He drew a line in the right-handed batter's box and he stepped over the plate and he didn't look at the umpire. He didn't even make eye contact or turn around, he didn't say a word. He just stepped over the batter's box, drew the line, kept walking and was heated and he ejected him immediately.

Fouts: [The umpire] was wrong. He was dead-ass wrong. He rung him up on a pitch that was way outside. It was what it was, like the guy was trying to get a rise out of him. He eyed him the whole time, both at-bats. Again, very evidently trying to get an emotional rise out of him. He struck out and Bryce drew a line in the dirt and walked away. He knew he couldn't do it. He got thrown out.

Larson: He got thrown out because he's Bryce Harper.

Sato: Looking back on it now, it doesn't really surprise me that something like that would happen. That some adult would try to show up a 17-year-old. He was trying to take over the show. I've just seen too many instances throughout the year where it was almost like coaches and umpires and teams were just trying to prove to us and to Bryce that, like, We can show them up.

Campbell: He sat in the dugout and just stared off into space for a little bit until they came over and said, You have to leave. You have to leave the field and go sit on the bus.

Scott: I remember being kind of wide-eyed. We all looked around and went, Oh, no. And then it was like, instant click, Get your shinguards on, you're going in. But we couldn't believe he had done that and that he had gotten tossed. He knows now he can't do that.

Cook: The stands were completely full and some. It was standing room only there and it was because of Bryce. Yeah, they wanted to see some baseball, but if we're being honest with ourselves, it was Bryce. And I walked up to the box and sure enough I see the line in the right-handed batter's box. It was kind of like just an eerie feeling in the stadium, now that Bryce was gone.

Jones: That stadium was packed to see him. And as soon as that happened, it was like a shockwave, man. You turned and looked in the stands and people are just getting up and leaving.

Aaron Kurcz, Sophomore, Closer: [San Jacinto] just acted like they had won the World Series. Like, that was the game for them. Once Bryce was done, they went nuts. I had never seen the reaction like that for somebody being ejected. Obviously, it's Bryce getting ejected, so they're going to be excited. I don't think I'll forget how happy the other team was for him getting kicked out of the game.

Iodence: I think, just his presence, he made the team stronger. We kind of felt invincible.

Cook: It was just kind of surreal. Like, Is this really happening to us right now? Because whether or not he was hitting home runs every at-bat, just with him in the lineup, it was different for everyone. Everyone was seeing better pitches if Bryce was in the lineup. We knew that it was going to be tough.

Smith: That was such a huge moment of the game because of how intense it was between the two teams. It's such a battle going back and forth and obviously both teams are battling to go to the world championship game, stuff like that. So much tension and when he got ejected, I feel like it was a big rally killer. I honestly felt like we had the momentum coming on our side and it was just that rally killer feel that happened. It was such a bad call, you know, and basically the momentum shifted within seconds. The environment changed then. We tried to put too much pressure on ourselves as a whole, and still playing the game of baseball, still grinding it out. I think we tried to do too much.

CSN lost the game, 10-8, setting up a win-or-go home contest the next day against Iowa Western. They would have to play without Harper, who was automatically suspended for the next game after accruing his second ejection of the season.

Jones: We went and got on the bus, we ended up losing and getting on the bus and going back to the hotel. He's giving us a hug after we got off the bus and apologizing to everyone for doing that.

Scott: I also remember going back to the room, because we were rooming together, and him feeling so bad for kind of letting the team down for being sent from the game, to the extent that he was crying.

Roach: Everyone got fired up and we took on an us-against-the-world attitude, or us-against-the-circumstances attitude of what was happening.

Campbell: I think we were supposed to go with Donnie Roach [going into the next] game. Bryan asked for the ball and said he wanted to throw. He wanted to throw for his brother. At that point in time, you're not going to tell him no. You can't tell anybody they can't have the ball if they're asking for it. He went out and pitched his tail off. I think he was so emotionally [invested] — he was drawing the 3-4 in the dirt before the game.

Medina: We all wore the eyeblack that [Bryce] wore, smeared down his face. Scott Dysinger, he wore Bryce's jersey the next game. He wore 34.

Campbell: Before getting on the bus, Bryce came in my room and he's just joking and he was like, Gotta go get them today. Make something happen. I kind of was like I got you. Tapped him on the shirt and said I got you bro. Hit a home run and still, to this day, I don't know how — it just came to me like that — I hit the home run and I hit home plate. His parents were sitting next to my parents and I remember, hitting home plate, seeing his dad and just immediately put up a 3-4 with my fingers. I remember his dad standing up and I think I still have the pictures. His dad stands up and he kind of points, and everyone's hyped after that.

CSN scored five runs in the eighth and ninth innings to carry a two-run lead into the bottom of the ninth. Joe Robinson, pitching in relief of Bryan Harper, retired two batters but let in a run, with another runner on second base. Chambers opted to call on closer Aaron Kurcz to record the final out. Kurcz then gave up a two-run, walkoff home run. CSN lost 9-8, and was eliminated from the Junior College World Series.

It marked the end of Bryce Harper's junior college career. For many of his teammates, it marked the end of the most impactful baseball experience of their lives.

Campbell: I think it took such an emotional toll on us. We got to that last inning of the game and we just got to the finish line and we were just gassed. We couldn't just even finish. The wheels just fell off. We had Kurcz, who had been our guy in the closer role all year, and he gives up the walk off. Joe Robinson had been lights out all year for us — he has trouble in that inning. I hadn't even made an error all year. That day, it was a little overcast and the outfielders kept sunglasses on, sunglasses off, sunglasses on, sunglasses off — trying angles. I go sunglasses on, sunglasses off, sunglasses back on. Lose the ball in the sun. My first error of the year comes at that point in time. Just how it unfolded, the events, it was so emotionally draining for everybody. After the game, we go, How did we lose that? How did that unfold like that?'

Fouts: It was unbelievable how close they were. I'm talking about for me, as well. This is my tenth year coaching college baseball, [with] four years at CSN. There was no group closer than that group. I mean that. There's no group I've ever coached that was more emotional to say goodbye and know they were never going to play together again. It's not even close.

Jones: It was almost like, Holy shit, these are my friends I go to battle with, day in and day out, and now that's not going to happen anymore. Getting on that bus ride and heading home, it was difficult. You've got everybody on the team practically in tears hugging each other. We have the last stretch of 30 miles to Las Vegas. We got back to our cars and everybody started getting up and walking around and bullshitting each other and hugging it and telling everyone how much they loved it and enjoyed the season. Because it was special, man. It was a great group of guys. A lot of us will never be part of something like that ever again.

Roach: It was probably the most fun I've ever had playing baseball in my whole career. Everyone just gelled. It's kind of hard to find personalities, especially in baseball — they're all confident individuals with their own personalities — to gel like we did. A lot of those guys are still my best friends to this day. Some of them were groomsmen in my wedding. A lot of us are still playing pro ball. We all work out together in the offseason.

Sato: It was still one of those seasons that you knew everyone was going to be lifelong friends, that you know it would be a season of baseball that you would never forget. Because you were witnessing some really cool things, and it wasn't just Bryce only. You knew there were going to be multiple guys who were on this team that were going to play in the major leagues.

Cook: On teams I'd played on before, there was always a competition within. You would kind of rooting for a guy you were competing with sometimes to strike out in a situation, so you'd get the opportunity. But on this team, I didn't feel that at all. I didn't see that at all. Everyone was pulling for everyone. They wanted everyone to do their best. It was all about the team and getting ultimately that World Series championship.

Scott: You wish you could play with that team forever. When I was at UNLV, we were saying, Yeah, UNLV's facilities are much nicer, all this stuff. But if I could have played with that team for three years, like a four-year school, that's all I would have wanted to do.

Medina: My best memory, if people ask me, I'll tell them: My freshman year, when we went to the World Series and I played with Bryce Harper. It was my greatest, best baseball memory ever.

Many players called CSN the best experience of their baseball career. Photo courtesy of Drew Farrar, CSN Athletics.

All told, eight players from the 2010 roster were selected in that summer's draft. Harper, as expected, was selected first overall by the Nationals. Donn Roach went next, in the supplemental portion of the third round, to the Angels. They were followed by Kenny McDowall (8th round, Mets), Aaron Kurcz (11th round, Cubs) and Chasen Shreve (11th round, Braves). Bryan Harper was also selected by the Nationals, in the 27th round.

Tim Chambers was appointed head coach at UNLV, and recruited nine CSN players in his initial signing class. "It's piggybacking off the last [year] — we wanted to stay together," says Ryan Scott, one of those nine.

Six years later, whether they're playing or retired, many of the CSN players still keep in touch with Bryce Harper. But they're all watching. They say that the person they know is far different from the player who is perceived as one of baseball's lightning rods.

Sato: [The reaction] I always get when people found out that I played with him was, just, like Oh, he's such a dick. Really, that's the complete opposite of the Bryce that I got to know while I was there.

Higa: As far as how the media portrays him, I know there's little stuff that he does where they try to make him a worse person than he is. There's just going to try and find something to make him look bad. But I've never really experienced or encountered, me personally, him being a bad person. As far as that, I think he's a great kid as far as what the media portrays him to be.

Larimer: A lot of those guys who are off that team and aren't in baseball anymore, Bryce still stays in touch with a lot of them. He's never treated anyone like they're below him. Even since he made the major leagues, he's always treated us like a friend.

Medina: I'd always tell him, You better not forget me when you're in the bigs. And he doesn't. We still talk.

Jones: I remember going to my locker, sitting there next to him, and I look in my locker and there's a new pair of shoes. I'm like, where did these come from?' He's like, Those are for you, man. Thanks buddy! His first year in A-ball, I fly back to go see him and he picks me up from the hotel. We go to lunch before the game. He reaches in his backseat, hands me another box of shoes. I'm like, what are these for?' They're for you. That's one of those things, he's special that way. He doesn't have to do that, you know? He's a good guy. When we were at Salt Lake Community, my whole family wanted to come up and meet him. He's like, Yeah, let's do it.

Larimer: He still comes out to the field and hits in the offseason. We're real fortunate, every year, he sends me about five boxes with about six to seven bats in each box, because we swing wood bats in our conference. He's been really generous in his donations giving back to the program now after he's gone.

Campbell: How he is, off the field, just sitting at home with the family, watching a movie or back with the fellas — completely different than how he is between the lines. He's one of the more intense guys I've ever been around playing the game, but he has his moments where it's I'm going to laugh, I'm going to play a prank, I just want to joke around and do these things. Just like anybody else. But I think it's hard for people to grasp when you see someone that good have that kind of attitude and do the things they do, you don't want to accept it. You want to find a problem with that person. That's all it is.

McDowall: They talk about when he blew the kiss to the umpire that one time and everyone hated him since then. But I know for a fact Bryce is never a person that's showed up anybody until they started blowing it all out of proportion. Their team was either chirping at him or did something, because I know Bryce doesn't do that unprovoked. He never has. He's always just played ball but if people want to add a little extra, he'll add a little extra right back. So when he hit the home run and blew the kiss, I'm thinking, Attaboy. Whatever he did, he deserved it.

Campbell: He's going to be in your face. I'm going to kick your ass, say what I want to say, beat you. Pretty much beat you. And if you're going to pop off at me, I'm going to embarrass you.

Roach: I think a lot of people don't see the amount of passion he has for the game and his craft and what he does. When someone who's really passionate and they care that much, if you're not one of those types of people, you don't really understand the way they react to things, the things they say and do. I don't think people see that. They don't know. They don't see how hard he works and how much time he puts in. You can see the passion in the way he plays but I don't think people understand that because I think it's a very rare trait in people to be as passionate as he is and committed. And, shit, man, he's 23 years old. He's still a kid. Most people think about what they were doing at 23 and they probably didn't even know what they were going to do at 23. He's one of the best players or best at his profession in the world.

The Washington Nationals declined to make Harper available for this story.

Where Are They Now?

Marvin Campbell: Cadet, Las Vegas Fire and Rescue – Las Vegas, Nevada

Trent Cook: Sales Representative, GT Sales – Salt Lake City, Utah

Ray Daniels: Chiropractic Student at Life West Chiropractic College – Hayward, California

Scott Dysinger: Recruit, Henderson Fire Department – Henderson, Nevada

Cooper Fouts: Catchers Coach, Pepperdine University – Malibu, California

Danny Higa: Towerman for TECHISCO – Las Vegas, Nevada

Tyler Iodence: Medical Student at Campbell's University of Osteopathic Medicine – Buies Creek, North Carolina

Taylor Jones: Pitching Coach at Juan Diego High School – Salt Lake City, Utah

Trevor Kirk: Medical Sales Rep – Las Vegas, Nevada

Aaron Kurcz: Triple-A in Oakland Athletics system – Midland, Texas

Taylor Larsen: Student at Utah State University – Logan, Utah

Sean Larimer: Assistant Coach at College of Southern Nevada – Las Vegas, Nevada

Kenny McDowall: As of March 2016, last tried out for the Quebec Capitales of the CanAm League.

Matt Medina: Works at Depot Training Center, a crossfit gym – Tooele, Utah

Donn Roach: Triple-A in the Seattle Mariners system –Tacoma, Washington

Casey Sato: Academic advisor at University of Utah for men's and women's basketball – Salt Lake City, Utah

Ryan Scott: Assistant Slot Director, M Resort – Las Vegas, Nevada

Burke Seifrit: Carpentry apprentice – Surrey, British Columbia.

Kyle 'Kaz' Smith: Private Baseball Coach – Las Vegas, Nevada

-

 PITCHERS NEEDED FOR NBC WORLD SERIES tag:www.checkswing.com,2016-07-14:2099111:BlogPost:348027 2016-07-14T16:16:19.000Z Bart Zeller http://www.checkswing.com/profile/BartZeller
This is Bart Zeller, Manager of the San Diego Force Baseball Club, and we are looking for 1-2 quality Starting Pitchers (who isn't?) to go with us to Wichita. You can have college eligibility left or have been recently released by an Indy or Affiliated team. It's not all about the "radar gun" but this is a very high level of competition. Please give me a call, text or email if you or someone you know might be interested. Thanks.

Bart…

This is Bart Zeller, Manager of the San Diego Force Baseball Club, and we are looking for 1-2 quality Starting Pitchers (who isn't?) to go with us to Wichita. You can have college eligibility left or have been recently released by an Indy or Affiliated team. It's not all about the "radar gun" but this is a very high level of competition. Please give me a call, text or email if you or someone you know might be interested. Thanks.

Bart Zeller

email@example.com

847-380-6362
 PBI Baseball League Fall 2016 Registration Open tag:www.checkswing.com,2016-07-12:2099111:BlogPost:348120 2016-07-12T16:49:45.000Z Jim Monaghan http://www.checkswing.com/profile/JimMonaghan
For coaches and teams in the NY/NJ area, the PBI Baseball League is now taking registrations for the upcoming fall 2016 season.

This is a Sunday league running from September 11 through the end of October with playoffs running the first two Sundays in November.

Complete details are here on the PBI website.

For coaches and teams in the NY/NJ area, the PBI Baseball League is now taking registrations for the upcoming fall 2016 season.

This is a Sunday league running from September 11 through the end of October with playoffs running the first two Sundays in November.

Complete details are here on the PBI website.
 With scholarship limit, college baseball careers come with a cost tag:www.checkswing.com,2016-07-10:2099111:BlogPost:347928 2016-07-10T18:11:59.000Z Grant Clifford http://www.checkswing.com/profile/GrantClifford
With scholarship limit, college baseball careers come with a cost

By Dirk Chatelain / World-Herald staff writer

Anthony Marks is a 5-foot-7, bearded ball of fire.…

With scholarship limit, college baseball careers come with a cost

By Dirk Chatelain / World-Herald staff writer

Anthony Marks is a 5-foot-7, bearded ball of fire.

Coming out of high school in western Pennsylvania, he was a 150-pound outfielder without a Division I (or D-II) scholarship offer. But his summer baseball coach knew Coastal Carolina's coach, who invited Marks to walk on.

First time Marks took batting practice with the Chanticleers, he wore jean shorts and a sleeveless undershirt. He had a long ways to go.

Marks' mother works the front desk at a hospital. His dad is a disabled veteran. And after his sophomore season, he returned to Pittsburgh and had long talks with his mom about his future. Could he afford to chase his Division I dream anymore? One more shot, they decided.

"I kinda knew, this is it," Marks said. "We took the chance. Don't let it go to waste. Play with everything I had."

He worked his way to first-team All-Big South and the dean's list. The final month of his college career, he started the ninth-inning rally in a do-or-die regional game at North Carolina State. He scored the winning run in the super regional at LSU. He hit .387 in the College World Series. That's all before he made the play that saved Coastal Carolina's national championship.

Doesn't get any better, right? Put Anthony Marks on a college baseball billboard.

But there's something about the Chanticleer hero they don't know back in Conway, South Carolina, something that didn't make ESPN or Baseball America, something you won't see in NCAA commercials.

Marks owes about $150,000 in student loans, he said, and he's still one semester shy of his communications degree.

He's a poster child for college baseball's money problem. Major-conference athletic departments, flush with cash from football TV deals, are spending on luxurious facilities, coaching salaries and new support staff. But little (if any) has trickled down to the dugouts. Tuition continues to rise, but the Division I scholarship limit of 11.7 doesn't budge.

"We all see where college baseball has come and where we are now," Virginia coach Brian O'Connor said. "You flip on the College World Series and the place is packed. I'm sitting in my office now and overlooking our stadium. It seats over 5,000 people. This is serious stuff, and it's totally underfunded."

College baseball players aren't alone in the struggle. Wrestlers and golfers and soccer players are requesting financial aid, too. But their championships aren't producing $13.5 million in revenue for the NCAA (in 2013), far above the women's basketball tournament ($4.4 million) and all other tournaments aside from men's basketball.

Their games aren't stuffing ESPN2 and ESPNU the whole month of June, another revenue stream for the NCAA. They're not being asked to turn down six-figure signing bonuses from professional baseball teams.

"The financial part of this is ridiculous," Coastal Carolina coach Gary Gilmore says. "Moms and dads are spending almost $100,000 in four years, whereas football and basketball and a lot of women's sports have tons of full scholarships. I'm asking guys that turned into professional minor leaguers to take 25 percent (of a scholarship). It's just not fair."

Nor is it likely to change.

* * *

Mike Morrison knew he'd thrown his last pitch.

Coastal Carolina's pitching coach popped out of the dugout in the bottom of the seventh inning — Game 2 of the CWS championship series — to pull his starter from a 2-2 game. Morrison, a senior, immediately recognized the significance.

"It kinda hit me that I was done being a Chant the rest of my life," Morrison said. "I was out there crying on the mound."

As he walked to the dugout, Morrison received a standing ovation from the Chanticleer fans. He'd come to Coastal Carolina as a walk-on from Gilbert, South Carolina (population 586).

"I come from barely nothing," he says.

But Morrison did get good grades, enabling him to access academic scholarships. And his South Carolina residency provided a tuition discount. When Coach Gilmore offered him a partial scholarship before his senior year, Morrison turned it down. It made more sense to help an out-of-state teammate.

Morrison is $40,000 in debt, but he's been around long enough to know that's nothing in college baseball. Student-loan bills are only scratching the surface of college baseball's scholarship problem.

He's witnessed recruiting battles turn into bidding wars. One school offers a 25-percent scholarship, a rival offers 30, then the kid goes back and asks for more. Pretty soon a 17-year-old kid feels like a negotiator.

"As a teenager, it's the most stressful thing in the world," Morrison says. "There's so many numbers and little promises. Like, 'Hey, we can't give you money this year, but we'll give it to you next year. By the time you're this good, we'll give you this. If you produce this much, we'll give you this.'

"It's like the fricking NFL. It really is."

He's witnessed big schools bring 50 players to fall practice, half of whom are walk-ons. The fall season basically acts as a tryout for scholarship money. When an out-of-state player loses his roster spot (and scholarship check), his only option is to transfer back home.

He's witnessed 18-year-old prospects who don't have the maturity for 120 games per season sign a contract anyway because a $50,000 signing bonus beats a $20,000 tuition bill. Two years later, they're out of baseball entirely.

He's heard of teams being torn apart by scholarship distribution. The subject is taboo in most clubhouses, but what happens when starters on a 25-percent scholarship find out the freshman backup is making 50 percent?

As an upperclassman, Morrison told Coastal Carolina's incoming freshmen it doesn't matter if you're on scholarship or not — "that check won't help you in the cage or in the field." But he understands the reality facing a head coach.

"If you have $40,000 invested in a guy who isn't very good, but you have a walk-on guy who's good, you gotta play the guy you've giving $40,000 and try to get something out of him or you're wasting tons of money."

What makes it harder to stomach, Morrison says, is seeing full-scholarship athletes on campus. Football, men's and women's basketball, women's volleyball, women's gymnastics and women's tennis are head-count sports in Division I. Any scholarship is a full scholarship.

Baseball doesn't make big money like football and basketball, but 85 scholarships in football vs. 11.7 in baseball doesn't make sense to him.

"The No. 3 right guard is going to school for free!" Morrison says. "And we're buying fricking chicken breasts every night and trying to survive. I didn't even get a damn meal plan because it's $2,000."

* * *

In 2014, the average baseball coach at an FBS school earned $241,000, which buys a whole lot of chicken breasts. They have their own problems.

Half the headache is distributing 11.7 scholarships among 35 roster spots, one of the worst ratios in college sports.

The other half is the MLB draft. Because incoming recruits and upcoming seniors are often selected in June, coaches spend July piecing together next season's roster and distributing dollars.

Six Arizona recruits were drafted. Jay Johnson spent the week after the CWS trying to determine who will show up in the fall and who won't. He has walk-ons he wants to reward with scholarships, but he's over the "cap."

"Honestly, being a college baseball coach is the greatest training you could ever have to be a GM of a big-league club," Coastal Carolina's Gilmore said. "You're moving shells and pieces. It's insane."

Said Virginia coach O'Connor: "I've got Excel spreadsheets on my computer, seriously, for the next four years forecasting scholarship dollars. It's impossible."

Arizona's Johnson says it's a "really delicate balance" between assembling the best possible team and being fair to your players.

You need good students who can supplement their baseball money with academic aid. You need in-state kids who can afford to accept small scholarships. You need your big-money investments (usually pitchers) to perform. You need to find good values.

"Any time you get good players on lower scholarships, it helps you extend your payroll, so to speak," Johnson says. "That's usually when you have your best teams."

Only 27 of the 35 roster spots are eligible for scholarship assistance. Each player on scholarship must receive at least 25 percent. Do the math, and you'll find that most players are in the 25- to 50-percent range.

Offering a full ride is high-risk, but coaches occasionally take the chance on a stud pitcher (or a star bat like Kris Bryant) who turns down the draft. If the kid buckles under the burden, the program is in a hole.

Gilmore once opposed full-tuition scholarships. But the longer he coaches, the more he believes it's the only way to level the playing field. A coach shouldn't have to nickel-and-dime teenagers. Let him sell his school, not the fattest check.

"It's almost like a used car salesman's approach," Gilmore says. "If we're recruiting against one another, and you're giving the guy this much money and I'm giving him this much money, we have to try to talk him into it.

"It'd be nice knowing that you're offering the same thing as the guy down the street."

* * *

So why hasn't it happened? Because even though the College World Series produces big profits for the NCAA, very few schools are making money on baseball.

In 2014, according to an NCAA report, the average FBS college baseball program lost $764,000. Only ice hockey ($1.06 million) is harder on the budget. Baseball produces revenue at some successful schools, but most places it's deep in the red.

"Imagine the uproar if the NCAA suddenly said we're gonna take baseball from 11.7 to 15," O'Connor said. "How many other sports are gonna be standing in line to do that?"

Moreover, because of Title IX, any additions in men's scholarships must be matched on the women's side.

Then there's the parity hurdle.

Most Division I baseball programs aren't investing fully in baseball now — they're at eight or nine scholarships, for example. What happens if LSU and Florida suddenly have 15 or 20 scholarships? Would they stockpile talent, robbing the sport of Cinderellas? Would underdogs, especially in the North, pull their money out of baseball altogether?

"One of the reasons we have a great story like Coastal Carolina," says Ron Prettyman, NCAA director of college baseball, "is that the 11.7 does allow for a really high level of parity across the board in college baseball. It spreads out the talent."

But how long should the "haves" work in the best interest of the "have-nots"?

The debate, O'Connor says, reflects the cost-of-attendance movement that passed through the NCAA in 2015. Power Five conferences were permitted to distribute stipends to their athletes — usually $2,000 to $5,000 — while many poorer conferences declined.

As college football attracts more and more TV money — the Big Ten recently secured $2.64 billion over six years for its media rights — Power Five schools like Virginia have a choice: They can pump money into infrastructure and salaries, or they can help student-athletes with rising tuition costs. Which makes more sense?

Either way, there's a cost.

"If this thing goes to 18 scholarships, is Cal Santa Barbara in?" O'Connor says. "Shoot, they can't even build a field that has lights. They can't even host a regional. Last year, we played them in Lake Elsinore, two hours away. This isn't a knock on Cal Santa Barbara, but if we say, 'Let's amp up,' are they in? I don't know."

O'Connor thinks Division I baseball could eventually fracture. He envisions a scenario where the top 75 programs — the power-conference teams plus a few committed mid-majors — create their own division with increased scholarships and a TV deal. Maybe that's the best long-term solution, he says.

Here's the irony: The 2016 national champion might not have the resources to go all-in.

"Honestly, I don't know what my school would do," Coastal Carolina's Gilmore said. "I have to hope we would do it, but I can't promise that we would."

* * *

You don't win a national championship playing scared. So when the ball left the bat and the runner took off from first base, Jay Johnson had no doubt.

Send him.

The Arizona head coach, positioned in the third-base coaching box, watched the ball land six inches inside the line in the left-field corner. The crowd roared. Here comes the tying run rounding second with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning of the College World Series finale.

Everyone in TD Ameritrade Park prepared for the ultimate climax: a play at the plate.

Then the craziest thing happened. Just as the Arizona runner arrived at third base, the Coastal Carolina shortstop received the cut-off throw from left field. Johnson, who takes pride in his team's aggressive base running, had no choice.

Stop.

The next Arizona batter struck out, stranding the tying run at third and winning run at second. Johnson staggered to the dugout and watched Coastal Carolina's dogpile.

One week later, the coach still can't shake Anthony Marks from his mind.

"It's the first thing I think of every morning when I wake up," Johnson says. "I just can't believe he got the ball in as quick as he did. ... That was the play of the year in college baseball."

After Marks sprinted from left field and joined the dogpile, he found his mother and aunt, who pitched in to send him to Coastal Carolina four years ago. They stood on the field. They took a picture with the national championship trophy. "We did it," they said, over and over. "We did it."

That night, the Chanticleers boarded a plane and returned to Conway. The next day, they starred in a downtown parade. In all the euphoria, Gilmore told Marks that the San Francisco Giants called.

After a week of celebration, he's off to Arizona for another baseball adventure, leaving behind his final semester of school and a six-figure debt.

His buddy and fellow walk-on, Mike Morrison, has his eyes on coaching. He's witnessed the cutthroat business of college baseball. But when it all works out, when five or six walk-ons develop into starters and eight or nine in-state players take leadership roles and all the labels are forgotten, there's nothing like it.

"I always tell those guys I'll pay debt the rest of my life to play college baseball," Morrison says. "It's a crappy mindset, but that's the mindset you gotta have."

http://www.omaha.com/sports/cws/with-scholarship-limit-college-baseball-careers-come-with-a-cost/article_9c27f775-3564-5051-b7f9-f258c8c37fd1.html?mode=jqm

Contact the writer:

402-649-1461, email@example.com, twitter.com/dirkchatelain

 Pooky Gomez: One Man's Life In The Baseball Borderlands tag:www.checkswing.com,2016-07-08:2099111:BlogPost:347859 2016-07-08T14:23:35.000Z Bill Stanton http://www.checkswing.com/profile/Bill

April 1, 2016 David Mark Simpson

POOKY GOMEZ: ONE MAN'S LIFE IN THE BASEBALL BORDERLANDS

"Pooky? The scout?"

"He's like a consultant, I…

April 1, 2016 David Mark Simpson

POOKY GOMEZ: ONE MAN'S LIFE IN THE BASEBALL BORDERLANDS

"Pooky? The scout?"

"He's like a consultant, I think."

"You want to talk to the guy who sells bats?"

Pooky Gomez, 36, was the guy sitting right behind home plate with team owners and executives. I'd met him on the field before the game and assumed, from the way he leaned on the dugout railing and joked with the players in fluent English and Spanish, that he was a coach.

If you ask Pooky, he'll call himself a broker. Others call him an agent. His Instagram account is littered with photos of him on professional baseball fields along both sides of the border. Under one photo, of Gomez and Vinny Castilla, he and the former All-Star third baseman exchange compliments in the comments. Under another, taken before sunrise in the empty parking lot of a Food 4 Less, the floodlights resembling the lights of a ballfield, he writes, "From one Job to another cuz Hustle don't sleep."

***

Last season, Gomez, whose given name is Richard Alexander Gomez, worked a consulting role for Tijuana Toros of the Liga Mexicana de Beisbol, helping the team sort out its weaknesses and plug those gaps with American ringers down the stretch.

"Hey, do you know Lew Ford?" a Toros executive asked him.

He didn't, but he put out a call and within a few weeks the power-hitting former Major Leaguer was leaving the Long Island Ducks and crossing the border to join the Toros. Ford hit .372 with 23 RBIs and 26 runs scored over 30 games, leading the team past the heavily favored Mexico City Diablos in the first round of the playoffs.

After a few innings, on that first day I met Gomez, he left his box seats and joined me on the second deck. "I think the relationship I have with TJ, it's a multilayered relationship where they allow me to come into the stadium, be on the field, and allow me to go to the other side of the team," he said. "The way I see it, when I go to TJ, the first three innings are with (Toros executive Jorge) Campillo. Other than that, I'm on my own."

Gomez is short and well-built, with dark hair and strong features. He typically sports a close-cropped beard but no mustache, wearing sunglasses and collared t-shirts. He shook his head as he watched the bullpen fall apart in the late innings. It was a weakness he said he'd been warning the team about.

"I gotta get ready to go," he said, during one of many pitching changes. He had to get back home to Los Angeles.

After he left, I asked someone from the Toros front office if it was rare for an American to be plugged in to baseball on both sides of the border.

"He knows everybody," he said, shrugging. "He does a lot of things."

***

He doesn't like to call himself an agent, but Gomez has negotiated more than two dozen contracts for American and Japanese players looking to play in the Mexican leagues.

When CJ Retherford, a minor and independent league lifer, was cut by his Venezuelan winter league team, he wasn't sure how to proceed. The Dodgers organization had set him up down in Venezuela but now he was on his own. A friend recommended Gomez, who doesn't advertise his services. In less than a week, Gomez had three offers.

"Baseball, down here especially, is a very small, tight community," said Retherford. "It's who you know not what you know. You gotta know people. Knowing Pooky, he's a good person to know because he knows everybody."

Gomez, who's also negotiated contracts for players like Mac Suzuki, Pat O'Sullivan, and Demond Smith, learned the skills acting as a ventriloquist dummy for a former Mexican league star, Derrick White. After just over a hundred bats in the Major Leagues in the late '90s and a couple years in the minors, White found his pop in Mexico. Gomez served as his assistant for several years in the mid-2000s. He'd commute down to White's San Diego home, staying in his spare room for several nightsper week, crossing the border on game days, buying groceries, picking up his lunch, and taking his car to get washed.

Pooky at the WBC Qualifiers. — Photo courtesy Pooky Gomez.

"I'm learning the day-to-day rituals of a baseball player," he said. "I'm living with a baseball player. From getting up in the morning, having a good breakfast to taking a nap to going and working out in the gym, to make sure we leave the house at 3 p.m. because stretch is at 4:30." When White's son was in town, and Derrick was on the field, Gomez babysat.

"He's the guy that if you were in another state, you could call him and say, 'Hey man, I'm stranded,' and he'd come pick you up," White said.

White is a tough negotiator, but the Northern California-native struggled with the language barrier. Pooky became his mouthpiece. "I'm saying 'I'm calling on behalf of Derrick and for next year he wants this to be his salary. He wants to stay on the stateside, this and that,'" Gomez said of his calls to Mexican general managers.

When White wanted to stick to his guns, drive a hard bargain, it was Gomez who had to be strong with the powerful executives. "I'm laying into the guy and Pooky's like coming with this passive thing," White said, "and I'm like 'No, Pooky. Tell him what I'm saying.'"

Once word got out that Gomez had negotiated contracts for one of the league's best players, requests for help started rolling in.

***

Gomez's Trojan Horse is his job as a bat salesman. It's what brought him to White, and it has also introduced him to all-time greats like Barry Bonds and Albert Pujols. It gives him access to the front offices and the locker rooms on both sides of the border. "I'm Maxbat until the end of the trade show," he said of baseball's winter meetings. "After the trade show, I'm the broker, or liaison. 'I have a guy. You guys want him? I got four teams trying to negotiate with me for my guy.'"

MaxBat was founded in a garage in Minnesota and was completely unheard of in the Mexican leagues, which favored the big name brands like Louisville or Easton, until Gomez decided to sell them. Now about a third of the Mexican players use MaxBat; it's arguably the most popular bat in the league.

Gomez's route to bat sales reads like some reverse American dream.

In his early 20s, working as a candy-striper in an L.A. hospital, he started riding along with beer league softball buddies on his off days to games down in Mexico. One winter, these friends moved to Guaymas, on the west coast of Mexico, and Gomez spent weeks on their couch, using all his vacation time and taking multiple buses, criss-crossing the border several times in a single trip. He'd haunt the ballparks and try to get close to players for no reason other than an obsession with the game.

One day, while milling around a uniform shop, the owner learned he was from Los Angeles and asked if he'd like to sell jerseys back in the states. Gomez started meeting the owner's son halfway between Hermosillo and Los Angeles, near the international border, to pick up merch, which he'd sell from the trunk of his car at Sunday beer league softball games. Through Mexican baseball connections, he met Mark Flores, who was selling Glomar bats, then Route 66 bat, then MaxBats. They teamed up, adding bats to the merchandise in Gomez' trunk.

The owner of the uniform store introduced Gomez to Mexican league executives. Eventually, they sold a couple dozen bats to some of those executives. On one trip down to Tijuana, in which Gomez was going to watch his friend pitch—a trip in which Gomez's car overheated on an uphill stretch as he closed in on the border—he found MaxBat's posterchild: Derrick White. A friend got him into the clubhouse and Gomez sold White on a custom bat. Soon Gomez and Flores were taking turns driving dozens of bats down to White in Tijuana. Soon after that, the rest of the league took notice of the star's choice of lumber.

***

Last September, on the night I met him, Gomez left Estadio Gasmart in Tijuana and sat in the dark at the border crossing for something like the thousandth time in his life, and then drove the more than two hours north to his home southeast of Los Angeles, where he lives with his girlfriend, who he calls "my family." He got a couple hours of sleep, woke up at 4:30 a.m., took a shower, put on his uniform, and headed into work.

When Gomez leaves the bright lights of the Mexican ballparks and passes back into America, his primary job is stocking 7UP products on the shelves of grocery stores around Los Angeles. Throughout the shift, he's checking results and texting on one of his three business phones (American, Mexican, and MaxBat). When his shift ends, Gomez takes a nap, then wakes up and starts watching baseball, four games at a time: two on on his computer screens, one on a tablet, and one on his big screen TV.

He uses all of his vacation time, four weeks, to travel to Mexico for long stretches or to spring training and the winter meetings. Then, he usually uses an additional four weeks of unpaid time off to go to more ballparks in pursuit of the baseball dream. "Some of my co-workers that follow me on social media, they're like, 'Wait a minute, you're the guy that throws soda to the shelves at a Ralph's,'" he said, of his photos with pro ballplayers. "'How are you getting this access?'"

Pooky with Vinny Castilla. — Photo courtesy Pooky Gomez.

Mitch Poole, the Dodgers' clubhouse manager, once saw Gomez in his 7UP uniform and was taken back. "He saw me one time at a Target and he's like, 'Oh that's right, something's got to pay the bills," Gomez said.

What was Gomez getting paid for consulting for the Toros? Nada. He sees it as paying his dues and appreciates the access it gives him for bat sales. The contract negotiations started as a free service as well. He asked only that the players covered his phone bill. But eventually White demanded that Gomez charge for his services. Now he makes the relatively meager sum of $500 if the player signs, and an additional $500 if they make it past the all-star break. "I've been around the game long enough to know that a closed mouth doesn't get fed," White said. "You've got value. He sells himself short on that. I think things could move a lot faster for him if he didn't do that."

MaxBat pays travel and commission, but that too started as a break-even pursuit for Gomez. He'd buy the bats on consignment and flip them for a couple extra bucks when he managed to find buyers. When he sold the bats to White, who was a huge acquisition for the fledgling bat company, those were on consignment too.

Gomez's mother and father immigrated to Los Angeles from El Salvador, where they don't play much baseball. So many of the decisions he's made, both bold (like taking multiple buses to sleep on friends couches down in Mexico) and humble (like accepting low or no wages for valuable baseball work), seemed, to me, extremely unlikely. I kept asking him "Why?" and the answers inevitably always led back to anecdotes about his parents. His father, a gardener, saved up to buy his own gear and eventually ran his own routes. His mother made a savvy home-buying decision that pulled the family out of a neighborhood at the center of gang war and into a neighborhood with, among other things, baseball fields.

When his parents had a bit of extra cash, they used to give him and his younger sister $10 and drop them off on Sunset Boulevard for Dodgers games. After Gomez got caught tagging up the middle school and the police walked him through recess, his mother, who'd gotten Dodgers Fever after the signing of Mexican phenom Fernando Valenzuela, signed him up for Little League to keep him out of trouble. This is how he got the name. After he was arrested, his tagging name Poke (inspired by Gumby), became Pooky, after Chris Rock's character in New Jack City.

His late start in baseball meant that he was never very good. He didn't understand the game. In high school, he never played higher than J.V., and quit playing after graduation until his buddies recruited him to play softball. It was his time with White that taught him how to carry himself like a ballplayer. Once, while on a sales trip for MaxBat at a fall league ballpark in Mesa, Arizona Gomez bootlegged his way through scout school.

"I was sitting down doing my notes, people started sitting down. Is this a sellout crowd or what? It turns out scout school is about to go on," he said. "I put my earphones on and act like nothing and just start listening. I start listening to the instructor. What do you gotta look for, this and that. I'm like man, it's more complicated than I thought. I ended up becoming friends with the guy next to me and he started telling me more."

He uses the word "awe" frequently to describe all of the moments where he's gotten closer to the game than he ever thought he would. He was in awe when Barry Bonds picked him up and put him in a headlock. He was in awe when his cousin tagged along with him for a bat sale in the Dodgers' locker room: "We came here as kids, man." The border crossings and the nights on couches in small Mexican cities—those were never in pursuit of a job, he says, but just a need to get close to the game. "I was still just at awe for actually being there," he said. He was in awe the first time he met White, who loves Pooky but thinks he needs to learn to speak up.

"He could run a team in Mexico but he doesn't put himself in that position because he doesn't feel like he's qualified," White said. "He sells himself short on a lot of stuff he does. He watches enough baseball, he's got enough of an IQ, he's around big leaguers to everybody in Latin America. He speaks both languages fluently and he sees the games and he can get players. If he needs to get players for a Mexican team, he can get them."

This summer, the general manager of the team based in Lagunas is going to pay Pooky to find Mexican-American prospects—a step in the right direction but still not enough to allow him to quit stocking shelves. He wants kids, and he sees them in his near-future, but he feels like he needs to get his professional life nailed down first.

I asked him why he hasn't quit the 7UP gig to capitalize on his value: Start charging for every bit of consulting he does, every transaction, ask for more cash when he negotiates a contract. He recalled something Lou Lucca, a lifetime minor leaguer who played behind Albert Pujols and ultimately down in the Mexican leagues, told him.

"You're Latin and you're part of this," Gomez said. "Always remember this: You give back to your people. You give back to us. Somebody's going to make it before but don't forget. Because guess what: we're all going to get old, and when we get old are we still going to have our friends? Always pay it forward."

I asked him if he was worried that no one would ever pay it forward to him.

"There's been times but I've had a lot of faith," he said, "and it's been given back. Through all of this, I'm just the son of two immigrants. I'm just lucky to be here and be part of this."

 Join Eagles Baseball In Cooperstown This August - Looking For 12U Players tag:www.checkswing.com,2016-07-01:2099111:BlogPost:347783 2016-07-01T21:26:36.000Z Jim Monaghan http://www.checkswing.com/profile/JimMonaghan
Professional Baseball Instruction's Eagles Baseball Association is sending our 12U team to…

Professional Baseball Instruction's Eagles Baseball Association is sending our 12U team to Cooperstown this summer – August 27th through September 2nd!

Playing in Cooperstown is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for a young ballplayer with memories that will last forever.

The Village of Cooperstown, with its quaint, old-time feel, adds to the experience with baseball-themed shops, restaurants, and of course the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Professional Baseball Instruction will be holding three tryouts for our 12U Cooperstown team on July 13th, 29th and August 3rd at their indoor facility in Upper Saddle River (see below for times). To be eligible to participate in the tournament, players must not have turned 13 prior to May 1, 2016.

If your child is selected to play on the team, there will be two weeks of workouts – Monday 8/15 through Thursday 8/18 from 9:00AM– 1:00PM and Monday 8/22 through Thursday 8/25 from 9:00AM– 1:00PM at a location in Bergen County TBA.

TRYOUT DATES AND TIMES Wednesday July 13 7 PM Thursday July 29 7 PM Wednesday August 3 7 PM

COST FREE! (players need only come to one tryout)

REGISTRATION Players MUST register in advance. Please call us TOLL FREE at 800-282-4638 to register.

Can't make one of the designated tryout times? Private evaluations are available at a cost of $20.

Click here for our 2016 Cooperstown brochure.

More information on Cooperstown Dreams Park can be found on their website.
 157 -pitch game in HS tag:www.checkswing.com,2016-06-04:2099111:BlogPost:347335 2016-06-04T23:00:00.000Z Will Laurence http://www.checkswing.com/profile/WillLaurence

How a 157-pitch game in Kansas explains everything wrong with youth baseball

By…

How a 157-pitch game in Kansas explains everything wrong with youth baseball

By Jeff Passan June 3, 2016 5:29 PM Yahoo Sports

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/how-a-157-pitch-game-in-kansas-explains-everything-wrong-with-youth-baseball-212918744.html

LAWRENCE, Kan. – Outside of Hoglund Ballpark, where his team's season had ended via mercy rule moments earlier, Jeff Hoover stood behind a black fence, banned from the premises. A week earlier in a regional championship game, Hoover, the coach at Wichita West High, allowed a junior named Colby Pechin to throw 10 innings and 157 pitches. Kansas State High School Activities Association rules allow a maximum of nine innings in a day. It suspended Hoover and Pechin for running afoul of the edict.

West won the game in 16 innings and headed to the state tournament. It was supposed to have been a triumphant day for Hoover. He had resurrected West from the dregs of Kansas high school baseball. The Pioneers didn't win a single game between 2008 and 2012. In April 2014, when Hoover took over the program, they snapped a 122-game conference losing streak that stretched back nearly a decade. Here they were just two years later, facing a Shawnee Mission East High team stocked with Division I kids and one, Joey Wentz, likely to go in the first round of next week's amateur draft.

And they were there without their coach. Hoover wore his West maroon, his baseball cap, his standard-issue wraparound sunglasses and the veil of ignorance that kept him from the field. While Tommy John surgery across the major leagues this season has fallen to its lowest levels in years – unfortunately most doctors and researchers believe it's statistical noise and bound to rebound rather than signal a step forward – the number of ulnar collateral ligament replacement surgeries in teenagers continues to surge. A 2015 paper in "The American Journal of Orthopaedics" found 56.8 percent of Tommy John surgeries between 2007 and 2011 were on 15- to 19-year-olds, and doctors say that number is bound to rise in coming years.

Why? Because Colby Pechin isn't unique, and overuse in all forms – high single-game pitch counts, throwing multiple times the same day, too many pitches clustered among multiple days, playing competitively year round – pervades the youth-baseball landscape. This is the worst time of the year for it, with high school teams trying to stay alive and universities aiming for the College World Series. Previously the headquarters of arm abuse, professional baseball is today far and away the safest place for a pitcher.

In amateur baseball, the onus falls on parents and coaches – and the ultimate decision is almost always the coach's, which presents grave cases of moral hazard. It is 2016, and any coach at any level who allows a pitcher to throw 157 competitive pitches in a game does not deserve to coach. And those like Hoover, who either understand what they're doing and ignore it or don't understand and aren't willing to educate themselves – both of which, frankly, are unacceptable – must understand the damage they're doing.

So I came here to have a conversation with him about the subject and hopefully help him understand the research on the matter.

"I'm sorry," Hoover said. "I can't talk."

I asked whether it was his choice or if the school put a gag order on him. Hoover politely suggested I speak with Joel Hudson, the principal at West. I inquired the same of Hudson: After making national news, was the school now refusing to address the criticism it brought upon itself?

"I think he just wants to focus on being with his team right now," Hudson said. "I'm happy he's with his team right now. I just want to let the boys enjoy the end of the season. They've had a great season. They should be proud."

Hudson, I would find, had a particularly strong ability for completely avoiding the questions being asked of him. And understand: These are important questions, and those being asked are not indemnified from answering for misdeeds done to children simply because they're in the sports space.

I tried again: Does West have any intentions of implementing new limits for its pitchers?

"That's entirely up to the state association," Hudson said. "They make the rules."

Nothing, I said, prevents West from implementing its own set of standards.

"We'll follow all the KHSHAA rules," Hudson said.

Right, but KHSHAA's rules offer no limits on pitches thrown, which is a far greater indicator of use than innings.

"We'll follow all the KHSHAA rules," Hudson said.

He smiled. I don't know if Hudson was satisfied by his smugness or annoyed at my refusal to accept his sloppy attempt at spin. Probably both. I reminded him he wasn't answering the question.

"We'll follow all the KHSHAA rules," Hudson said. "Now, enjoy your day. That's all you're gonna get out of me. Hope you had a good experience here."

I hadn't. I came to see if someone involved in the destruction of youth arms would take responsibility and vow to do better. I found the same men as always: ones who turtle away from accountability. Though when I approached Hoover once more, he left open a glimmer of hope.

"Do me a favor," he said, "and call me."

Every day, it seems, a new case of pitching abuse pops up, and I ask myself when things are going to change. I spent almost four years writing a book about the pitching arm, and as much as I tried to focus on youth baseball and where we've gone wrong, obviously I didn't devote enough space to it, because here we are, not just high school and college kids throwing too much but barely pubescent ones.

One of the most resonant messages of the silly season came from an Illinois man named Thomas Blamey. In a Facebook post that has been shared more than 70,000 times, Blamey wrote what amounted to a public apology to his 17-year-old son Matt: "After I stopped being Matts coach at age 14, I allowed coaches to over use him. I take the blame. I knew his pitch counts like my own SSN. And because I didn't want to embarrass him or have his coaches think I'm a crazy dad, I let him throw until the coach decided to pull him. And often times that was after the game ended. Here is what can happen."

 Underneath was a grisly picture of a just-sewn-together elbow – Matt's, after his Tommy John surgery. Thomas said his son wants to pitch in college. So, presumably, does Colby Pechin, whose fastball reaches 88 mph and who is listed on a number of recruiting websites. I would have asked him, but a proxy for West said none of the kids on the team was talking, either.

Even if he weren't, that doesn't matter. So many of the arguments proffered by high school coaches and players rest on the idea that this is a kid doing it for his team or a kid whose arm can handle it or a kid who doesn't plan on pitching after high school. All of these are nonsense.

If a kid must throw 157 pitches for his team to succeed, that means his coach did a poor job developing other quality pitchers. One child should not have to pay for his coach's mistake. Similarly, nobody knows what a kid's arm can handle – least of all the coach who only gains from using it. If a proven method to predict arm injuries existed, perhaps then coaches could speak with such confidence.

The worst is the he's-not-pitching-anymore argument. The consequences of overuse do not end at high school graduation.

This is a minuscule fraction of the people who understand the consequences of arm injuries. To act like the deeds done in childhood won't resurface in adulthood is a moral failing.

It's just as egregious when done at the college level. Kyle Cody, a senior at the University of Kentucky expected to go in the top 100 this year, threw 137 pitches in a recent game. The next day a GM texted me and said he took Cody off his draft board that morning.

A Minnesota State-Mankato starter threw a 171-pitch complete game. Southern New Hampshire University summoned a reliever for nine innings and 145 pitches after he'd never thrown more than 3 1/3 innings. It's not just small-time programs. Clemson used a pitcher after a 2-hour, 41-minute rain delay. Rice and the University of Connecticut pushed pitchers well beyond reasonable usage on multiple days.

The battle for arm health often pits winning games against looking out for the player's future. This is an anachronism. And it will change once enough pressure descends on the coaches whose selfishness guides so many of these choices.

I called Jeff Hoover this week at the school, like he asked. The woman who picked up the phone said Hoover was not there but she would send him an email with my contact information. I never heard from him.

In an interview with The Wichita Eagle, Hoover expressed no regret. He argued that Pechin shouldn't have been suspended – a perfectly reasonable perspective, since punishing the child for his coach's misdeeds seems excessive – but then dipped into the classic playbook of cockamamie coach excuses that only reinforce the depth of their witlessness on a subject they should be required to understand better than anyone.

"I know I have to look out and save a kid from himself," Hoover told the Eagle. "His velocity was the same as it was in the third inning. Everything was good. He felt fine. … He said, 'If you asked me at the start of the year if I would sacrifice myself for a chance to go to state for a game, then I would have said yes. I stand by that.' "

This is where a responsible coach commends the kid for his noble intentions, thanks him for his 100 pitches and removes him from the game, no matter how painful it may be. Because it's the right thing to do. Even if we don't know the proper number of pitches – and we don't – and we're just guessing as to what a reasonable threshold would be, implementing a limit among children is never a bad plan, not with arms as fragile as they are.

The KSHSAA rules, by which Hudson said West would continue to abide, are actually quite terrible. The nine-inning threshold is too arbitrary. Allowing a pitcher to go 12 innings over a 48-hour period is inviting trouble. If Kansas wanted to stop this, it could do what Illinois, Texas, Minnesota and other states are trying: implement hard-and-fast pitch-count rules.

This won't eliminate pitching injuries. Nothing will. Throwing a baseball at high velocities can be dangerous even among the most coddled kids. And clean movement patterns or superior genetics spare others from the pain of injuries. No easy solution exists. What coaches can do is play the odds, and those say the less overuse for a child who pitches, the less likely he is to get injured. I'd love to tell this to any coach who wants to talk about it and understand more on the subject – even Jeff Hoover.

He's got my number. I don't expect a call. I hope I'm wrong.
 The NCAA way tag:www.checkswing.com,2016-06-03:2099111:BlogPost:347421 2016-06-03T17:30:00.000Z Bill Stanton http://www.checkswing.com/profile/Bill

The NCAA way: students pay; coaches (and everyone else) get paid
 Dan…

The NCAA way: students pay; coaches (and everyone else) get paid
 Dan Wetzel,Yahoo Sports 22 hours ago

On Wednesday, the University of Louisville agreed to pay its baseball coach $1 million per year. (Repeat: baseball.) With various bonuses, Dan McDonnell's annual compensation can actually go even higher than that. He is believed to be among, if not the, highest paid baseball coach in the country.

There was some howling over the idea of a college baseball coach breaking into the million-dollar club. This was misplaced. This is America and this is capitalism and McDonnell is worth whatever he can get someone to pay him. Good for him. And Louisville can decide whatever it wants to pay its employees. Good for it.

The more germane point is this: while eye-popping coaches' salaries are nothing new in football and men's basketball, as uneasy as it is seeing millions go to them and "just" full scholarships to the players, in college baseball that isn't even the case.

Louisville, for instance, lists 38 players on its baseball roster, 30 of which have appeared regularly in games this season. However, NCAA rules say Louisville can only offer 11.7 scholarships. Part of McDonnell's job is divvying up a pool of money that covers less than 30 percent of what would be needed for every player to get a full ride.

Alabama football coach Nick Saban may be making over $7 million per year, and his players deserve a larger share of the revenue they produce (namely via profits off their name and likeness). Eighty-five of them, more than enough to field a football team (the NFL roster limit is 53), get full rides, though.

At least there is that.

____________________

The disparity in so-called non-revenue sports is disturbing, especially as coaches are valued above seven-figures annually and games are blanketed over ESPN and conference cable television networks.

It also illustrates the tortured economic logic that college sports employs. It is half Marxism, half capitalism … only the half of each that it subscribes to always wind up benefiting coaches and administrators over the athletes and their families.

There are three main excuses offered as to why baseball (and other Olympic sports from golf to gymnastics to soccer to lacrosse) scholarships are limited well below full roster: cost, so-called competitive balance and in the case of men's sports, compliance with Title IX, a federal law that requires an equal number of athletic scholarships for men and women. Since there is no female equivalent to football (and its 85 scholarships) other men's sports need to be limited in an effort to bridge the gap.

This is a cop-out, of course.

Softball, like baseball, has grown in popularity, yet the NCAA allows just 12 scholarships, or just 0.3 more than baseball. That still doesn't come close to covering a full roster, which typically has two-dozen or more players. If Title IX is a big deal, then why not double up for the women rather than starve everyone?

As for costs, major programs are rich in revenue, hence the soaring coaches' salaries, staffing increases and so on. To say there isn't money is absurd. Just look around. There is enough to load up on Olympic scholarships and allow football stars to share in marketing revenue.

In terms of competitive balance, yes, it's true some schools are wealthier than others. The University of Texas could easily handle more scholarships. UT-Arlington might not. So what? They aren't meant to be identical. Texas wins nearly every recruiting battle anyway.

____________________

The idea of limiting "compensation" for the players to balance things out, but not limiting the compensation of coaches and administrators or the size and scope of facilities to lure the best talent in (adding value above the cost of the scholarship) is something only the bosses could believe in. It just shifted the payout model.

The construction of top-line facilities is surely appreciated by the players who get to train and play in modern opulence. Here's guessing every one of them would take their old locker in lieu of a full ride.

Scholarships limits are wrong to begin with. Let Texas offer 50 per team if it wants. No one limits the number of athletic department employees it can hire or the size of the stadium it can design. No one says the engineering department can only go grant aide to whatever number of students a poorer school can afford. Let the market work itself out. Since this is likely too radical for most, let's agree to this: if there is going to be a cap, however, it should at least be high enough to cover the roster.

Would smaller programs struggle to defeat bigger programs as more of the best players flock to the biggest schools? Perhaps, but there is already a recruiting imbalance. Playing time and other factors can still be important. In supposedly protecting the little guy, it's the real little guys – players and their families – who lose out.

Thousands of additional scholarships would be well worth the risk, particularly as tuition soars. It's far better than a system where a few kids get full scholarships, some get partials and many get nothing.

The interesting part with softball and swimming and other capped sports is that it crushes one of College Sports Inc.'s chief arguments against allowing football and basketball players to get additional pay or a cut of jersey sales or autograph deals. Supposedly a team where "pay" is unequal in favor of star players would cause chaos and require a system impossible to devise. Yet that's exactly how all the other sports on campus operate (not to mention pro team and any company).

So which side do college administrators believe? Whatever one limits the rights and remuneration of the athletes in a particular argument, of course.

____________________

This is how the legislative process views athletes though. Consider another bit of news Wednesday: the mind-numbing decision out of the Big 12 to maintain restrictions on non-scholarship players who wish to transfer within the conference.

It goes like this: Let's say you are a volleyball player at Kansas State, but there is no scholarship money for you, so you are paying your own way and excelling on the team. The Kansas coach says he likes you so much he will give you a scholarship. Great. Except you can't just transfer to Kansas. You have to sit out one year and lose a full season of eligibility, essentially cutting your college career from four years to three. In practicality, it makes transferring prohibitive for upperclassmen, the most common walk-ons who develop into good players.

So coaches and administrators believe that even students who are paying tens of thousands of dollars to play for them should face a punishment for leaving to go to another conference school that instead values them and is offering to foot the bill.

How? Why? What the hell? According to Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby, some coaches didn't want other coaches recruiting players off other rosters, players, mind you, that are so lowly valued they receive no money.

So an inconvenience for the coach means more than a hard-working player getting a scholarship.

Because college coaches and administrators seem incapable of grasping this, here is the proper reaction to such a situation: Shake the kids hand and say, "Congratulations, I'm very excited for you and your parents. This is great. Thanks for paying to play for us. I wish I had a scholarship to give you, but this makes me happy."

Here is the wrong reaction: "We need legislation to limit these kinds of success stories because it is always and forever about us coaches and administrators."

Naturally, no coaches or administrators have any problem, or propose any restrictions, on another school (in-conference or otherwise) hiring them at improved compensation. The university can even pay them a million bucks to coach a team that offers just a quarter of the scholarships the roster demands.

This is the National Collegiate Athletic Industrial Complex in full effect.

Play ball.

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/news/the-ncaa-way--students-pay--coaches--and-everyone-else--get-paid-184418269.html

(Editor's note: the Big 12 reversed course on the so-called "Baker Mayfield Rule" late Thursday, so walk-ons who transfer to another school within the conference won't lose a year of eligibility.)

 random pitching things tag:www.checkswing.com,2016-05-30:2099111:BlogPost:347412 2016-05-30T20:50:56.000Z don wilbanks http://www.checkswing.com/profile/donwilbanks
 pitching control. Just like in the movie "the patriot" when Mel and his boys went up on the ridge to take out the red coats to get his son back, he told his one boy..."aim small, miss small" When I was a kid we lived in an old brick house and on one of the walls I took a black crayon and drew dots about the size of a quarter ( Mom loved that one ) within the strike zone. One up and in, up and out, down and in, down and out and one down the middle. I would throw 10-20 at each location, in a…

 pitching control. Just like in the movie "the patriot" when Mel and his boys went up on the ridge to take out the red coats to get his son back, he told his one boy..."aim small, miss small" When I was a kid we lived in an old brick house and on one of the walls I took a black crayon and drew dots about the size of a quarter ( Mom loved that one ) within the strike zone. One up and in, up and out, down and in, down and out and one down the middle. I would throw 10-20 at each location, in a row, while keeping a ball/strike count at each zone ( i'm an only child, gimmee a break). But i'll tell ya what, I always had PINPOINT control. It's the old expression..." it's impossible to get worse at something if you do it over and over again,"....except golf...."hey what's that silver thing flying above the tree tops?"...."oh that's just Don throwing his club again."
 Players Needed tag:www.checkswing.com,2016-05-26:2099111:BlogPost:347075 2016-05-26T20:32:02.000Z Bart Zeller http://www.checkswing.com/profile/BartZeller
The San Diego Force, a member of the Southern California Collegiate League is looking for College Players who are looking for a place to play ball this summer. We will play approximately 45 games plus 2 tournaments. Our games are played at Madison High School, which is a very good diamond. If you know of someone, or would like to be a part of our organization (6 championships and trips to NBC World Series in Wichita) please call Bart Zeller at

847-380-6362, or visit our website or…

The San Diego Force, a member of the Southern California Collegiate League is looking for College Players who are looking for a place to play ball this summer. We will play approximately 45 games plus 2 tournaments. Our games are played at Madison High School, which is a very good diamond. If you know of someone, or would like to be a part of our organization (6 championships and trips to NBC World Series in Wichita) please call Bart Zeller at

847-380-6362, or visit our website or email me at email@example.com. Hope to see you, and if you are a college coach and have a player you want to play this summer, let me know.
 rule violation? tag:www.checkswing.com,2016-05-25:2099111:BlogPost:346847 2016-05-25T15:52:26.000Z Bill Stanton http://www.checkswing.com/profile/Bill
I've never heard of such a rule.

------------------------------------

The Torrance baseball team captured it's California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) Southern Section Division 4 first round playoff series on Thursday, knocking off Fullerton, 4-1. On Friday evening it learned its season was over, regardless of the positive results on the field.

As reported by the…

I've never heard of such a rule.

------------------------------------

The Torrance baseball team captured it's California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) Southern Section Division 4 first round playoff series on Thursday, knocking off Fullerton, 4-1. On Friday evening it learned its season was over, regardless of the positive results on the field.

As reported by the Torrance Daily Breeze, Torrance's playoff victory was declared a forfeit after CIF Southern Section officials determined the team had held batting practice in an illegal way before the opening round game. At issue was the method with which Torrance coaches pitched balls to batters; the Torrance coaches lobbed them up underhanded while CIF regulations claim they must be thrown from the side, so as to ensure it does not mimic the motion of an in-game pitch.

Here's the CIF regulation in question, word-by-word:

"Teams entered in the baseball playoffs will not be permitted to take batting practice on the day of a playoff game prior to the commencement of the contest. Batting practice will be construed as ANY type of pitching motion with ANY type of ball from in front of the batter (including pitching machines and overhand throwing).

With the consultation and support of the CIF Southern Section Baseball Coaches Advisory Committee, the rules are as follows … the only acceptable batting warmup will be side soft toss, batting tee work or pepper."

"I knew the rule, it just didn't occur to me at the time that they were not off to the side," Torrance coach Ollie Turner told the Daily Breeze. "I guess they sent in video of us underhanding the ball in front of guys instead of from the side."

The forfeit means that Fullerton will advance instead, and that Torrance finds itself out in the cold after an impressive season. The Tartars were 18-12 but held a 7-3 league record and were considered contenders in the Division 4 playoffs. Incredibly, Torrance's elimination by forfeit isn't the first to result from a violation of CIF-SS Bluebook Bylaw 1522.2, as the Daily Breeze noted. Just three years ago, Peninsula was eliminated via forfeit after the team was found to have violated batting practice regulations on the day of its third-round game against Santa Monica.

For his part, Turner was quick to shoulder the blame for his team's elimination himself, expressing disappointment that his players were not allowed to appeal the ruling that ended their season.

"We were hoping they could fire or suspend us coaches and let the kids play on," Turner told the Daily Breeze. "The bottom line is I messed it up. It's something I have to live with."

 Pepper tag:www.checkswing.com,2016-05-20:2099111:BlogPost:342831 2016-05-20T19:42:19.000Z Bill Stanton http://www.checkswing.com/profile/Bill
This was in Peter Gammons' blog.

Ted Williams used to play pepper almost every day, for what he said…

This was in Peter Gammons' blog.

Ted Williams used to play pepper almost every day, for what he said was the feel of manipulating the bat and getting the daily feel of exacting the barrel of the bat to the ball. Yet, for a number of reasons like complaints by ground crews that players dug up the grass with their games, pepper has virtually disappeared in the baseball culture; in fact, Walt Weiss says "most kids today wouldn't know what we're talking about when we mention it."

I loved pepper. When I was travelling with the Red Sox for the Boston Globe in the seventies and eighties and would work out when the Sox took early hitting, Johnny Pesky would warm me up with 15-20 minutes of pepper.

Boston had two of the best fielding pitchers in the game, Tom Burgmeier and Bill Campbell, and they played what they called "Killer Pepper," to improve fielding and practice getting into a fielding position after releasing their throws. My shins will hurt.

Somewhere over the years, grounds crew and ballpark administrators outlawed pepper games.

But Dodgers manager Dave Roberts has brought it back. For the last three weeks, he and his staff have taken Joc Pederson out at 2:45 every afternoon to play pepper, in Roberts words 'to help Pederson regain the feel of manipulating the bathead.' Pederson hit two home runs Tuesday night, but Roberts feels that more importantly for a young player who hit .178 in the second half last season, he has begun to use the whole field and develop as a pure hitter. His on base is up to .368. "He has shown the ability to manipulate the bat and take balls to all fields," says Dodger Pres. Andrew Friedman, a devotee of pepper when he was playing at Tulane.

Trayce Thompson is now taking it up. And their housemate Corey Seager has requested to join.

Roberts and Weiss remember what pepper games meant when they were in high school and college. Weiss instituted pepper games in this year's spring training, and yesterday said he may encourage players to do it in the regular season. And have pitchers have their own pepper games. "It's good for lot of things," says Weiss, "including team-building."
 Marty Schupak's latest youth sports article on T-Ball fielding tag:www.checkswing.com,2016-05-15:2099111:BlogPost:342806 2016-05-15T03:57:46.000Z Marty Schupak http://www.checkswing.com/profile/MartySchupak
 This article is from Marty Schupak's

 best selling ebook: T-Ball Skills & Drills…

 This article is from Marty Schupak's

 best selling ebook: T-Ball Skills & Drills T-Ball Skills & Drills (book) By Marty Schupak

 Fielding

In t-ball with regard to fielding, the number one goal is not to catch the ball. The number one goal is we want develop confidence and try not have the player get hurt by the ball hitting them or making them afraid of the ball.

There are different stages for a youth player to learn how to catch a ball. In the early stages of a youngster's life, he will catch a kick ball or a large plastic ball by cradling it against his body. Kids develop their motor skills at different ages and some might develop them very young. Others may develop them later on.

A youngster can be as old 8 or 9 when he or she first becomes comfortable catching a ball with their hands. There are numerous factors that go into this. Besides the development of the motor skills, a big factor is if the youngster has an older brother or sister who plays baseball or softball. Kids that practice with their older peers may have an advantage because of the added repetitions they are getting. Whatever the reason for this development, the kids themselves will not mind that much because another player can catch a fly ball and they can't. What you have to do as coach is to explain to the parents how each player develops at a different pace and not to feel self conscious if their own kids look like they lack talent at 5, 6 or 7 years of age. In our overly competitive society, many parents cannot accept that another child can throw or hit a ball better than their own child. I have seen youngsters who looked awkward and clumsy at a young age in a sport and end up becoming All County in high school in that sport. I have also seen kids who I thought would never amount to anything in life become very successful. I rememeber one youngster who was the biggest pain in the neck on my team as a eleven and twelve year old. I never though he would amount to anything. I met him in my town about twenty years later when he stopped me. I was shocked for two reasons. The first was that he was coaching his son's baseball team because of me. And the second was he had just become one of the youngest judges in our state. So we are all guilty of pre-judging people. And parents sensitivity with their own kid's ability at anything can get out of hand. So beware and keep your parents calm if they seem upset at their own kids.

And when it comes to the fielding skill itself we as youth coaches have to put the t-ball players in the best position to succeed. I have repeated this over and over again, but it drives me crazy when a first year t-ball coach will begin his practice throwing fly balls to his players. This is the best way to turn a youngster away from baseball if he gets hit in the head with one of the very first balls thrown to him.

In athletics, there is term used called the "Specificity Principle." The meaning of this term is for athletes who want to become better at a certain skills, they should practice that specific skill. A shot put thrower will get better tossing the shot put rather than only lifting weights. A basketball player who wants to improve his foul shooting is best served practicing his foul shots instead of shooting from the corners or only practicing visual training. In t-ball the developmental stage is so young and raw that coaches and parents need to think things out. When I speak about reachable goals, if the goal is not to catch the ball but only to make contact with it with your glove, doesn't this make more sense at your first practice? Can't we progress from this point? And if you agree that some kids develop differently, how about dividing the team in half with the more developed kids in one group and the rest in the other group. We want to practice as much as we can as a team but we want to be fair to the different levels of skill at this young age. So yes, I agree with the specificity principle, but t-ball coaches have to think outside the box for the betterment of the whole team.

 Ground Balls

In Major League baseball, when there is error in the infield on a ground ball hit directly at the player, most of the time it is because the infielder lifts his head up a fraction of a second too soon and the ball goes under his glove. This happens a lot when the infielder is rushing to make a double play. Like a receiver in football running before he catches the ball, the shortstop in his haste to get two outs gets none as the ball embarrassingly trickles underneath his glove. In t-ball the concept of just stopping the ball and keeping it front of the player should be emphasized. Of course we want the player to catch the ball cleanly and make a perfect throw to first base, but just looking at some of the gloves the parents bought their kids makes it almost impossible to catch a ground ball clean.

Ideally on a ground ball the player will move his feet to wherever the ball is. He will field it in the center of his body, with his glove out in front of his body forming almost a triangle with both feet. He bends the legs by bending his knees, not just bending down from the waist. He watches the ball go into his glove then brings the ball up to his waist then chect and throws it to first base for the putout. Oh, if life was so easy!

For kids in t-ball make sure you separate skills when practicing. If you are practicing ground balls, don't have them catch a ground ball and throw it right back. Have them catch a ground ball and carry it with them back to the end of the line or catch the ground ball and just drop it to the side. This simplistic idea works well having young t-ball players focus on one skill. You can and should eventually combine more than one skill but the initial teaching of the skill should be that skill and that skill only.

An excellent drill is the "No Glove" drill where you throw ground balls and the player moves to catch it in the center and in front of his body with both hands open. I use this drill for older kids because sometimes players think just because they have a $150.00 glove on, the ball will automatically go into it cleanly.

An excellent term I use which came from a close friend of mine, hitting instructor Bobby Woods is the term "soft knees." This is one of those terms you can use to help kids get used to bending from the knees and they will remember it!

 Fly Balls

Catching a fly ball in t-ball is a rarity but during the course of a season, players may catch a fly ball cleanly. I recommend you start by just having the players make contact with their glove and the ball. And state to the team that no one is aloud to catch the ball. This way they all have the same goal. more advanced players may be bored but they should be able to go through this for one or two practices.

Another technique I have used with t-ball players is one of those scatch paddles with a scatch ball. The ball has a couple of Velcro strips and they will automatically stick to the paddle. You may ask, Is this teaching a real baseball skill? I would answer that anything you do to give a 4, 5 or 6 year old confidence with fly balls should be tried. When you transition to the glove from the paddle, the player has a better chance to make the catch.

Another suggestion is to use a racquet ball racquet and tennis balls. These are hard to catch with a baseball glove and always seem to bounce out. But if you use the "just make contact" goal here for everyone, it works and the players love seeing and using props.

Also if you are a coach or parent having a catch with your son or daughter in t-ball, many parents tend to throw the ball underhand and the player is standing there with the glove open facing the sky. I think this is the wrong way to teach catching balls in the air. The ball can easily roll or bounce up right into the player's chin and we just helped the lacrosse and soccer coach recruit another player. When the thrown ball approaches a youngster from the waist up, you want the fingers facing the sky. Again the quality and condition of the glove will play a big part in the success of the player catching the ball. Just as I mentioned the "No Glove" drill for grounders, using rag balls or even bean bags with a player's bare hand is an excellent way to teach kids to catch fly balls. The coach tosses the bean bag to either side of the t-ball player and he only has to make contact or block it. And going from side to side is important because youngsters are not used to their own hand blocking their vision with their hand going in front of their eyes. Remember we want to develop confidence and not to hurt players or make them afraid of the ball.

Related Resources:

Baseball Coaching:A Guide For The Youth Coach And Parent

The 59 Minute Baseball Practice (video)

Backyard Baseball Drills (video)

To view the T-Ball Video Skills & Drills for free:

1) Go to the Apple App Store

2) Type in the keyword:

 Schupak Baseball

3) Scroll down to the video T-Ball Skills & Drills
 LOOKING FOR HIGH SKILL TALENT 40 GAMES IN THE BOSTON PARK LEAGUE! 781 891 0621 tag:www.checkswing.com,2016-05-06:2099111:BlogPost:341886 2016-05-06T22:18:19.000Z HENRY MUNEVAR http://www.checkswing.com/profile/HENRYMUNEVAR
THE GAMES ARE MON., WED., FRI., AT 7:30PM SO A PLAYER COULD WORK IN THE DAY AND PLAY BASEBALL UNDER THE LIGHTS AT NIGHT. MOST OF THE PLAYER'S ARE COLLEGE PLAYER'S. WORK ON GROUNDERS, FLY BALLS BATTING PRACTICE AND ABOUT 40 GAMES. PLAY OFF'S AT THE END OF SEASON. DINNER IN LATE OCT. 2016 FOR AWARDS. BEST TO CALL AND LET US KNOW WHAT UR SKILLS ARE. THIS IS NOT CHILDREN'S BASEBALL!! HENRY 781 891 0621

THE GAMES ARE MON., WED., FRI., AT 7:30PM SO A PLAYER COULD WORK IN THE DAY AND PLAY BASEBALL UNDER THE LIGHTS AT NIGHT. MOST OF THE PLAYER'S ARE COLLEGE PLAYER'S. WORK ON GROUNDERS, FLY BALLS BATTING PRACTICE AND ABOUT 40 GAMES. PLAY OFF'S AT THE END OF SEASON. DINNER IN LATE OCT. 2016 FOR AWARDS. BEST TO CALL AND LET US KNOW WHAT UR SKILLS ARE. THIS IS NOT CHILDREN'S BASEBALL!! HENRY 781 891 0621
 Environment. Teammates. Winning. ?? tag:www.checkswing.com,2016-05-06:2099111:BlogPost:341985 2016-05-06T17:34:13.000Z Grant Clifford http://www.checkswing.com/profile/GrantClifford
Question for this esteemed group of baseball people:

My nephew is 12, almost 13. He's played on a travel team for the past few years that rarely wins. Great group of kids and families. They are all close friends. The coach is excellent. Many of the players are just not developing despite good efforts from the coach. Many lack the athletic ability and view it as more of a fun activity instead of a game they are looking to play in HS or college.

The kids do not seem to…

Question for this esteemed group of baseball people:

My nephew is 12, almost 13. He's played on a travel team for the past few years that rarely wins. Great group of kids and families. They are all close friends. The coach is excellent. Many of the players are just not developing despite good efforts from the coach. Many lack the athletic ability and view it as more of a fun activity instead of a game they are looking to play in HS or college.

The kids do not seem to mind the losing all that much. Sure, they aren't happy to lose but they move on quickly even after an 0-4 weekend at a tournament where they get beat up pretty good. The kids really love the game and being together despite the lack of success.

My nephew has talent. He's blessed with size and runs well. He's finishing up 7th grade, so he has one more year then HS. If you were scouting him you would definitely say he's "projectable" to be at the very least an very good HS player. He also plays on his middle school team, which is decent but the coaching is lacking. He's playing a good amount of baseball and loves the game.

Sorry for the rambling but here's my question: Should we find another travel team for him that is more competitive so he can be around better players? Will playing in a more competitive environment prepare him better for HS ball?

Or leave it alone and let him continue to play with his friends?
 The Core Velocity "Touch & FEEL" Top 25 Baseball Programs tag:www.checkswing.com,2016-04-20:2099111:BlogPost:341758 2016-04-20T16:34:20.000Z Lantz Wheeler http://www.checkswing.com/profile/LantzWheeler
Hey guys...

Here's my latest post ....

After watching the "TOUCH & FEEL" videos found inside... (BTW - They're interactive videos that allow you to choose what you want to see and hear.)

Would love to get your feedback and hear what you THINK! …

Hey guys...

Here's my latest post ....

After watching the "TOUCH & FEEL" videos found inside... (BTW - They're interactive videos that allow you to choose what you want to see and hear.)

Would love to get your feedback and hear what you THINK!

http://baseballthinktank.com/the-core-velocity-belts-touch-feel-top-25-college-baseball-programs/

Trust what you FEEL!

Lantz Wheeler

@LantzWheeler
 Carson Wentz shows that quarterback camps just might be ruining quarterbacks tag:www.checkswing.com,2016-04-19:2099111:BlogPost:341938 2016-04-19T16:13:11.000Z Bill Stanton http://www.checkswing.com/profile/Bill
Carson Wentz shows that quarterback camps just might be ruining quarterbacks

On Football

By Adam Kilgore April 18 at 6:38 PM…

Carson Wentz shows that quarterback camps just might be ruining quarterbacks

On Football

By Adam Kilgore April 18 at 6:38 PM

 Carson Wentz, overlooked just five years ago, might be the top pick in the draft. What does that say about how quarterbacks are found and developed? (AP Photo/Bruce Crummy)

As the freshman team quarterback at Bismarck Century High, Carson Wentz stood 5-foot-8 and weighed 120 pounds. A growth spurt allowed him to become the projected varsity starter by his junior year, but a wrist injury delayed those plans until his senior season. Recruiting services did not create online dossiers for him. He matriculated without fanfare to North Dakota State, a Football Championship Subdivision power, where he would redshirt one season and sit on the bench for two more.

The wildly implausible may become reality at next week's NFL Draft. How many quarterbacks were considered superior prospects to Wentz five years ago? He has leapfrogged perhaps all of them in the eyes of NFL evaluators. The Los Angeles Rams traded a ransom to move up to the draft's first spot, and they will decide between Cal's Jared Goff and Wentz, the late-bloomer from a far-flung football outpost.

"Never in my wildest dreams would you think five years later, he's being mentioned as the No. 1 pick in the NFL Draft," said Ron Wingenbach, Wentz's coach at Bismarck Century. "It's almost too surreal to think about something of that magnitude."

At every level, the football industrial complex devotes untold resources into developing and finding quarterbacks, the most coveted commodity and most glamorous position in sports. What does it say about the efficiency of the systems in place that the NFL's top pick might be an lower-division college player who didn't start quarterback until his senior year of high school?

With widespread 7-on-7 leagues and a cottage industry popping up around grooming signal callers, the system continues to grow. Yet if the Rams take Wentz first, the top draft pick in a league desperate for competent quarterback play will be a player who developed outside the system. It may not be a quirk.

Wentz, some believe, is not a top prospect despite blooming late. He is, in some readings, a top prospect because he became he bloomed late. His delayed progression allowed him to develop well-rounded athletic skills and avoid the over-coaching – and, in some cases, detrimental coaching – many young quarterbacks receive.

"It's killing the position," said Jeff Christiansen, a former NFL quarterback who has tutored, among others, New England Patriots backup Jimmy Garoppolo. "It's destroying it. I don't think Wentz ever went to a quarterback coach. There are three or four guys that I had that never went, and they're further along than had they gone to a guy and become a mechanical robot. It's a glaring, glaring problem."

Wentz never attended quarterback camps or sought individual teaching outside his team as a quarterback. In high school, he played basketball in winter and baseball in spring.

"We're strong proponents of being multi-sport athletes," Wingenbach said. "One thing that a lot of kids miss out on, they get to hear the voice of a different coach. After high school, you're going to hear a bunch of different voices, whether at a job or in sports."

For this reason, Wentz never experienced the incessant or repetitive coaching that is common for quarterbacks who are identified early as elite talents. Quarterback tutors have become prominent. In spring, 7-on-7 leagues, both associated with high schools and not, are common. Many parents believe their sons must do it all. Even as some excel, the constant quarterbacking can backfire. Those pushed into the camps and clinics are recognized as the best talent entering college, but they can regress, stall or burn out.

"It's almost like some of those kids, if you're lucky enough to find me or a guy who gets it, your talent is going to escalate and you're going to play at a higher elevation," Christiansen said. "If you find a clown who doesn't get it, you're going to throw it better, because you're going to grow and get bigger and stronger. But they're not going to throw it more efficiently or play the position better."

Recently, Christiansen said, he knew six kids in the Chicago area who trained with a quarterback coach after earning college scholarships. Christiansen believed all of them possessed enough talent to land in NFL camps, and two could have been early-round draft picks.

"They were so mechanically broken after these two guys got there hooks in them, they all wound up playing different positions," Christiansen said.

Christiansen argues with parents who want their son to focus on quarterbacking to the extent of quitting other sports. Playing basketball, Christiansen said, is the best thing an aspiring quarterback can do: It improves sudden movement, hand-eye coordination and spatial awareness.

As an unheralded high school player, Wentz never felt pressure to quit other sports to focus on football. Once he got to college as an overlooked recruit, no coaches had motive or desire to rush him on to the field. He worked hard, learned a pro-style offense and, when his time came, he revealed himself to be an unlikely NFL prospect. The process didn't hurt him; it helped.

"I think that has a direct relationship," Wingenbach said. "I look back at the recruiting process. If he would have been 6-2, 6-5 as a sophomore, I'm almost certain he would have been more highly recruited coming out of high school. It would have made a world of difference of football."

Quarterbacks have proven they can reach the NFL, and even thrive, after meager beginnings. Two years ago, the Patriots made Garoppolo the fifth quarterback taken when they chose him early in the third round out of Eastern Illinois, the school where Tony Romo played. Aaron Rodgers, perhaps the best quarterback in the NFL, launched his career at a junior college where coaches allowed his confident, free-wheeling style to flourish.

Wentz will become the latest. His unique background shaped him as he surpassed all the quarterbacks considered superior to him a short time ago. It may be instructive. It is also hard to believe.

"I'm gonna be real honest," Wingenbach said. "It's been unreal."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/sports/wp/2016/04/18/carson-wentz-shows-that-quarterback-camps-just-might-be-ruining-quarterbacks/

 Attention to Defense tag:www.checkswing.com,2016-04-18:2099111:BlogPost:341933 2016-04-18T20:15:35.000Z Bill Stanton http://www.checkswing.com/profile/Bill
Peter Gammons: Troy Tulowitzki, Travis Shaw, and attention to the defensive side

April 16, 2016 by Peter Gammons…

Peter Gammons: Troy Tulowitzki, Travis Shaw, and attention to the defensive side

April 16, 2016 by Peter Gammons

Less than a 16th of the season had passed Friday night, and Troy Tulowitzki was hitting .139. "I don't care," said Blue Jays manager John Gibbons, "if he doesn't get another hit all season. His defense is that good."

"Of course," laughed Gibbons, "he will get another hit."

A week and a half of a six month season leads to a wasteland of hyperbole. Tulowitzki is an 11 year star with a .295/.368/.506 slash line, a 121 OPS+ and an .874 OPS that is elite for a shortstop. He's made some adjustments in his swing that have yet to be in sync.

Worry not. He is out of Colorado, where players wear down because they don't properly recover. "The hits will come," says Tulo, seemingly without concern. So will a string of 10 run games from the Blue Jays, which may be the best lineup in the league.

But on a team with a legitimate top-of-the-rotation starter in Marcus Stroman and an elite closer in 21-year old Antonio Osuna, what is most impressive about Toronto is their defense.

Russell Martin, Tulowitzki, Ryan Goins and Kevin Pillar are all elite defenders. Josh Donaldson is one of the two or three best third basemen in the league. Jose Bautista is not only cerebral, but a max effort right fielder.

"I have to believe there haven't been many championship teams," says Gibbons, "that don't have really good shortstops. Teams that win more than one championship."

The Red Sox may belay Gibbons' observation, winning three world series in nine years with Orlando Cabrera, Julio Lugo and Stephen Drew.

"David Price was everything we hoped him to be, really more when one takes his character and unselfish team attitude into account," says Gibbons, "but I really believe Tulo made this team what it was last season, and what we can be."

The element of Tulowitzki's defensive game that fascinates Toronto teammates and the staff is his throwing. "I've never seen anyone who can throw from more angles and positions that Tulo," says Gibbons. "He's a big man, but he plays like a little guy. His athleticism is beyond believe." One executive who scouted Tulowitzki at Long Beach States says his "gymnastic ability to throw was the tool that most fascinated me."

"I have always prided myself in my throwing," says Tulowitzki. "Even in high school, I worked on it. I still work very hard on it. I try to take balls at every type of angle, in the hole, up the middle, charging… Sure, there were times in Colorado with the air that I got pretty tired. But throwing is something I believe has to be worked on constantly."

"You see infielders take ground balls, but very seldom do you see them take the grounders and make throws the way they do in games," says Gibbons. Catchers work on their throwing. The best outfielders do." (I remember shagging with Dwight Evans in early batting practice on the road, and he always power-shagged, busting his behind to get in position to properly catch balls and go right into his throw. That work ethic resulted in being one of the best right fielders of his generation, and a big part of his throwing was always catching balls in position to step and throw)

Teamates claim Tulowitzki often says that the majority of infielders' errors come on throws. In his 11 major league seasons, Tulowitzki had made 74 errors (none since being traded to the Jays). Of those 74 errors, 33 are listed in Baseball Reference as being on throws. He made seven errors on throws his rookie seasons, five one other season. Period.

In 2015-16, 283 of the 608 errors by shortstops—46.5%–have come on throws.

In his career, he leads shortstops in assists, range factor and total zone runs. This season Tulo, Xander Bogaerts and Addison Russell lead all MLB shortstops in total zone runs at shortstop, albeit a small sample size.

Arguably the best, most reliable thrower in the last forty years was Alan Trammell. In 20 major league seasons, he made a total of 224 errors, only 46 on throws. Twenty years, 46 errant throws (in his 20 seasons, Jeter made 254 errors, 122 on throws, while Cal Ripken's 17 seasons at short, saw 225 errors, only 50 on throws).

While the Blue Jays watch Tulowitzki's work ethic so that he gets rid of throws strongly, quickly and accurately however he reaches them, so too, on the other side the Red Sox have come to marvel at the throwing of Travis Shaw.

Now, for a guy who was moved to first base for awhile, Shaw's athleticism has surprised the coaches and the front office. "I know I am very impressive with his defense," says Dave Dombrowski. "Travis gets rid of the ball very quickly," says Brian Butterfield, "and he does so with arm strength and exceptional accuracy. He impressed all of us when he came up last year, but he's better than we imagined. And his throwing is special."

Shaw grew up playing catch with his father Jeff Shaw, who in his two-time all-star career had 203 saves, a 2.33 earned run average and a 7:2.2 K:BB ratio. "From the time I first started playing catch with my father throwing was really important," says Travis. "I always took pride in it. I pitched some in high school, but I have applied the pride in throwing to third base or any other position. I learned from the time I was a little kid that throwing is something that requires pride and constant work."

You see it now when Shaw comes out to begin warming up. He takes his warm-up tosses seriously. He likes to practice throwing from all the angles and depths third base requires from the time he goes in the field. The coaches kid that is clearly the son of a pitcher who made his mark throwing strikes, and has been doing it since kindergarten.

Troy Tulowitzki has the highest fielding percentage of any shortstop in baseball history. Going into Saturday's game, Shaw had played 16 major league games at third base, without making an error.

There is no chance involved. In Trammell, Ripken, Jeter, Tulowitzki or, as we may be watching, Travis Shaw.

 Tournaments tag:www.checkswing.com,2016-04-16:2099111:BlogPost:341929 2016-04-16T18:16:16.000Z Dion Chamar Owens http://www.checkswing.com/profile/DionChamarOwens
Can the people in the Checkswing community keep me posted on the future global baseball tournaments(that's including in North America[including the U.S.]) that are coming up? Because I am trying to play in as many as I possibly can.

Can the people in the Checkswing community keep me posted on the future global baseball tournaments(that's including in North America[including the U.S.]) that are coming up? Because I am trying to play in as many as I possibly can.