Chapter 11 - Do you know what we get to do today Brooks? We get to play baseball." - (Dennis Quaid in The Rookie)

The day has finally come. Months of planning and anticipation. All the training and lack thereof. The two months of batting practice. Its finally here. This morning we dressed in home whites and took our Camp picture as well as our team picture. Last nite was the draft and I was drafted by Coach Epperson, the manager of Boston's California Class A affiliate. Assisting him is hometown favorite, Lou Merloni (coached at one time by our own Franklin resident Coach P). After the picture we headed to City of Palms Park (the secondary field) to play the morning game against Mirandas' Marauders, headed up by Walter Miranda, pitching coach of the Lowell Spinners, a Class A affiliate of the Redsox. We were the home team and I was 11th in the lineup playing second base. Running (trotting) out onto the field it reminded me of all the times I sent my team out and telling them just to have a fun time, its a game. From my recollection of the morning, I had a couple of balls hit toward me, the first I wished I had a glove on my foot, but I did stop the ball (great hockey save). The second was a force at second, just aimed it at the runners head, lucky for me he started his slide and we got the out. That was pretty much on the field, I think I played 5 of the 7 innings.

Now for the batting. Very shaky. Did not get up till the third inning, the guy was throwing heat. By the time he got to me, I sensed he was getting tired. He got the count to 1-2 and I new a curve ball was coming. A opened my stance a little more (not much more or something might have happened) and sure enough here it comes, right down the middle, the tongue slips out the side of my mouth (ala MJ) and I reared back and all of the sudden the ball breaks to the outside and I whiffed it, not pretty. My other at bat was non-eventful as well, I believe another strike out. We lost the game by a lot. We went back to the player development facility and had lunch. Jim Rice was there begrudgingly signing autographs. I am not a big autograph type person but appreciated the fact he was there, but passed on opportunity. After lunch, changed into my away jersey and got ready to play another. See Chapter 12 for those results.