50 Homers is HUGE Again...

Congrats to former Tampa Bay Devil Ray and Pittsburgh Pirates slugger Jose Bautista on reaching 50 dingers… I think that 50 means something again and I think coming from someone like Baustista, it is an amazing accomplishment. I always wish the best for any former member of the D-Rays even though I don’t remember him playing for the D-Rays. He only played in Tampa Bay for 12 games, had 2 hits and no homers and was sent on his way. I DO remember him as a Buc. He was in Bradenton (my home towne) for 7 spring training seasons and he played for the Gulf Coast League Bradenton Pirates rookie level team twice on rehab assignments in his twenties. I have watched this guy hit a lot. He impressed me with his swing from day 1. That said there are hundreds of guys I can say that about and few of them even make the big leagues, so I am not saying I called this. I was pissed when the Bucs GAVE him away at the end of the 2008 season. Trading him for a weak back-up catcher was foolish. Sending him to the Blue Jays where he wasn’t even a starter was a bummer too. I remember watching him in a rare start at Tropicana Field last year at third base. He was a bench player who got the start in favor of Scott Rolen that day because it was a day game following a night game on the last day of a road trip. He made 2 key plays at third and drove in a couple of runs. I remember saying that if he could crack that lineup he could make a huge impact. I didn’t predict this kind of impact. I watched him this spring in Dunedin with the Blue Jays. He looked good at third base, but found a home in the outfield and started the season as the Jays lead-off hitter. His success this year reminds me a little bit of Carlos Pena’s breakout year in 2007 when he hit 46 homers. The difference is Pena was a first round draft pick and he had hit 20+ homers in the big leagues before. He was really just fulfilling the initial expectations of him. Bautista was a 20th round pick who had been a bench player and didn’t have much hope of being more with so many high priced players standing in front of him. I say congrats to Jose Bautista… Score one for the underdog. It isn’t always the high priced free agent or highly touted draft pick – sometimes the difference maker is already sitting on your bench… I still think it was stupid of the Pirates to send him to Toronto for Robinson Diaz, but I don’t think the organization would have given Bautista the chance to flourish like this. Makes you wonder how many other players out there have 50 bombs in their bat, but just can’t get the respect from management… I love this game! I love this hobby! Go Rays! Troll out.

Spring Training 2010

I had a VERY busy weekend, but the weekend ended the same as most do, searching through my photos sending them to various editors. One of my assignments was to pick a photograph from Pirate City that summed up the start of Pirates spring training without a word. I thought this shot of super prospect Pedro Alvarez had it covered, but the publication didn't agree with me. They bought a different shot, so I own this one (so I might as well use it...). Florida baby!

Spending the Day at Pirate City With My Little Brothers...

The local schools in my area had an admin half day today. That worked out awesome for me because I had the morning off from work. I wanted to check out some spring training action as I hadn’t been all week, but I figured I would leave the planning up to my little brother. On a side note, I would whole-heartedly recommend volunteering as a big brother or big sister to anyone and everyone reading this post. It is very rewarding and it’s just a fun thing to do. You can get more info from the Big Brothers national website HERE. Anyway, I called my little brothers mother last night and she confirmed that he wanted to go to Pirates camp. I asked if any of his friends wanted to come and a few hours later she called and asked how many kids I could handle. Well, I sometimes have a rough time taking care of myself, but when baseball is involved, I say the more the merrier! I knew we would have a crowd so I decided to rent a car for the day, went with a minivan, fortunately. When I arrived at lil bros house (we will call him Dan for the sake of this post) he had 7 friends with him. All of them had their baseball mitts and wanted to come along. We all piled into the car and hit Pirate City. I brought along all of the Pirates cards that I had and we split them up among the kids when we got there. I didn’t have too many current Pirates at all, but I had quite a few Akinori Iwamura cards, so every boy got at least 3 of them. I also gave each one a ball (not official league, but they worked) and a sharpie magic marker. We all watched BP for a while and then went off to the side to play catch together. Chuck Tanner came by on his golf cart and pretended that he was scouting the kids. He posed for some pictures with them (which I won’t post here) and he signed some of the boy’s baseballs even though they had no idea who he was. After an hour and a half we stopped our game of catch and returned to watch the big leaguers take BP. That wasn’t too exciting for them because they didn’t have a great view of what was going on from behind the batting cages. The nice thing was that as each guy finished his round of BP, they came out to sign autographs for my boys. I only had cards for them of about 6-10 players each, but I bought “Dan” a gray tee Pirates tee-shirt and they each had baseballs, so by the end of the day each boy had at least 20 autographs. Not every player stopped to sign for them. They were most disappointed that Andrew McCutchen didn’t come over as he seemed to be the kid’s favorite. Bobby Crosby and Ryan Doumit both denied our requests as did most of the pitching staff. Some of the most friendly players and best signers included (fortunately) Akinori Iwamura, Ryan Church, Garrett Jones, Brandon Jones, Tony Sanchez, Ramon Vazquez, Steve Pearce, Lastings Milledge, Jonathan Van Every, Brandon Moss, Chuck Tanner and Javier Lopez. The two best signers were Ryan Church and Aki. I only had 1 Church card for each kid, but he signed all of them, plus their baseballs, shirts, rosters and then posed for pictures with each kid and then signed all of their gloves. I had 25 cards of Aki (all in a Rays uniform) so each boy got 3 and then after I dropped them all off, “Dan” gave me back 3 autographed cards-an Aki, Brandon Jones and a Garrett Jones (my other favorite Pirate). It made me want to cry. Seriously, it did. Aki was in more of a hurry than Church, but he did sign a total of 25 cards and pose for a group photo with the boys. His English was better than I remembered with the Rays as he said “how are you” to each boy. It was weird for me to see my one of my favorite Rays in another jersey, but I am glad that he landed on a team that appreciates him and he really seems to get along great with everybody. I am not very impressed with the Pirates staff, but offensively, I think they are a team that can get on base and manufacture runs. I want to thank “Dan” and all of his friends for a fantastic day. I think the two of us will ride our bicycles out to Pirate City again next week and once the games begin, we will go to one each week. There will be more on Aki the Pirate in my next post, stay tuned!!! Spring training isn’t going to last much longer, but if anyone has any cards of current Pirates that they can spare for my next field trip, I would appreciate it. These boys loved getting autographs of big league ballplayers, but other than “Dan” who has a binder full of cards from me, the other kids had never seen baseball cards before. The hobby is in a lot of ways too costly for most of the next generation and I would hate to see my favorite hobby dry up and go away, so please, send your common cards of Pirates and Rays over here! I will also add that when players like McCutchen snub their young fans, it doesn’t help the games popularity any either. Go Rays! Go Aki! Troll out.

Greetings From Florida, Wish You Were Here!

I have received a multitude of emails this past week from folks who are jealous that they are shoveling snow while I am enjoying spring baseball. I don’t want to hog the experience, so I am doing my best to share it with you all. You are missing games of Simon Says, guys playing catch, guys stretching, walking from field to field and on occasion, guys swinging bats. Some have asked about the autograph situation down here. Guys do sign for fans and I love seeing it. An interesting factoid about the Pirates-their longest tenured position player, in terms of MLB service, is Ramon Vazquez with 7.026 years over 9 seasons with 6 different ball clubs. I think he is a lock at the back-up utility infielder position as he can play all 4 infield spots well and he is a hustle ball player. He is also a great signer, although he is not a household name, these kids acted like he was Albert Pujols when he agreed to give them autographs. I love seeing that.
Vazquez is one of the few returning Pirates players in camp. Most “veteran” Bucs were more than happy to sign for the young fans including the Jones’ brothers, but the newbie’s were more apprehensive. I had promised a list of guys who showed up early and here it is. I don’t have a complete list, but some of the names included Ramon Vazquez, Garrett Jones, Brandon Jones, Andy LaRoche, Jeff Clement, Bobby Crosby, Steve Pearce, Neil Walker, Jose Tabata and super prospect Pedro Alvarez. It was my first look at former 1st round pick (3rd overall 2005) Jeff Clement and the 2004 American League Rookie of the Year Bobby Crosby. In chatting with Bucs manager John Russell, no job is guaranteed, and there will be a lot of competition this spring. At first base Clement will be battling Garrett Jones. In the outfield Andrew McCutchen will play center, but Brandon Jones, Lastings Milledge, Garrett Jones, Delwyn Young, Steve Pearce, Brandon Moss and Ryan Church will all be fighting over the other two outfield positions and/or first base. In the infield Iwamura and Crosby will likely take second and shortstop with Andy Laroche trying to hold off Pedro Alvarez. The pitching staff is an even bigger mystery...
As far as camp arrivals go, everyone was there except for Ryan Church, Delwyn Young, Andrew McCutchen, Lastings Milledge and Akinori Iwamura. You have to appreciate it when big leaguers show up early for work. These guys are ready to play and they want to play, that is a good thing. I don’t know where tomorrow will take me, but I will be watching guys playing catch somewhere… More on Garrett Jones to come. I will leave you all with a pic of a sweet piece of lumber. Beats the heck out of a relic card if you ask me… Baseball is back baby!!! I love this game. Troll out.

Ozzie Smith Was NOT a Pitcher-MORE From Pirate City

Since today was supposed to be about pitchers and catchers, I will start with them. It seemed like there were 100 pitchers in camp and there might have been. There are 18 pitchers on their 40-man roster and another 18 in camp as non-roster invitees, plus there were about 40 minor league pitchers who will not be in big league camp, but were there anyway. I would say that all of the big name pitchers were present and accounted for, but I don’t think the Pirates have such a thing. Zach Duke was there. Joel Hanrahan was there. Ross Ohlendorf was there. Ryan Doumit was there. And so were about 80 other guys without bats. There were veterans like 38 year-old Brendan Donnelly and 36 year old Octavio Dotel fighting for jobs with youngsters like 22 year old Bryan Morris and 23 year old Ronald Uviendo. At this point all 4 of them have a shot at making the ball club. As far as catchers go there are supposed to be six in camp with just two of them on the 40-man roster. Ryan Doumit and Jason Jaramillo were both there. I did not however see 21-year old first round pick Tony Sanchez today, but he certainly could have been there. The catchers didn’t appear until late in the afternoon. The pitchers were out early and they did what pitchers do, they ran. And ran. Pitchers run a lot, especially in spring training. That is why I am so surprised that there are so many overweight pitchers in the big leagues. Those guys are always running. After they were done running, the pitchers played catch. Initially a few feet apart and ultimately like 100 feet apart. I didn’t take any pictures of the pitchers playing expanding catch because there was batting practice going on at a different field and that was more exciting. After catch there were drills. The pitchers were split up into different groups. Four pitchers including Ross Ohlendorf went into the bullpen area for a real throwing session. The other starting pitchers took fielding practice and this I watched. I was hoping for a little bit of comic relief. The Pirates hurlers didn’t disappoint. There is a lot of rust that gathers over the winter and for some this was their first time on the field in months. The pitchers took grounders, fielded bunts, and practiced taking the throw at first base and making the throw to first. The ultimate in BASICS. I am really glad they practice this at the big league level because these guys needed it! The first round of choppers off the mound guys looked good. Daniel McCutchen got serious air off the mound. Octavio Dotel has pitched in 562 games in the big leagues. He has 67 career assists and went 5 seasons without making an error. Today he couldn't hold onto anything… He wasn’t the only one. It was all in fun. If you look close at these series of errors by Dotel, Daniel McCutchen, Donnelly, Zach Duke and Joel Hanrahan, you can see the other pitchers giggling in the background. One day of drills is not enough to start making predictions, but you have to love just seeing guys in uniform out on the field. Enjoy the comedy of errors above, courtesy of the Pirates pitching staff. I am SURE that scenes like this could be witnessed at each and every camp in baseball. Up next, more drills, more stretching, more catch, but also some bats… Much more to come from Pirate City. I love this game! troll out.

The First Day of Camp

When you see palm trees sitting beside a foul pole, you know you are in Florida. When you baseball topped posts creating walkways, you know you are in a baseball zone. Greetings dear readers, your Troll is just now returning from an afternoon at Pirate City in beautiful sunny (and windy and cold) Bradenton, Florida. Yesterday was the mandatory report date for pitchers and catchers, but it was TODAY that the first on field workouts took place. An 8:30 AM run was expected this morning, but the 40 degree temperatures caused manager John Russell to call that off. I was there just in case, as were about 25 other members of the media and around a dozen fans. We were told that the players would be taking the field at 12:45 PM for the first workout of the year. Personally, I took the extra time to walk my dog and do some homework-others stuck around. I returned to Pirate City at noon. I probably should have stayed because while stopping at home I left my camera bag there. The bag contained my tape recorder and all of my lenses. I had my camera with me, but only an 18-55MM lens. Oops. Nothing was going on at noon, but the number of fans and media had increased times 10. I don’t think I had ever seen so many people at Pirate City before. Sure enough by 12:30 players in full uniform began walking out of the clubhouse and by 12:45 there were POSITION players on the field for calisthenics. I was quite surprised to see so many players showing up early. I am going to be posting about every half-hour to an hour today to try and give everyone the feel that they were there. Even without the 500MM F4 lens that I rely on so much, I was able to snap quite a few pictures. Stay tuned for photos, roll call and even some of my spring time predictions. MUCH MORE to come tonight, so keep on checking back. Pull up a chair and grab a cup of your favorite drink... The next post will include who was there and who wasn't. I love this game!!! troll out.