One week to Fort Myers.....

Ok - so it's -4 degrees out with a -40 windchill here in Sunny Minneapolis -- baseball in Florida cannot come soon enough.  I will again be blogging during the week keeping those who are in cold country apprised of the games/standings and of course the day to day on-goings of my hitting and pitching adventures.  This year I will be teammates with one of my friends from the summer baseball team in Minnesota.  After my first camp in 2010 -- I was given the heads up of baseball teams in the area and I started playing for the Coon Rapids Diamonds in the Federal League -- a 35 and over baseball league.  Talk about amazing -- so I have been playing baseball (instead of softball) in the summers!   My teammate from the Diamonds, DS (follow him on twitter @sorney), will be joining for the fun in Fort Myers this year.  The cool part is DS and I played on an All-Star team back in 1989 when I was in 8th grade and he was in 9th grade.  We were a part of the powerhouse Blaine/Spring Lake Park baseball program.  DS was a legit all star, where I was on the AS team because my team was terrible and since I was the oldest (and the best, but that is not saying much) player on the team I was the default (along with another player) all-star representative.   We had a very good team and mostly made up of 9th graders -- I was the 4th outfielder and more or less the first guy off the bench.   We played in one of the better baseball games I have been a part of -- we ended up losing to Hibbing 4-3 on a field in Proctor, MN in the bottom of the 7th inning -- I think we were winning 3-1 when the Hibbing squad took down the All-Stars from B/SLP.  I remember being devastated -- I did get one AB in the game and I struck out having basically zero chance of hitting the hard throwing lefty from hibbing -- I had never seen a fastball like that -- I didn't even see the ball until the catcher took it out of his glove -- I was not up for that challenge.

Camp this year will be breaking all sorts of records -- the camp will have the largest roster of campers ever -- a reported 120-130 campers will be there and 10 teams will be fighting for the championships during the week (rather than the usual 8 teams).  The other wrinkle is this year we will not be at Hammond Stadium (Twins Spring Training complex) because they are renovating the big ballpark, the clubhouse, adding on dorm rooms (for a player academy), a new minor league field and many other upgrades -- so we will be at the old Boston Red Sox spring training -- now called the Player Development Complex.  This complex sports 5 fields, 8 batting tunnels and of course a spacious clubhouse to house all the campers.  The Twins complex would be stretched to have 120 campers, before all the upgrades so camp 2015 should be good one as well!

New Pro Staff have been added this well -- Greg Gagne, Mickey Hatcher, Rod Carew, and Dave Goltz are the "new" pro staff that have been added this year since the expansion to 10 teams.  It will be interesting to meet the new guys and connecting with old teammates, pro staff, and the camp family!

I just need to warm up before heading out on saturday -- it is freaking cold here in Minny.

PB

~~ "You can observe a lot just by watching." - Yogi Berra ~~