Housing

While in the Minor Leagues you are required to find your own place to live, that is unless you are playing in the GCL or AZL Rookie Leagues where your club houses you in a hotel. Now once you get promoted and find your way out of those Rookie Leagues you will have to find somewhere to live and when you get promoted you will almost always have new room mates. 

Since the Twins have been in Elizabethton for a long time, a few families open up their houses to players to live in  and you just pay your host family rent and they will usually cook you meals so you don't have to worry too much about doing grocery shopping. The rent with a host family may be a little more expensive then it would be to live in an apartment or house, but not having to cook and shop makes up for the extra you pay.

In Elizabethton I have moved houses once already. For the first two weeks I was living in a house with AJ Petterson, Steven Gruver and Madison Boer. The house wasn't furnished so we had to rent couches and a tv, and also went out and bought air mattresses to sleep on. Steven slept in the living room, AJ slept out on the porch and Madison and me each had a bedroom to ourselves, but once AJ got injured and had to go home to recover, the rent and utilities for the house would have been too much for Steve, Madison and me to take on so we decided to move. With the help of some friends that work for the Elizabethton Twins, we were able to find a smaller and cheaper place that was fully furnished. Now when I mean smaller, I mean really small. Steven and me share the bedroom and our beds are literally one inch apart, while Madison slept on the couch in the living room. We had already paid in full for the couch and tv at the old house and weren't able to get our money back for that, so instead we traded in the couch and tv, to get a larger tv for equal value. Now we enjoy our movies on a 52inch HDTV.

Throughout the season, players will get promoted. I have lived with 6 people this season, soon to be 7. In Spring Training I was paired with Brad Tippett and then once Extended Spring Training started I was roomed with Jacob Younis. Since I was added to the Elizabethton Twins roster I wasn't able to choose house mates and I was grouped with AJ, Steven and Madison. Madison recently got promoted to our Low A affiliate the Beloit Snappers, and Tim Atheron was promoted from the GCL to Elizabethton, so now Tim will move in with Steven and me and take Madison's place in the living room for the last month of the season. While on the road I am roomed with fellow pitcher Tim Shibuya.

While on the road we get to stay in hotels, and it is a pleasant change to be sleeping in a bed for a few nights, but it's always nice to head back to Elizabethton and sleep in my small house on my air mattress