Social Networking

When you live in a country that is 10,000km away from home, and the time difference is 14 hours behind, it may be hard to communicate with family and friends. Luckily with such websites and programs as Facebook, Twitter and Skype, staying in contact with family is easier then it would have been 10 years ago.

Facebook is the largest social networking site on the internet, it has over 600million active users and it allows us to leaves messages to friends and family and they can reply whenever they want to. So if I want to ask a friend something or just see how they are going, I will just leave them a message, and they can get back to me whenever they are online. Most mornings I will wake up and there could be up to 130 people online on Facebook, so It is fun being able to talk to all my friends and family. Like I said in a previous post, when I go on bus trips to Sarasota and Port Charlotte, I connect to the buses wi-fi using my iPhone, and spend some time talking to everyone back home before I have a little nap.

Twitter is relatively new, and it's not really used to communicate with people, it's used to let everyone know what you are up to. I do have a Twitter account, but rarely use it, because I don't have enough interesting things to say everyday. A lot of famous sports stars use Twitter, such as Australian Major League League Pitcher, Richard Thompson who has 4,000 followers.

Even though these social networking sides have their upside, they also have a downside. Since you are posting online, it is there for the world to see, so you always have to make sure you don't say anything or upload any pictures or videos that may upset anyone. In the past many athletes and celebrities have been caught complaining online, or have been shot in an unflattering picture, and have had to apologise publicly for their actions. Sometimes what has been put online in so severe it could ruin a players career and tarnish their reputation.

The internet isn't very good in our hotel, so I have to use Skype at certain times of the day when there aren't many people in the hotel. The best time for this is when you come back from the field early, and half the team is away on the road at a game. Since we are all away from home, when we are back at the hotel nearly everyone will be on the internet so the network gets a bit congested and if you want to have a good Skype call, you need to have a faster internet connection.

Without the help of Facebook this blog wouldn't have spread so easily, and I would like to thank the Facebook administrators for the Australian Baseball Digest and the Sydney Blue Sox for sharing my blog with everyone online.

Food

This post is inspired by the recent meal we were treated to during lunch yesterday. We have 4 Major Leaguers down here on rehab at the moment, they are Tsuyoshi Nishioka, Jason Repko, Delmon Young and Jim Thome. It's almost an unwritten law that when a big leaguer comes down to Extended Spring or to the GCL, that they buy a meal for all the players. Yesterday Delmon Young bought our entire team a catered meal, with grilled fish, hamburgers, fried rice, and salads. Needless to say it was one of the best lunches I have had since I have been here.

We eat breakfast at the field every morning, and it's just a selection of different cereals and bagels and waffles, you don't have much time to eat in the morning unless you find a way to get there really early, so I usually just have a bowl of cereal and a bagel.

We get the same thing for lunch every week, on Monday we will have Subway, on Tuesdays we will have Chik-Fil-A, Wednesdays we have Pita Pit, Thursdays we have Chicken Grill, which is rice with cut up grilled chicken, on Friday we have pork sandwiches with cornbread casserole and on Saturday we have Moe's Burritoes.

Its usually enough food to get us through until dinner time, but on many occasions people will go buy a meal after the day is done, then have a later dinner. We get paid $105 a week to buy ourselves dinner. I usually try and eat dinner at the hotel's restaurant, or make my own meals in my room. There are a few restaurants that are within walking distance that me and the other Australian players go to when we feel like eating out.

Stats

If anyone knows me well, they would know that I do enjoy studying baseball stats. A lot of people probably wouldn't know that in 2002, Barry Bonds got walked 232 times, with 120 of those being intentional walk, or that Alex Rodriguez hit his 250th career home run of an Australian pitcher, Luke Prokopec. I find baseball statistics to be fascinating, I always refer to a quote from a baseball movie that makes baseball statistics one of a kind, where everything can be documented as a stat, this quote "Last year he was was 6th in the league against right handers, he was facing for the first time after the 7th inning, at home". Now even though it is a line from a movie that is meant to be comical, if someone had the time to keep this stat, I'm sure you would hear about it in a Major League game.

Since I have a love for stats, I decided to keep my own stats in Spring Training and Extended Spring Training. Some people think I'm crazy and obsessed, but I just find it fun to be able to look back on every outing I have had, and remember what went well, and what went wrong. If you remember reading my entry title "Slumps and Streaks" I spoke about going through a little cold streak, try and notice what I was talking about in my game log that I have kept.

Duties - Video

If you read my post 'Duties' you would know that we do video recording of pitchers, these are videos of all 4 pitches that I throw, my fastball, changeup, curveball and slider. Enjoy

Fastball

Changeup

Curveball

Slider

Side View

Strength and Conditioning

When playing a sport everyday, your body needs to be in peak physical performance. We maintain this level by following a specific strength and conditioning program. As a pitcher, we run everyday, and are in the weight on days after we pitch. A pitchers running program is as important as their bullpen sessions. When you're in the 5th inning, and your arm starts to feel tired, its your fitness and legs that will carry you into the 7th inning. We have many different running activities we do for conditioning, and what you do depends on when you will be throwing.

Every morning we have light weight drills, a thera band routine and agility drills. We use 1.5kg weights, and they are slow shoulder exercises to get us loose for the day. The thera band routine we do is pretty basic, just working on internal and external rotation of the shoulder and for the agility drills we either do work with ladders and we work on quick feet, or we have hurdles, and work on internal and external hip rotation. We don't actually run and jump over the hurdles, we step over them, just incase anyone was confused.

Here in Extended Spring training we all are pitching on 3 days rest. The day after you pitch, you will do the interval run. The easiest way to explain the interval run is pretend the outfield warning track, is split into 2 with the division being in centerfield. You run to centerfield, and that counts as 1, and then you walk 1, you then run 2, walk 1, run 3, walk 1. run 4, walk 1 and then work your way back down to 1. It's a pretty good workout when you run it hard. Also on the day after you pitch, you are required to go into the weight room at the end of the day, and do a leg workout. At the end of the day your legs usually feel like jelly.

Day 2 after you pitch you could do 8 3/4 poles, which is running 3/4 of a pole. If you're unfamiliar with what poles are, its just running from foul pole to foul pole on the warning track. You could also do 100's, when we do these we are being timed. We run from the foul line, and go in a straight line to centerfield and back. We have 1 minute to get there and back, and if we run it in 35 seconds, we will get 25 seconds break. Its one of the tougher runs that we have to do. The last thing you may do on your 2nd days rest is the 4-3-4. It is 4 3/4 poles, 3 100's and 4 90ft sprints. On this day as well you need to go into the weight room, and you need to do an upper body lift. You can choose whether to lift heavy or light, depending on how your arm feels and how much you think it may be able to handle.

Day 3 after you pitch, or the day before you pitch, you will have to do sprints, you will either do 8 120ft sprints, or 10 90ft sprints. These are the easier of all ours runs, but just because its easier doesn't mean you should take it lightly, you should make sure you put in 100% effort in all these sprints.

On the day you pitch, you will have to run after your outing. We always do 6 120ft sprints, followed by 6 3/4 poles. After your outing you may feel very tired, but its important that you get the most out of it and put in.

A lot of people think that all we do is throw the ball, but there is a lot more we do behind the scenes to help make us a better baseball player, and a better athlete.

My Cleats

This is unrelated to playing in Minor League baseball, but thought it would be fun to share one of my many obsessions, my baseball cleats.

A lot of people who have played baseball with me, would know I own a lot of pairs of cleats. At home right now I have 14 pairs of cleats, all ranging in different colours. I have white, black, grey, black and white, grey and black, red, red and white, and Blue. While here in Florida, I have 5 pairs of cleats, 2 are black and white, 1 black, 1 black, red and grey and 1 pair that is black and red. I also have another pair of cleats on the way that are grey and black.

The reason I have so many cleats is that I like to match my cleats with every different uniform. While at home playing for the Ryde-Eastwood Hawks I will always be wearing a pair of cleats that are either white or red. With the Sydney Blue Sox I would wear white cleats, or my black and white ones with our home uniform, and my grey cleats with our away uniform.

                                     My small collection of cleats in my locker

                                   The cupboard back home that stores my cleats

Rehab

Since Fort Myers is the home of the Twins Minor League facility, all players that get injured and put on the disabled list get sent back to Fort Myers to do their rehab program. The extent of the injury would have to be pretty severe to get sent to do your rehab here, injuries such as a sprained ankle would not be considered severe, and you would stay with your team until your fit to play, but if a player pulls a hamstring or their arm blows out, then they would come to Fort Myers to get better.

The players on rehab will usually come to the field earlier and go to the training room to get treatment, and if needed they will go to the gym to work out. All their workouts are tightly monitored by a trainer. Each rehab player will have a timeline set for their return to games. Of course that timeline can be met only if they put in the work to get them self fit. Once they can see that the player is ready, he will be put in games.

When a pitcher comes off the disabled list, he will start the game and throw an inning, then the regular starter will throw after him. This has happened to me on 3 occasions in Extended Spring, having to pitch in relief of rehab pitchers when I was expected to start the game. If it's a position player coming off the disabled list, he may hit once every 2nd inning so they can get plenty of at bats, of course they can only do this in an Extended Spring game since they are not official games.

Often we will get a Major Leaguer down here to rehab, just recently we had Kevin Slowey here in Extended Spring Training, who has been part of the Minnesota Twins starting rotation the last 3 years. One day I was scheduled to start, but had to throw in relief as Slowey started that game.

It takes a lot of motivation to get out bed everyday when you're on the disabled list, and that's why I have a lot of respect for all the guys who are on rehab and come to the field everyday, knowing they can't play, throw, hit or run, they do everything they can to get back on the field as quick as they can.