SPRING TRAINING SUCCESS DOWN
THIS YEAR
Like so
many of you. I labor during the months of December and
January to get letters ready to send to the baseball spring
training sites. Up to recently I could always depend on a
67-70% success rate. This season though, I've seen my
success fall of dramatically. As of June 14th, I've
only received 125 responses out
of the 244 letters that I sent. No, I don't send to the big
names. My letters go out to the prospects for the most
part. I figured I'd use the first part of this article to
let you know who I have failed to have success with.
Perhaps I can save you some labor and postage.
Failed in my second time
attempting both Sergio Santos and Edgar Gonzalez. No luck
from Carlos Quentin, either. I got 5 of 9 back from the
Cubs. The only non-response that surprised me was Chadd
Blasko. No responses from Florida's Don
Levinski or Montreal's Chad Cordero. I didn't expect to
hear from St Louis' Renteria or Greg Vaughn, but Adam Wainwright, Chris Carpenter
and Evan Rust? They surprised me. No luck with the Mets
Jason Roach or Joe McEwing either.
Cinncinnatti's Ty Howington
failed to respond which was no surprise. I also failed to
get back Justin Moseley, Ray Olmedo, Jesus Sanchez, Chris
Booker and Jimmy Haynes. Houston's failures were Eric
Bruntlett, and the second time each for Taylor Buchholz and
Jerome Robertson. I only got one of seven of my Giant
letters back, failing with Pedro Feliz, Dan Ortmeier, Mike
Wagner, Dustin Mohr, Dan Lewis and Michael Tucker. Los
Angeles gave me no success with Chad Billingsley, Juan
Encarnacion, Greg Miller and Dionner Sanchez.
The American League faired
little better. No response from Baltimore's Brian Finch,
Cleveland's Jason Cooper (twice), Brad Snyder, Ricardo
Rodriguez, Shane Wallace, Giovanni Cabrera and Jose Jiminez.
No luck with Detroit's Will Ledezma, Nook Logan, and
Fernando Vina. No luck with Milwaukee's Tony Gwynn Jr.,
Lyle Overbay, Dave Pember, and Corey Hart and Junior
Spivey. The only two Yankee's that failed to respond to my
requests were Robinson Cano and Tim Battle. Toronto's Josh
Phelps, Aquilino Lopez, and Tanyon Sturtze were non
responders as well. With Anaheim, the double play
combnation of Alberto Callaspo and Eric Aybar let me down.
Kansas City's Brian Anderson failed to respond for the
fourth time. No luck with Tony Pena, Alvin Moye and Kris
Wilson either. Even Chris Lubanski didn't come back from
spring training and he's a great signer in Burlington. For
Oakland I failed to get back Graham Koonce and Omar
Quintinilla. Tampa Bay was another real poor responder. I
only got three of nine back from them. Another non-success
with Dewon Brazelton, Robert Fick, and Jared Sandburg. Of
course no response from Delmon Young. No response from
Bartolmoe Fortunato and Joey Gathright either. This gives
you a little bit of an idea of the players that I look at.
I honestly don't think that players like Brian Shackelford,
Dustin Nippert, and James Barrett and many of the above
players refuse to sign. With autographing becoming
more and more popular, I believe that many envelopes
disappear en route or in the club house. I just threw
this out at you. Maybe you readers have had luck with
these players, and maybe you've got a totally different list
of non responders.
TRIP TO NEW YORK
Nancy and I made our yearly trip
to New York to visit her mother and sister. This was not
the productive baseball trip that I've had. I have to have
my vacation request in before I have my Baseball Directory.
When I looked at the week that we earmarked to head out
there, the week before Memorial Day, I discovered that my
options were limited. I planned to swing up to Buffalo the
night before we swung down to Elmira where her family lives,
but upon closer examination had to drop that option because
Norfolk was playing a 10:35 a.m. get-a-way game. Still I
had two games in Elmira to look forward to and a game in
Binghamton. When I arrived at Elmira on Tuesday night, I
discovered that the Allentown/Elmira exhibition game that I
had hoped to see had taken place the night before. A
mistake on my part; I misread the schedule. Wednesday we
drove to Cooperstown. The Baseball Hall of Fame was better
than I had imagined that it would be. The emotions that I
felt when I entered the gallery where the Hall of Fame
plaques were hung were akin to the emotions one feels when
entering a European cathedral. There were the same high
vaulted ceilings and the same feelings of awe and reverence
when you entered the sacred sanctuary. Instead of an image
of Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary you had bigger than life
size cardboard cutouts of Babe Ruth and Ted Williams. The
museum's book store is very impressive too. The nice thing
about the Baseball Hall of Fame is that you never have to
worry about a rain out.
Thursday night was Elmira's opening
night, and they were scheduled to play New Haven. One of
last year's Burlington Bees, Matt Burch, was scheduled to
pitch for Elmira. He is a player/pitching coach for the
Pioneers. He pitched well for 3 innings. Then the rains
came. I felt sorry for the Pioneer's staff (not the team).
It was obvious from the beginning that their concessions
were inadequate to handle the 1,400 fans they had on hand.
When the rain came, it was obvious that they had not had
much training in pulling a tarp either. As it rained the
tarp got heavier and heavier as they dragged it forward, and
with the field wet already, the people dragging the tarp had
little traction. One of the staff slipped unnoticed by the
rest of the crew, and much to the crowd's delight he had the
tarp pulled over him. The amount of water coming down
eventually brought the progress of the tarp to a
standstill. Finally the Elmira team had to rush out in a
gully washer of a down pour to help them finish pulling the
tarp over the field. Management was loathe to turn away an
opening day crowd though, so the delay in pulling the tarp
over the field meant that the field was a sodden mess. We
take stadium staff for granted, but on a night like that you
could really tell that they could have used more training.
Friday night we went to
Binghamton. I worked the Trenton Thunder (Yankees) and
Nancy worked the Binghamton side. I did extremely well,
only missing Chien-Ming Wang who was pitching and Stump
Merrill who did not come out of the dugout. Nancy did very
well on her side as well. Binghamton is a very friendly
stadium that does its best to accomodate fans, including
autographers. I really enjoy my yearly visit there.
It
wasn't all baseball during the trip. We swung up to Niagara
Falls, and I toured the War of 1812 battlefields of Lundy's
Lane, Queenston Heights and Chippawa on the Canadian side of
the border as well. My brother-in-law who works for Elmira
College also took us on a tour of Quarry Farm, on the heights
above Elmira, a residence where Mark Twain spent his summers
and did much of his most venerated writing.
MIDWEST LEAGUE
We autographers are fortunate in
that 4 teams have gotten there sets out by early June.
Thanks to Cedar Rapids and West Michigan, who always do
their best to keep card set prices reasonable. Both teams
$5 a set plus S&H. South Bend weighs in so far as the
villain on the other end of the spectrum with $12 a set.
Daric Barton, the Chiefs
catcher, was a mid- May arrival to the Midwest League, but
he's making up for lost time, hitting with authority. His torrid hitting earned him a
last minute invitation to the MWL All Star game with will
take place on June 22 at Cedar Rapids. I'll be there.
There's an element of timing in
autographing as there is in baseball. This past weekend I
opted to go to the Quad Cities Saturday night to work on
getting my Kane County set signed, then to Peoria on Sunday
to work on Clinton. I should've flip-flopped the order that
I did those two days. When I arrived at Peoria on Sunday, I
discovered that Ian Kinsler, the League's leading hitter and
a player whom I had pictures of and his MWL Top Prospect
cards of to get signed, had gotten promoted to AA ball after
Saturday's game. He richly deserved the promotion, but why
couldn't they have waited 1 more day. Oh well.
QUIZ! QUIZ! QUIZ!
Honors go to Eddie Brewer III
from California City, California.
He was the only person who got
my quiz right from the last article.
The answers were: 1.Ft Wayne 2
Quad Cities, 3 Dayton 4 Wisconsin 5 Burlington 6 Peoria 7
South Bend 8 Cedar Rapids 9 Clinton 10 Kane County 11 Battle Creek
12 West Michigan 13 Beloit 14 Lansing. Anyway, I have a trivia question
for you guys this time too. The first correct answer
receives a 4x6 picture autographed by Midwest League All
Star Daric Barton, a 2004 Bees magnetic schedule featuring
Paul Mollitor and autographed cards of Denard Span and Tila
Reynolds. The second correct response receives a 4x6
picture autographed by Midwest League All Star Kevin
Richardson and as well the magnetic schedule and 2
autographed cards.
The question is: I've recently been
reading Ted Williams, The Biography of An American Hero by
Leigh Montville. It is a superlatively written book.
Fascinating. Despite his character flaws Ted Williams comes across as a heroic, almost Lear-like character. In one of
the chapters mention is made of a player by the name of
Lefty Lefevbre. Baseball is a game rich in irony. Lefevbre
was the first player to hit a homerun on the first pitch
thrown to him in the Majors. He never hit another home run
in his career. My question is: Who was the pitcher that he
hit it off of? That's all. Until next time, have fun with
the hobby. I sure try to.
