The team was finally able to get in a game at the home field yesterday, hosting, and losing, to the Kansas City Royals club. That stopped the streak at 5 unplayed games here. Unfortunately, the Mets ended the Big Club’s streak at 9 wins. Time to start a new one.
I uploaded more of the Boca Chica photos to the Photo Gallery, if anyone’s interested. They’re in the Dominican Republic section.
I’ve got lots to keep me occupied until I fly out of here on July 11th. I think this weekend I might do a practice pack to see how much room I might have for souvenirs to bring back. I’m going to leave a lot of stuff behind, since I’ll be returning in October. As I wrote in a previous post, I also have a lot of paperwork to complete, and I have some workshops to conduct up in Samana as soon as I come back, so I have to work on those before I leave.
The players finally get their first paycheck today–I hope they don’t go crazy in Boca Chica, but I’m not too worried; they’re a pretty good bunch of guys. It’s odd how the pay system works. Some of them have been here since the camp reopened in February, but none of them get paid until they actually start playing the Dominican Summer League games. Many of them have been without ample amounts of money for quite a while now. Like I said, I hope they don’t go overboard in Boca Chica. Most of the foreign players (Venezuelans, Panamanians, etc.), I hear, are waiting for next weekend, when there is a big concert just down the road.
Speaking of foreign players, the Yanks just signed a Brazilian tryout player, Michael Souza. That seems unusual, since Brazil is known more for its great passion for football (that’s soccer to you norteamericanos) than for turning out baseball players. In fact, I don’t recall there ever being a Brazilian player in the majors. I’ll have to check. (In fact, that’s your homework assignment–find me a Brazilian born player who was in the majors.) More later.
Related posts:
- Update There was a LOT of confusion among the players and coaches about when everyone would be allowed to go home to vote. The voting age here is 18, so most...
- Baseball Tournament, Holy Week The last couple of Saturdays the camp has hosted a high-school age baseball tournament, consisting of 8 teams, which means all four fields have been in use. Each team plays...
- BIG Television I went up to the big conference room/player rec room yesterday to begin my classes. A few players were watching TV (if they’re not in the particular class that day,...
