Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 7, 1993 TAG: 9303040232
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB WILLIS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
BASEBALL HEAVEN
WHATEVER your destination in the life hereafter, the saying goes, you'll change planes in Atlanta on the way. I'm at the Atlanta airport, I'm changing flights, and I'm heaven-bound.But not dead yet. With about 100 other guys, I'm headed for Braves Baseball Heaven in West Palm Beach, Fla. It's Sunday, Feb. 7; for the next week, we'll wear the uniform of the Atlanta Braves, defending National League champions, and play out our boyhood dreams on sunlit fields amid chatter and the crack of the bat.
When the 20th century was young, a perceptive observer termed the United States a nation of frustrated baseball players. A decade ago, someone hit upon that as a way to make money for himself and ease some of those frustrations for others.
Baseball Heaven - also called fantasy camp - is the way thousands of men who love the game can "make the show," if only for a week. The Braves setup is one of 25 around the country, all at locations where big-league clubs train. You're there a week or so before the actual teams arrive to prepare for the upcoming season.
You gotta have heart. You also gotta have expendable assets. A week at Braves Baseball Heaven this year costs $3,595, so for most of us this is once in a lifetime.
But that $3,595 buys a lot.
You get round-trip airline tickets from anywhere in the continental United States to West Palm Beach; ground transportation to and from the hotel, where you get a week's stay plus two meals daily; and daily rides to and from the park where the Braves hold spring training.
Aside from clothes for your leisure time, you need to bring your own glove, cleated shoes and athletic supporter with protective cup. When you arrive at the training complex, you get a full Braves uniform, with home (white) and away (blue) jerseys; a long-sleeved sweat shirt; a slipover Starter jacket with Braves logo; a fitted cap with the Atlanta "A"; striped uniform socks; a team jacket with the Braves logo; and a bat of your choice.
You also get personal training and advice from the old pros, a group of former major-leaguers with whom you can hobnob in your free time. Men like Lew Burdette, Ralph Garr, Glenn Hubbard and Bobby Wine. If you're hurt while playing (a distinct possibility, as you must be over 30 years of age), the Braves' major-league trainers attend to you.
It's a first-class operation. It's also a male-bonding experience that "Iron John" might envy.
But let's take one day at a time.
\ Number 21
On the airplane from Atlanta, I spot an older man in a Braves cap on the other side of the cabin. At the West Palm Beach airport, I catch up with him at the restroom. "Are you Jim Tyler?" I ask. He is: a tall, wiry 73-year-old who has become something of a legend at Braves Baseball Heaven. This will be his third; fourth, if you count a camp in the 1980s when somebody else ran it under a different name.
Tyler, a former minor-leaguer who's semiretired from his dry-cleaning business in Macon, Ga., is a pitcher with speed, curve, slider, change-up, knuckler - and remarkable endurance. Last year he pitched in every game his team played and racked up 33 innings in a week.
Tyler offers me a lift to the Airport Hilton. In the lobby we encounter Hubbard, the former Braves second baseman, who's upbeat about his coaching promotion to Richmond, and Burdette, who won 203 games, most for the old Milwaukee Braves. Most of the other campers arrived earlier in the afternoon, so we leave our bags and hustle over to the training center.
Our "lockers" are open stalls with shelves, a dowel for hanging clothes, and a stool. In Locker 92 hangs, resplendent, my uniform; for one brief shining moment, I feel like a major leaguer. There are my two game shirts, with name sewn on the back above my 8-inch-high player number, in red figures: 21.
Everything fits; I heft a few bats and pick one, although it seems a trifle heavy. After a brief meeting breaks up, many of the guys, along with the pros, head for the Hooters restaurant and bar; Jim Tyler and I go to supper, then to our rooms. There I meet my roommate, Bob Stewart, 60, who retired a couple years ago from the plastics business he'd helped build in Greenville, S.C.
His wife, he says, put him up to this. He'd listed himself as a second baseman, "the last position I played, more than 40 years ago." As for the camp itself, "it's the most bizarre thing I've ever done."
I'm not sure whether bizarre's the word in my case, but I begin to wonder just what it is I'm doing here. I've not even played softball regularly for several years. Most of these other guys, I learn, not only are much younger than my 63 years; they also are on the field regularly at home. The only baseball I ever played was as a preteen, when we kids soft-tossed the ball to the batter and none of us could hit or throw very hard.
Position? I'd put myself down as a pitcher only because I knew I could throw the ball at least 60 feet, 6 inches (not that I'd have anything on it). Beyond that distance was iffy; even when young, I'd never had a strong arm. And my uniform number, the date of my wife's birthday, was retired by the real Braves several years ago; it was worn by somebody named Warren Spahn. Ignorance is the handmaiden of pretense.
\ Monday, Feb. 8: At the breakfast buffet, I voice my misgivings about my suitability as a pitcher to Hubbard, Doug Flynn and Darrel Chaney. (The latter two were infielders on Cincinnati's Big Red Machine 20 years ago; with Bobby Wine and director Andy Miller, they own Braves Baseball Heaven.)
"When you're playing two games a day for four days," Hubbard says, "the important thing is just to get the ball over the plate." Maybe I can do that.
We campers arrive at the clubhouse and dress out. Some begin tossing a ball around. Most simply congregate in the area outside where the daily meetings will be held.
At 9:30 a.m., Chaney and Wine introduce themselves and the other staffers. Most are ex-major leaguers who played at least a few games with the Braves in Milwaukee or Atlanta.
Kangaroo court will be held at every morning meeting, with campers and pros subject to small fines for things like leaving locker areas untidy. (The money goes to the clubhouse staff.) Wine holds up two hangman's nooses: One, the "golden rope," will be awarded daily to the player whose performance the preceding day was outstanding; the smaller "brown rope" will go to the goat.
The campers are led to a practice field nearby, where we jog once around the field and then do stretches and calisthenics. "Don't try to do too much today," one staff member advises, "and spoil the rest of your week." It is sound counsel that I will ruefully recall before the sun has set.
Next we split up by position. This is the beginning of the day's tryouts, wherein the staffers will evaluate us and draft their teams. There are 10 sets of pitchers and home plates, five in two rows side by side, separated by a screen. I toe a rubber, begin my windup and am stopped immediately by Bruce Dal Canton, former Atlanta (now Richmond) pitching coach.
"Don't take so long a stride backward," he says. "Just a short step, angled to the side. See? And don't put your pivot foot on the rubber; it can slip. Set it in front and push off from the side." I follow his advice and get a few of my tosses near the plate.
Moving to a diamond, we pitchers practice covering the bag on grounders hit to the first baseman. Then we join other players for coaching from Mike Lum on playing first base ("Always anticipate a bad throw"), and by Flynn and Hubbard on covering second. Hubby says that on a double play, he tries to end up on the far side of the bag; that way, a sliding runner is stopped by the base and can't hit him.
Our group takes turns fielding grounders at second and receiving throws at first; then we move to short and third base.
I get to the balls hit in my direction - they're not traveling very fast - and make my throws. But I'm stiff, awkward and tentative. Nobody will mistake me for an infielder.
After this we move to the outfield for coaching in that position. Sonny Jackson tells us how to pick up ground balls and throw back to the infield.
Jim Beauchamp, assistant to Bobby Cox as Braves manager, recalls that his first outfield coach was Terry Moore of the old St. Louis Cardinals. "He said that at the end of the game, at least three people will be tired: the pitcher, the catcher - and you, the outfielder, if you've done your job, even if you never catch a fly ball." That means being on the move to back up infielders when the ball's hit to them. "Bust your butt out here," he says. "It looks good."
I try. But I catch only one of the eight or nine fly balls hit in my direction. The others land a couple steps out of reach - I misjudge them or am too slow, or both. Nobody will mistake me for an outfielder, either.
Finally, we take batting practice: 10 swings. Rick Mahler pitches to our group. Lay one down, then take your cuts. Batting left-handed, I miss the first pitch, then get down a bunt along the first-base line. I lunge at a couple, then settle back and manage three or four rollers to the infield.
Damn. I've always been able to hit. Now it seems I can't even do that. Who am I trying to kid? Glumly, I join the break for lunch.
Afterward, we break up by alphabet, Abrams to Younker, into eight teams. This arbitrary grouping doesn't produce a catcher for each team, so we have to wait while one is rounded up, with his pads and mask, from another field.
He arrives and our side takes the diamond. I'm one of three still on the bench. The catcher asks if I'll go to an adjoining field and get his equipment bag. Great; so I'm a gofer for the real jocks. I've been through that before.
But at Baseball Heaven, you don't ride the bench. Even if you're not playing a position, you bat; it's like having three designated hitters. When I get back with the catcher's bag, I learn that I'm on deck. I hit a looping liner over the second baseman's head for what should be a single, but the runner on first holds up to see if it will be caught and is forced at second. I advance on a walk but die on base.
In the third inning I go to the mound. On the basis of this debut, nobody will confuse me with a pitcher. I give up a walk, three or four hits and three runs. Maybe I can field my position; on a grounder that the first baseman throws to second, I run over to cover first; but the second baseman's there to take the relay.
Bottom of the fourth, a man on. I hit one back up the middle through the pitcher's legs, but the shortstop gets to it and the runner is forced at second.
Churning down the line to avoid being doubled up at first, I hear a pop! in my right leg and fall headlong across the base. I made it. I also have pulled a hamstring. They bring up the golf cart and drive me back to the clubhouse, where the trainers apply an ice pack. I'm not alone; there are other first-day injuries.
After my leg's been iced for about 20 minutes, Jeff Porter comes over. He's the head trainer, the balding guy in shorts you see run out onto the field whenever one of the Atlanta Braves gets hurt. He has me bend from the waist - "Tell me when it hurts" - then lie prone on a padded table while I bend each leg back against resistance from his hand.
"Your strength is good; your flexibility is not. The two usually go together." He massages the thigh muscles - no pain yet - and finds no major damage. Another trainer tapes my leg.
I'll be limited in what I can do, but what else is new? In fact, as the week goes on I learn there are compensations to being hurt early. I still can take a turn at bat, with someone running for me. If I'm not playing a position, I don't risk embarrassing myself or hurting my team.
I'm also spared some of the wear and tear of being on the field day in, day out. And later in the week, I'll feel better.
Not that I feel very good right now about what's happened. That evening, while many others drive to Boca Raton to Pete Rose's place, I stay in West Palm to ice my leg some more. Bob Stewart and I go to dinner at Manero's, a good restaurant with moderate prices that's popular with the Braves. Also dining there are Lum, Dal Canton, Beauchamp and Pat Jarvis, former Atlanta pitcher who's now sheriff of DeKalb County, Ga.
Back at the hotel, we find the draft's been completed and rosters are posted. Stewart's with the Dirty Dozen, coached by Flynn and Larry Jaster, former Milwaukee pitcher. I'm with the Shoot Fires, coached by Mahler and Beauchamp. Every team has a young third coach who never played in the bigs; ours is Brian Gelfand.
\ Tuesday, Feb. 9: I arrive early to get my leg taped again. The clubhouse staff keeps a couple pots of coffee going, and there's a barrel of Gatorade. Even bubble gum.
Matt Rockwood gets the golden rope: Wine says he'd pitched two scoreless innings, then got a hit and had exclaimed "Damn!" because it wasn't as good as he'd wanted. "Rock" is a Shoot Fire, good news for us.
The brown rope goes to Ed Harris, a catcher. Doug Flynn demonstrates Harris' catching style, which he says almost got an umpire killed. "If the ball didn't come right to the mitt, he didn't go after it; he just reached back to the ump for another ball." It's all in good humor.
Afterward the new teams gather and we Shoot Fires introduce ourselves: Dan Applerouth, a rheumatologist (not until week's end do we learn that the name on his jersey should read Appelrouth); Billy Baer, in real estate and investments; Steve Clementi, public relations; Dennis Clements, retired fireman; Dallas Hudgens, movie-theater operator; Alan Mintz, business executive; Neil Negrin, orthopedic surgeon; John Oxford, who finances purchases of Peterbilt tractors; Rockwood, an elementary-school phys-ed teacher; Bill Skinner, business executive; Lin Wood, lawyer; and me, retired newspaperman.
Jim Beauchamp explains the team nickname: "You know, in your cow pasture games, how the catcher says to the pitcher: `Shoot fire, hum baby.' You meet so many guys you can't remember them all; I took to calling everybody `Shoot Fire,' and that's what they call me."
Clements, who's been to a previous Baseball Heaven (nearly 40 percent of this year's West Palm campers are repeaters), emerges early as a leader. That's fitting, as he is one of our catchers. With his chrome dome, beer belly and bristling mustache, he looks like the stereotypical German burgher. "Shoot fire, hum baby, hit the pud!" becomes his shouted mantra.
There aren't many strong arms in this camp. And many fielding errors will be made. Noting this, Dennis says: "Just put the ball in play. With these guys, anything can happen."
After lunch we get pictures taken for our bubble-gum cards: three poses apiece, one at bat, one fielding and the third kneeling with the bat. This summer we'll get a package of 100 of these free, to be presented to us (along with the camp video) at a ceremony before an Atlanta home game.
Afternoon is our first game, against the Mohawks. The rules: We'll play seven innings. Bunting is OK, but no stealing, passed balls or balks. For someone like me, a runner stands near the plate behind a portable screen; when the ball's hit, he can take off for first.
With Rockwood pitching, we go up 6-0 before they get two runs. Our relievers give up a few, but we win 10-5. In my three at-bats I pop to second base, strike out and hit a nubber to the infield. Running for me (because he had made the last out) is Skinner; he beats it out but also pulls a leg muscle. "It was that last step, trying to reach the bag," he says. My first hit, and I feel guilty.
Back at the clubhouse, there's a keg of cold beer. Injuries are spreading. More people are in the training room that afternoon than on Monday.
That night at the hotel, a bull session is scheduled. Hors d'oeuvres and beer are supplied; a bunch of the old pros sit at a long table and field questions. In colder climes, as arbitration hearings loom, club owners are doling out millions to players, some of them mediocre. In West Palm, the talk turns early to today's inflated salaries and what they portend for the game.
"If I was playing nowadays," Burdette says, "it'd be like winning the lottery once a year." The minimum salary in his time was $5,000.
\ Wednesday, Feb. 10: Our first game is against Garr's Gators, managed by Ralph Garr, former Braves outfielder, and Cecil Upshaw. Jim Tyler's their pitcher, and I know he has a surgically reconstructed right knee that limits his mobility. I get a private word with the umpire: "With somebody running for me, if I bunt and stay in the batter's box, will I be interfering with the catcher's attempt to field?" I might be. His advice: If you bunt, back out of the box.
I take a pitch, then square around to bunt. Not a good one; before I can leave the batter's box, it bounces up and hits my bat for a foul. "Trying strategy on us, huh!" Garr roars. After working the count full, I fan on a curve. The second time up, I pop up a fastball to second base.
Our pitcher is Dallas Hudgens, a slender young fellow with a baby face like Steve Avery's. He gives up two hits and a walk in the first inning to load the bases, and one scores on an infield fly where our second baseman falls down making the catch.
Each side winds up with four hits. We lose 1-0.
In the afternoon, our coaches have arranged a home-and-away set with the Mets fantasy campers in nearby Port St. Lucie. Four of our teams get on the bus, while four others - including the Shoot Fires - wait for Mets teams to arrive.
Ours is a walkover. We hop on their starter for six first-inning runs and coast to a 12-2 victory. Rockwood works four innings, Baer two, Wood one.
Roles are becoming established. Clementi, Baer and Negrin are table-setters, consistently getting on base for others to bring around. Rockwood is our mound ace and, along with Clements and the bearded Appelrouth ("Apple-man"), a threat to hit the long ball. "Ox" Oxford is a steady first baseman who'll hit nearly .400; Wood, one of the team's biggest cheerleaders, and Hudgens will wind up at .333. Mintz doesn't hit a ton but has the good glove.
My first time up, I walk on four pitches; my runner later scores. On my second at-bat, with the bases loaded, I hit a looper; their second baseman goes deep in the hole to grab it. My third time up results in another trickler down the first-base line that my runner beats out for my second hit.
My early jitters are leaving, my confidence building. In the batter's box, I find I can pick up the pitch, follow the ball and decide - in that mere fraction of a second available to a hitter - whether to let it go or swing. If I cut at it I don't always connect, but neither do the pros; and I stay alive with a lot of foul balls.
For the day, our teams and the Mets split 2-2 both at home and away. The games count in our standings.
That night there's another bull session, with a different set of old-timers. They agree that many of today's players go on the disabled After lunch we get pictures taken for our bubble-gum cards: three poses apiece, one at bat, one fielding and the third kneeling with the bat. list, whereas decades ago men played hurt for fear they'd lose their starting position to somebody else. If that concern didn't get them onto the field, somebody like Eddie Mathews of the Milwaukee Braves would shame them onto it.
"Eddie would get in a guy's face," Ernie Johnson, the former pitcher who's spent 28 years in broadcasting, recalls, "and say, `Oh, does the itty bitty baby have a sore throat?' "
On Monday: up to the mound once more.
\ Bob Willis retired in November as associate editor of the Roanoke Times & World-News editorial page.