Chapter 28 - Tryouts

The last semester had started off so bad, but by the end I had decided to stay where I was. With Rory and Gemma, I now had other students to talk to, it wasn’t often, but it was enough for me to get by.

During the break I had plans.

I had disregarded my Dad’s advice about not researching baseball, I did my normal video research, on all aspects of the game.

As well as learning about the game, I discovered a few things about the game.

Pitchers got a lot of recognition but didn’t play as much since they had to rest between games more. Batting was important, the better you were at hitting, the better your team tended to do, as long as more than one person could hit.

The most important fielding position as well as the most difficult was shortstop, they fielded more balls that made it off the bat than any other position, and it took athletic ability and a keen eye with an understanding of the game to become any good.

I did my study work on all positions but I had a plan to make sure I could be the best I could be other than just doing research.

So during break I had booked time with one of the college coaches, he would give me time in the batting cage and tips on how to improve my game.

When I got there I wasn’t the only high school student getting assistance, most of them were with parents who you could easily see came from money.

The time with a coach wasn’t cheap, but it wasn’t really expensive either.

One thing that became apparent from my research which I hadn’t realized, was I could be ambidextrous, most of my research in other sports were not reliant on a dominant hand, baseball could be. I had always thought I was right handed, since that was the hand I had automatically used for writing etcetera. But the first time I got to the plate, I was going over my research in my head, remembering how a left hander hit the ball, so I had set myself up in a left-handed stance. I was hitting most balls, so I thought about another professional I had studied, without even realising what I was doing, I switched to right handed and batted in his style. The coach who was working with me was astounded. “Jack, are you left or right handed?”

“Right handed.” I replied confused.

“So why did you start off left-handed.” he asked, confused.

“Did I, I never thought about it, I just did.” I admitted.

I practiced hitting for a while, but there were a lot of people wanting to use the machine, we then moved to pitching, my fastball wasn’t very quick in comparison to what I had seen the college guys throw, but the coach worked on my other pitches, explaining that they were just as important as blowing by a batter with speed, you needed diversity to beat each batter.

So we worked on my curve ball, change up and knuckle ball as much as anything.

Then I asked for assistance to become as good a short stop as possible. He went through some of the situations the shortstop would come across. Anticipating how the ball would come off a certain pitch would determine where they would stand to cut it off.

I enjoyed my time learning the game and positions with the coach.

Starting the spring semester was a new start for me, and I planned to try out for the freshman baseball team. This would be at the end of the first week.

Classes were not much different, just working on more complex versions of things already learnt before, or new chapters on different variants on the same subject. In other words S.S.D.D. (Same S@#$ Different Day)

With the change in the season, so was there a change in the weather, it was no longer cool all the time, Dad had a company come in and have the pool cleaned and refilled, It wouldn’t take a lot of time before it was warm enough to use, it would be great to be able to have a cooling dip into it when the oppressive humidity and heat of late spring got us rolling toward the long hot summer days, even thought we had an outstanding central air conditioning unit in the house.

There was a downside though, Dad informed me it was added to my chores to keep the pool clear of leaves and check on the chemical balance of the water.

I got through the first few days of school without incident. Tryouts, on Wednesday, would be a good distraction.

I turned up with the rest of the freshman who wanted a chance to make the team.

It wasn’t just freshmen, there were also older students trying out for the Varsity and JV teams also involved.

One issue I did have was that Coach Jamison was part of the coaching staff. I just hoped he wasn’t involved with the freshman team.

We had been split into three groups depending on which team we were trying out for, then we started our training. The freshman group consisted of about sixty boys. There were a lot more students there than were needed to make up a team.

The first thing the coaches did was to have us run laps around the football training grounds. We were told to do two laps, I heard the other older groups being told to do more, but they set off before our group, we all started in separate positions using different parts of the grounds to do our run.

It became very apparent that there were a number of freshman who wouldn’t be able to cut the exercise portion of the try out, there were a lot who dropped out before we even started the second lap, a number of cocky ones, had run fast to begin with, but they were paying for it by the end of the first lap.

I was running with a couple of guys from the cross country team, we were ahead of the rest of our group, putting a gap between us and the others who were staggered out in single file.

When our group finished, we kept moving like we had been taught in cross country training, so our muscles didn’t tighten up.

As the rest of the freshman group finished, most just collapsed on the grass, they would pay for that later when they tried to move again.

The coach had given us a qualifying time to complete the course, once the time limit was up, the coach directed any freshman still running to head for the showers, their try out was done.

“Hey coach,” someone shouted out, “why is the middle school kid trying out with us?”

“Who said that?” Coach boomed out.