Chapter 10: Another Week of Fun

I had two weeks left of the School Summer Holidays.

Most of the few friends I had at home were away. So I was looking for something else to occupy my time.

There was a baseball camp going on at the state college campus, which seemed ideal to my needs.

Mom and Dad were agreeable to my request to join. I think Mom was the most happy about it since it got me out of the house for another week.

The course was on all portions of the game, so I could get help in learning more in everything I did for the school team.

I was really hoping that most of the freshman team would step up, becoming part of the JV squad this year. A nice surprise was finding Tim and Ben were both at the camp. A downside was that Jeff Nobel was also there.

I didn’t really know which area of the game I should work on, so I just went with what my two friends from the team were working on.

Although Tim was a good pitcher, he was working on his fielding, Ben also wanted to improve his skills in this portion of his game. So that is what I requested to be put in to do as well.

An upside of this was Jeff was only interested in batting, so he was off in the batting cage getting tuition.

Well Jeff was right in that, his batting had been below par compared to the rest of the freshman team we had last year.

We had fun in the field, but it was hard work.

We ran lots of drills to improve our speed at reacting to a hit, corralling the ball and were given instruction on which base was best to throw it too.

We also worked on our field positioning during different circumstances. Depending on where runners might be on bases, it determined where a batter should be trying to hit to. It would be better to tighten up these areas, rather than covering the whole field. Even if it went into an area the batter would be foolish to hit into, we would still have a good chance of getting the runner out at the next base.

This was all the general practice, as we hadn’t worked on our own specific field positions yet. We would work on those, but the guys running the course wanted us to know all the position basic requirements. The reason for this was that we wouldn’t necessarily get to play our preferred position in every team we played for. If we knew the different requirements between infield and outfield, we not only could play either. We could also move to cover the other positions when the ball was hit into different areas of the field.

This took up the first two days of the course. The next two days we were split into smaller groups and we worked on specific positions.

I went with the group being taught the shortstop position, though the instructors also made us learn the second base position as well. The odds were good if you got moved out of the one position, the other was the most likely for that type of player to go to.

That was also a good couple of days’ worth of instruction. Although I have used my ability to learn from the best players how to play that position. It hadn’t let me know some of the reasons why they played out some of the situations like I had seen them do. Now I learned the fundamentals of playing the shortstop and second base positions.

For the last hour of each day, we switched to batting practice. The players normally there had already finished for the day.

That was great fun. I still loved hearing the sound of well hit baseball coming off my bat. It became something of a competition of the pitchers to see who could avoid getting a hit by me.

The machine was just too easy, as it gave continuous balls in the main strike zone. They could be a faster pitch than you were used to, and in different areas of the strike area, but you should be able to adapt easy enough.

The other side of the batting cage was used for the pitchers who had turned up. They tried to trick us with the different pitches they had learned at the camp.

For each of the first four days I hadn’t been struck out yet, it was becoming more frustrating for the pitchers. I was getting a lot of angry looks, especially from the Varsity High School pitchers who were there training. Ben had also been doing well, though he had been struck out a couple of times.

Tim was one of the pitchers throwing to us though I hadn’t come up against him yet. I had seen him working on getting his pitches better over the last couple of days with all the other pitchers at the camp.

That was one area I had decided not to work on, they were only teaching certain pitches. I had knowledge of all of those they were giving lessons on, so didn’t think it worth my while.

Friday was going to be a little different. The instructors had picked players throughout the week to field two teams. The two teams were made up of different age groups from multiple schools, but we would have a fun seven innings game to finish off the week.

We spent the morning finishing up any training we wanted more instruction on, and then the afternoon period would be the game.

I had been picked for the white team, Ben and Tim had both also been picked, but on the red team.

I didn’t know anyone on the white team, so it would be interesting to see how well we gelled for the game. I was a bit disappointed that I wasn’t picked at shortstop, but when I saw the guy on the team list that had, it wasn’t a surprise. He was going into his senior high school year, being touted as the best shortstop the state had produced in years. I was down as the second baseman, which was still an achievement, since it wasn’t my preferred position. In the batting lineup I was number two, which was much higher than I expected.

Although the final game of the week was meant to be a fun finale, it was also meant to allow us to work on the drills we had been taught during the week.

That being said, neither team wanted to lose. Each team had one of the instructors as the manager. Ours would be the batting coach. The red team had the head coach of the college as theirs.

We all had an interesting ten minutes after the final names were called for the final game. Jeff Nobel’s dad had a heated discussion with the head coach, asking why Jeff hadn’t been picked for one of the teams.

Ben, Tim and I couldn’t help our smiles, when the coach gave Jeff’s dad a rundown of his deficiencies in his abilities.

Our coach spent a lot of the lunch break getting the white team together, making sure we got to know each other before the game.

He went over what he expected of each player on the team. We had a diverse team, as there were younger players who would be playing JV. As well as players who hoped to not only be playing Varsity, but were hoping for college scholarship offers.

There was one thing we all had in common. We all loved playing the game. So everyone would do their best to make our team better than the red team.

There were a few people wondering if I could transition my performance from the cage to the plate. If I could hit as well during the game, it would give our team a good chance.

The opening batter on our team was a well-respected senior, he had been the lead off batsman for his team for the last year. He had been on the Varsity state conference team the year before, which boded well for our team.

I had been put in second due to my performance in the cage. The next two players in our lineup were also both seniors, with good batting statistics from the year before.

The bottom end of our lineup was not as well respected in the state. But they were better than most, since that was why they had been accepted at the camp in the first place. They had earned their place in the team, otherwise they would be with the rest of the people who hadn’t made it watching the final game from the stands.

The game was a tight affair. The pitchers were good, but then the batters were the best around as well.

Both teams managed to score in the first innings, even against the top two pitchers. The top end of both team’s batting orders was just too good, not to get a hit on the ball.

The difference in the game was going to be how well the bottom order did. Both teams were well balanced in the field, picking up on any mistakes and punishing them.

The top order kept on filling the bases, so each team got at least a single scoring point each innings, if any of the bottom order could get a good hit, then multiple runs would be scored.