London: Part One
New city and new blog structure. Instead of
going day to day and saying that I ate three meals went to work and baseball,
I’m going to keep my audience in mind a bit more and try to write about the
stuff that actually might interest them.
Part One of Part One: Arrival
I hopped off the plane at LHR with dream
and my cardig…actually more like my hat, glove and everything else I could fit
into two suitcases. Didn’t sleep much on the flight and tried to pull the
all-nighter, which was aided by the five hour time difference between PA and
London. Took the tube (train) home to Erick’s (coach of the Mets) place where I will stay in the beginning to
relax after relaxing for seven hours on the plane, but felt it necessary
anyway. Then went back on public transport (heck with staying in one place!)
and arrived at a baseball field where the Mets 14Us and 16s were playing
scrimmages against ASL (American School of London). I did my best impression of
an energetic first base coach while not knowing anyone’s name and counting down
the hours until I could go to sleep at an appropriate time. Another highlight
from this day that I remember in my tired stupor was consuming my first English
kebab. There was no messing around here, right to the kebab shop. Priorities.
The next day was another baseball
scrimmage, this time an intersquad with kids from both 14U and 16U and other
Mets club members. I coached one of the teams, and having lacked the mental
fortitude the previous day to actually learn names, again I coached kids I did
not know. By the end of the day I had a few names down and started to feel more
like a part of the club as opposed to the random guy who shows up and wears the
coach hat for a day.
This was taken a week and a half later but goes here to break up the long text
NBL (National Baseball League) games began
the next day with a doubleheader at Farnham Park, probably the nicest field in
all of Great Britain and the home of the national team. We won 11-0 in the
first game against the Bracknell Blazers, and I threw the second game as we
knocked off the defending champ Essex Arrows 5-1. Opening days are always a
blast, and this was a great way to kick off the season. English teams evidently
have the same idea of what to do after baseball games as Aussie team, and the
tradition of the postgame, postpractice, and postanything pub appearances began
with much to celebrate.
The next few days consisted of a lot of
getting settled, learning about how difficult it is to do anything in England
without proof of address and learning that I don’t have it and am far away from
getting it. Still, I settled in nicely over these days, found a nice meathead
gym complete with a boxing ring and pictures of Arnold Schwarzenegger in not
nearly enough clothing covering the walls. This is not the type of gym to offer
pilates but I can do plenty of bicep curls.
Part Two of Part One: Prague trip
Next big event was the trip to Prague with
the 14U and 16U Mets teams for the European Pony Championships. I coached with
the 16U squad, and if you’d like to hear more of how they did (in my own words,
no less), Czech out this article: http://www.londonmets.org/news_article/show/506473?referrer_id=445458
Yeah, that’s my facebook cover photo at the
top. I was a coach not team photographer. 16Us finished 12th and
14Us finished 4th at the event.
Still new to the group of kids, we finally
began to get to know each other over Czech puns. I had a field day with the
puns, so much so that by the time we got to practice on the first day the kids
were already sick of hearing them. More importantly, I was able to amuse myself
for the duration of the trip.
We saw a bit of Prague the first day after
practice as we ate lunch at an original Pilsner place (yes they name their
restaurants after beer) and then wandered through old town square, King Charles
Bridge, and the Kafka museum (thankfully no one woke up as a cockroach during
this trip).
The old city square in Prague
We still needed to gel as a team,
especially as this squad was a relatively new collection of players with two
assistant coaches that few if any knew, and none longer than a month.
Thankfully, that need was fulfilled after the first game, as the Mets defeated
the Stuttgart Reds 5-4 in walkoff fashion. As the kids dogpiled on the field
and celebrated their victory a team was born.
I got to know each of the kids very well
during the trip and enjoyed a great coach to player relationship with each of
them. My coaching style involves getting to know players on an individual
level, find out their background on and off the field, what drives them to show
up each day, and so forth. The passion for the game with this group was
tremendous, as evidenced by the following anecdote. We had a doubleheader one
day, dropped both games and were eliminated from the knockout round. We the
coaches gave the kids the option to hang around the field a bit more or head
back to the hotel to rest, and every single player opted to stick around and
watch more baseball, which quickly turned into playing catch and enjoying being
around the game. In a moment when most players would be down and look to put
baseball to the side for the night, these players couldn’t get enough baseball.
As a coach, this is something that you desire in each of your players but
cannot teach.
This is a good opportunity to give a shout
out to one player in particular who really stuck out to me on the trip. Those
who follow my instagram have already heard a bit about Laura, a tiny
Japanese-Briton who not only made the team, but was one our better players. She
earned the start on the mound in the opening game, and despite lacking the
velocity of some of the larger humans competing in the tournament, she threw five
quality innings at the event with five strikeouts and most importantly for my
purposes, not a single walk. In addition to playing with the Mets, Laura, a 15
year old girl, will also represent Great Britain later this summer in both
baseball and softball…at the 19U level! Those are not typos. She is a 15 year
old girl and a member of GB’s national 19U baseball and softball teams. The
best part about coaching her, apart from her standing up for women in baseball,
beating the odds and boys twice her weight and having the best attitude a coach
could ask for is the joy of visiting her on the mound. I regret not having
someone snap a photo of us talking strategy out there, but the height
difference is something like Jose Altuve looking up to Randy Johnson. For you
non baseball fans, that’s a big difference. I’m coaching her again in Big
League (older division of Little League) and will be sure to put someone on
assignment to get this photo. Yukie or James if you’re reading this, it would
be great for someone to document this.
The only picture of Laura and I where she appears taller
Although I’d done some informal coaching
before, the Prague trip was my first official coaching experience. A 12th
place finish wasn’t exactly the best result, but I took an instant liking to
the profession and the opportunities to leave a positive impact on the baseball
careers and in some situations, the lives of the players. Erick allowed me to
act as the head coach for the last game of the tournament and I took a liking
to that as well. Being around the game my whole life, the transition to
coaching at the youth level has been a smooth one so far and I’m excited to
continue to fill in that role throughout the summer.
Part Three of Part One: Sliming around
London
After not seeing much of the city prior to
Prague, it seemed like high time to go check out this new city where I was
living, so I researched how not to get lost and successfully saw many of the
more famous parts of the city. I began near Westminister Abbey, Parliament
Square, and the London Eye (which quite honestly looks vastly overrated,
contrary to the other stuff) and ended all the way down at the Tower Bridge.
The river walk along the Thames was quite nice, apart from having to watch out
for a neverending stream of runners. A vastly underrated part of the city is
the two Sphinxes on the north bank of the Thames, which I took an instant
liking to.
Another day I checked out the British
Museum, or rather a very small part of this wonderful place. Probably the
biggest and best museum I’ve ever been to, this is not something that is done
in a day. My strategy is to do it in sections and do those sections well over
the six or so months that I’m here. I completed Mesopotamia, the Levent, and
other ancient places like that, as well as ancient Egypt. I never thought I’d
say that a mummy collection was unnecessarily excessive, but the collection
here certainly came close. It was wonderful to see such great artifacts, which
also included a large part of a statue of Ramses II, the Rosetta Stone, and the
Lewis Chessmen.
The Lewis Chessmen - Czechmate!
Up next is Opening Day for youth baseball
this Saturday. My team, the Orioles (I wonder how they got that name…) will
play a doubleheader against the Rangers. I’m excited to have many of the kids
from the Prague squad on my squad, and the only negative is that I can no longer
justifiably make Czech puns.
I will update this again once I go more
places and do more things.
Disclaimer: I did not proofread this in the
slightest. Runons and poor sentence structures should be expected
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