By Ed Piper
I have an interesting set of documents in front of me. They include the San Diego Padres' workout schedule in Spring Training for Sat., Feb. 24 (the day of my visit to their morning practice in Peoria, Arizona), a page titled "Padres Mini-Camp" for the same date, and a separate handout for the pitchers.
A fellow Spring Training attendee pointed out the handouts to me when I arrived on a cold (48 degrees) morning at the Padres' side of the Peoria Sports Complex, surrounded by shopping malls, restaurants, and industrial areas in the northeast area of Greater Phoenix.
What's interesting on the two-page front piece is the time breakdown of each drill: On the "Pitchers" schedule sheet, two columns are labeled "Live BP [Batting Practice] Throwers" and "Sides & No Throw Guys". At 9:45 a.m., six different groups are identified to meet and do their "Throwing Program" in Field 6 Right Field for 15 minutes.
At 10:00 a.m., the "Sides & No Throw Guys" (not throwing live batting practice) engage in a 25-minute competition spread across three different baseball fields at the Padres' complex. "PFP" is the name of the competition, but I don't know what that is.
Richard, Lauer, Lucchesi, and Kennedy then take part in batting practice on Field 6 for 15 minutes, then they shag flies. They switch places in these two segments with Perdomo, Lockett, Mitchell, and Diaz.
I didn't witness all these drills taking place. Arriving just after 9 a.m. on a long haul from across the Valley of the Sun beginning at my motel in faraway Mesa, Arizona, I watched as the pitchers came out from the main building, assemble on a field, then do stretching from 9:30 to 9:45 under the direction of San Diego's strength and conditioning coach.
The coaches came out with bats to hit grounders and flies, some with hoodies pulled up on the cold morning. Jokes were exchanged about how they looked in their cold-weather gear, everyone dressed out in baseball uniforms. (Coaches in other sports don't don the uniform.) Like every other environment, I don't think a lot of morning activity would start without plenty of coffee being consumed to animate the spirits.
Later on, in the "Live BP Throwers" column, Stammen, Yates, Capps, Strahm, and Lamet each are scheduled for 10-minute stints on the mound. Obviously, these aren't just batting practice sessions to give some hitters a few rips at the plate. Coaches would be actively evaluating their pitchers and their stage of progress--this, on the 10th day of Spring Training workouts ("Camp Day #10").
In the 10:05-10:20 time segment, I watched new Padres first baseman Eric Hosmer and new shortstop Freddy Galviz (with braids--not knowing better, I thought he was 19-year-old phenom Fernando Tatis Jr. and took a snapshot of him through the chain-link fence) and their teammates go through infield situational drills. The mood was light, active, and looked like baseball. A lot of fun. That's why people attend Spring Training.
Anyone who has observed a sports team's practice in the last few years recognizes the detailed, scheduled training practice: broken into 15-minute, even 25-minute segments, with targeted skills and drills.
Unlike at football and basketball practices I've hung out at in recent years, no loud, pounding urban music (i.e., rap, rhythm and blues, mixed with pop) was shooting out of speakers. Baseball is known for being one of the most conservative sports, even though pro baseball is now made up largely of Latin Americans who listen to salsa and other upbeat music.
On a separate pitchers mini-camp sheet, "Latinos" and "Gringos" are split into two groups, the former meeting at 9:00 a.m. on February 24 in the "Upstairs Conference Room-AMO" ("Enter from the outside"), the latter at 10:00 a.m.
The reality--and I'm glad I speak Spanish from my year living and teaching in Mexico City in my 20's--is that one out of 10 Major Leaguers is a Dominican who speaks Spanish primarily, plus there are many Venezuelans and an increasing number of Colombians who also speak "God's language". Your organization's coaching staff better be populated by plenty of people facile in Spanish and who are good at working with young men of various cultures.
The Padres are known, under General Manager A.J. Preller, for going after Latin talent. He's a bilingual guy, though I've never met him.
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