tuesday april 10: last real day of sickness. but then my stomach attacked and had trouble being effective at round 2 of the baseball camp the pioneers put on. threw some long toss at practice and got some good at bats in. forgot what i did afterwards...i think i went to nick's place, our first baseman, who i really enjoying hanging out with - he's got a great taste in music and seems to be a burgeoning intellectual, like myself. i went over to his place and we did part 1 of a music exchange as he took 3 hours and went through my labtop sampling and taking some tunes.
wednesday april 11: felt a lot better and had a great time helping to coach the older kids (11-16) in the camp. the youngest kid is a lefty, whose name is tough and i forgot it of course, but he has the best technique and fundamentals of any ballplayer in the u.s. or wherever of someone his age, and the weirdest part - he was playing SS, i had him move to CF, and he was sick...catches everything with two hands, perfect arm action, runs hard and makes proper turns at first, just does everything perfect, i have never seen anything like it. i told his mom, that he has a lot of potential, i wouldnt be surprised to hear about him in six years.
sammy was there and i threw a 75 pitch bullpen from the mound, which was the best i felt all year. change-up i loosened the grip on and had better downward action. the slider was breaking two planes, and breaking hard, my fastball was on each corner on the knees and popping.
sammy came back after the camp and picked me up and he took me to see a sport, typical to belgium, called korfball. it's a hybrid of handball, basketball, and soccer, i guess. they use a hard soccer ball, and two basketball poles with a basket and no backboard a little higher up than an actual basketball hoop. it was played outside, 4 defenders - 4 on offense, 4 girls and 4 guys on a team. can't run with the ball, and can't shoot if a defender is guarding you. really strange game, but sammy is part of a fan club that goes nuts for the sport (the girls wear short skirts, is why i think there are a lot of guys in attendance) and it was surprisingly really entertaining. this is my introduction into belgium sport, culture, and leisure activities: korfball.
thursday april 12:
forgot what i did in the morning
practice in the evening
friday april 13: with erwin out of town for 2 weeks in mexico and canada, some of my teammates have decided to "pitch-in" and take care of the americano. alain, the often-mentioned patient hitting 2nd baseman with the best belgium name of my short stay here thus far took me to get some suppliments (belgium style, twice the price as in the u.s.) and afterwards with his darling girlfriend helga, made a great spaghetti dinner at his place. i thrw a short bullpen to sammy and then headed over to watch alain play foosball with dennis and kenny at "the place to be"cafe. alain is supposedly one of the best foosball players in the country, and i can attest to that as i, (key word )tried to play him on the foosball, i guess it's a table or in belgium we refer to it as a tofle, at his home and he soundedly whipped me like i had never been whipped in foosball before. i went with david frenkil, my best friend from the u.s. who is in town for a few days ahem with the antwerp eagles, they were taking a look at him, since the club is in desperate need of some pitching help, and david is a tall lefty.
after watching the foosball for about 3 hours we headed over to the park where wendy (who plays on a korfball club) was having a studio 54 party. alain likes to close down the places he visits, and that's all i have to say about that.
saturday april 14: opening day at the antwerp eagles field. going into the game the newspaper had us a darkhorse contender behind the Greys (last year's champion), meanwhile, the Eagles, who used to be one of the best teams in the premier league, are now fledging to stay in first division. (similar with soccer, at the end of the year, the best team in 2nd division moves up to first and the worst team moves down to 2nd) this year it looks like the eagles might be that team. we won pretty handidly 12-2. Our starting pitcher Kenny Van Den Branden is not that big of a guy but he's young and still growing, he throws pretty good heat, excellent movement, and a variety of offspeed pitches which he throws from a variety of arm hangles. I would definitely compare him to El Duque aka Orlando Hernandez. He pitched an excellent game and as i noticed has a rare superstition or habit of eating something between every inning, i'm talking not just like a candy bar but whole sandwhiches (brootjas), it''s incredible. I got two at bats, once we put the game out of reach, Mark had me pinch hit for Alain at DH, and first time up I trouble staying back on the ball and grounded out to third or short, somewhre on the left side, i don''t know, i don't watch it - i just run. Second time up though, i faced this tall american lefty pitcher who started me off with two balls before i got my fastball down the middle and laced it to deep center but right at the centerfielder. it felt nice with my new SAM Bat though.
www.sambat.com
after the game i went with nick and his friends clio and joena (pronounced u-nah) to a great italian restaurant and i had a blast. the girls were real down to earth and everyone did a great job of speaking in english and including me on the conversation. as i concluded in previous posts, the leisurely pace of how things are done in this culture, i am truly marveled by. after dinner, we sat out on the terrace of the restaurant and enjoyed the unusually nice for this time of year 70 degree weather, while they drank wine, i was a soot/suit (a loser who drinks water when he goes out with friends who are all drinking alcohol). They convinced me to go with them to the tofleje rond (the small round table) a place i visited with sammy, nick, and nick the previous week and first met the girls, when i rudely leaned my head into their conversation (of flemish) and when they looked at me funny, i told them in english that i was trying to work on my language skills and i was listening for key words like morgen (tomorrow) spelen (play) pintja (beer) and poepen (shall remain untranslated), of course, it was funny all of the sudden and not rude because i was the stupid american in the foreign country - so i'm glad they didn't hold that against me when we hung out this time. back at the tofle i continued my sootness/suitness (not sure on the spelling, did i mention dutch is impossible to speak and SPELL?) by drinking water all night and even though i wanted to get back early because i was the starting pitcher the next day, we got carried away with my transition to flemish language (helping my pronunciation, which in honor of my friend alli back home who once told someone that i told her that they spoke belgianeese in belgium *i didnt i said they speak flemish but that's another story - the girls have nicknamed my complete butchering of the language as belgianeese - it's an english, dutch, flemish, antwerpen, flanders hybrid and also with my pick-up lines like ye hip moya ojen (you have beautiful eyes) which i used on the bartender, but i dont think she bought it, oh well...
Sunday April 15 tax day in the states - 1st ever professional starting pitching game.
this is the game that i've been dreaming about since i was 7 years old, although, at that time i was thinking i'd go right from college to the chicago cubs, it looks like i might have to take a more indirect route, but i have to say, thus far, a stopover in belgium has been quite nice.
first, i have to say the adjustments i made during the week, in order to not repeat the mishap that took place spring training against PSV. working on the change-up grip, loosening up my arm on back side, my overall focus and mental projection, visualization, etc. I have to say that my manager Mark, does an excellent job of letting do my routine, I was able to get to field, listen to my music and relax and when I was ready to begin my pre-game routine I was simply allowed to just do my thing, which probably was the greatest asset to the start of the game... I went into the first pitch, focused, relaxed, excited, but calm unlike my first home start last week where i was anxious to show off for the crowd, as Helga suggested two nights before "just pitch your game i know you can be great..."i did. for five innings. no hits. zero. i walked a batter in the 4th inning on a 3-2 count with a 4 seamer right on the corner that the ump had been giving to me all day and then the next batter blooped one in right infront of our right fielder thomas who was playing shallow. the runner on first had to wait in the middle of the base path before it dropped in and thomas made a great heads up play throwing it into 2nd base for the force out, so instead of a hit it was a Fielder's Choice 9-6. We started off slow against the Eagles only leading 3-0 going into the bottom of the 3rd then exploded for 25 runs in the next two innings in crushing them 28-0. i never pitched a game like that, last no hitter was freshman year of high school in my 2nd outing i also went 4 or 5 innings of a no hitter. but this was an abringed (shortened) no hitter because of our route, the game was over after 5. sammy called a great game and it felt great to be working with him again as my battery mate since it had been almost 3 weeks since we got a whole game together. he also hit the ball well, as did most of our team including Steven our CF, who i believe his nickname is "Bear"? but i think that's what all the guys say it's always tough to translate the flemish, as we discussed last paragraph. Steven started off thes season with a solid 8-8 or something like that over the two games. not too shabby. here's what the website had to say:
Zondag was er veel volk opgedaagd om onze Amerikaanse werper, Justin Prinstein, aan het werk te zien. Slechts 59 pitches had hij nodig om een NO-HITTER te laten noteren. Reeds na 1 uur en 50 minuten ( 5 innings ) stond er een 28 - 0 eindstand te blinken op ons scorebord. Onnodig te zeggen dat onze jongens er weer stevig tegenaan gingen aan slag. Het leek met momenten wel of er maar één ploeg op het veld stond.
the celebration was pretty simple. i showed david some of antwerp... i took him to the only spots i know... a bolleke (a big round glass that is native to antwerp and contains rich and smooth and the most amazing beer in the world brewed right here in belgium) and then to the toffleje rond and then finally to fritteur no. 1. which i now can make a full order in flemish/dutch/antwerpen/flanders aka belgianeese.
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