a little late on the post but here's a quick update
wed: sick all day
thurs: still really sick (sinus infection, flu, cold, jet lag, allergies, combination of those? who knows) but got up and went to work the baseball camp with dennis at the field. all the belgium kiddies have 2 weeks off for easter so the club is putting on an all day baseball camp for a few days this week and next week teaching baseball to newbies and helping some young baseball veterans out. so i went to the field for the day, oh wait, i forgot to bring something, that's right...
how to speak the frickin language, yeah that would probably help. all morning as i spent blowing my nose into an entire roll of toilet paper that i brought i had 5-9 year olds as they rotated to my station of hitting of the tee and then after break for soft-toss. i had no way of telling these kids in flemish how to hit the ball.
i mean i tried sign-language: success rate = 6%,
i tried english: success rate = -0.3%,
i tried flemish: success rate = 1%
i tried demonstration: success rate = 0 %
i tried long distance translator: success rate = 15%
i tried just doing nothing: success rate 14.4 %
i actually don't know what i thinking by trying to talk to them in english because they really had no clue what i was saying and then they would ask me something or say anything and i was completely lost and then we just would stare at each other. i was lucky to have this one kid juric, who was 8 i think and said to dennis that he understood everything i said but couldnt always talk back but he would tell his partners in crime what i was saying so that helped. and he hasn't stopped following me around the ballpark since i taught him the fist explosion handshake... it's official i have one fan. that's always good.
the PM was much better, dennis and i had the flyball station for the older kids and we made it fun. i threw pop-ups as high as i could, had the kids run (lopa!) after it all over the field and we had a blast, except for the time i yelled "dika, dika!" instead of "duka, duka" at the gravitationally challenged 11 year old (overweight is the correct terminology, i guess) who was running after a fly ball.... probably so loud they heard me in downtown antwerp. of course i didnt realize that dika means fat while duka means to dive. whooops.
practice afterwards which i threw a pen, to my catcher sammy, definitely one of the best catchers i've ever had. he's got the arm strength of a joe michalski (baltimore orioles 2005) but a quicker release and transfer. plus he calls pitches like a real pro *that he is, i mean already i can say that we are almost 99 percent on the same page, and the best part, when i throw the change-up that starts up before it falls off the table (at least when i do it right) his glove doesnt flinch, he knows it will drop and just let's it get there intead of making it look like a ball or that i didnt hit my spot. can't say enough so far, in practice, but nevertheless i'm already really comfortable with him there.
friday:
a chilled out day trying to get better from the sickness that i still can't shake
did a lot of hitting with dennis at the field, swing is definitely coming along.
working on keeping the front leg stiff as i connect, as i have in the past, flexed it especially to get to low pitches instead of using my back leg. and then the main thing, trusting my hands (which have been surprisingly quick this spring for the long layoff) and staying back!!!! in the midst of this batting report, i'll toss a quick endorsement of SAM bats out there (www.sambat.com) the best maple wood in the entire world who are outfitting me for the season and apparently the JC1 model (named after rachel prinstein's favorite joe carter) which the specially made for me in a matter of weeks in march and got them out to me literally 1 day before i left for belgium, has been a big hit with some of my teammates over here.
after hanging out at the club for a bit and watching some mlb.tv with dennis, we all went out with alain to my current favorite bar - la suite (definitely not the correct spelling, but def how it is pronounced) where i was "that guy" who was drinking water the whole night because of the start on saturday and whom the waitress was definitely making fun of in flemish, especially when we were all giving her orders and i said in matter of fact english, "if you have any single women back there, i'll take that, astubleif (please in flemish)" the good news was she didnt understand me, the bad news was that alain definitely translated in flemish.
maybe next time.
which brings me to my next question...
why don't the toilets have handles here? really?
No comments:
Post a Comment