Mesa, Ariz. – For writers, it is a perfect time to refresh the spring training battery, rewrite old friendship and resume retail stories of baseball characters, which made our work easier.
Furious Chicago Cubs Manager Lu Pineela. Utilityman and professional troubleshooter Tony Philips. Legendary scouts Phil Rizo and Gary Hughes.
The spring comes out when the mid -March arrives, and you cannot wait until the arrival of the inauguration day. But the years walk in a spot, reminding you that the game is on all of us.
Last week, I fled to the Hall of Fame Writer Peter Gammons at the Cubes Complex, covering baseball since it started in Boston Globe in 1972. Gammons suffered a life-threatening brain aneurysm in 2006, but was recovered and still not intended to retire at the age of 78. He said that he tries to learn at least two new things every day, an motto I intend to steal.
Two summer earlier Gammons said that he saw an infidelor from Maryland, a young Maryland, in the Cape Cod League, where Shaw killed 360 and the league MVP was named. Gammons told me that Shaw, now a 22 -year -old cub is likely, he was the best player he saw in the Cape Cod League. It was a praise that Shaw took as the supreme praise.
Gammons and his new friend held a long conversation on the field on Tuesday, sometimes stopped the most respected writer Gamans in the game by Cubes Manager Craig Counsel, bench coach Ryan Flehrti and others to say Namaste.
Reporters grow up and players become smaller, but the game is the tie that binds.
“Peter is best,” Shaw said. “When I was in the cape I met him, and he knew a child named Ivan Sleet, who is now playing in Alabama. They introduced me, and obviously I knew who Peter was because I was a red sox fan. We talk and find out till the end of the conversation that we both love this game. He is the best writer in the game, his stories are unprecedented, and we hit it by jumping. ,
The next day the next day, Fort Myers, left to check at the Red Sox Camp at Fla, where he was going to catch with the new GM Craig Bracelo, which he saw while playing in Yale.
But Gammons hopes that this season later in the Wrigley field or whenever Shaw makes Major.
For a long time, Boston Globe Baseball Reporter Peter Gammon, Right, on 27 February, 2024, interacts with Infield Prospect Matt Shaw at Cubes Spring Training Complex in Messa, Aries. (Paul Sulivan/Chicago Tribune)
“I don’t know if I adopted him or he adopted me,” Gammons said.
On the other side of the valley, Roger was giving water to the Infield in Cameback Renge before the Bossard Cactus League game, when I stayed from the camp.
Mostly known by its surname, “The Sodfather”, Bosard is entering its 58th season as a white sox groundskeeper and does not have a final game in sight like Gammon.
“I don’t think of retirement,” said Bosard. “Jerry (Rinsdorf) was quoted in paper a few months ago, asking ‘what am I going to do (if I am retiring).” I feel the same way. I enjoy staying on the field. I will come here by 12 March when I go back home and prepare OL ‘Betsi for Opening Day. ,
“Ol ‘Betsi,” of course, the rate area is guaranteed, which goes to the bossard in the same way as it is its backyard. Mild Winter has recently left the playground in good position for the 28 March opener against Detroit Tigers, contrary to some winter of the vintage.
White Sox Groundskeeper Roger Bosard prepared the guaranteed rate field on October 5, 2022 for the final game of the season against Twins. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)
He said, “It has been one of the first years, I don’t have to worry about keeping Tarp down on the field and warming up my ground to take it out of the domity or potentially sprinkle it with a green dye.” “I am putting too much high nitrogen on the field. I will wake it up. If someone is buried under my area in this spring, he will be popping with all the items that I am going to put on it. ,
Bill Week once said that a good groundskeeper was the value of six to eight wins. If so, Bosard should be one of the most valuable assets of the SOX as they try to rebound from the 101-loss season.
Boserd said that he expects longer to work in the field of the proposed South Loop Ballpark, assuming that it is constructed. Reinsdorf recently asked Sodfather: “Do you have another area?”
“I felt good from this, so they are not able to get rid of me yet,” said Bosard. “Why would I retire?” I am doing something that I like to do. ,
Tom “Otis” Halman, the equipment manager for the cub, at an Angel Stadium before a game against Angels on 5 April 2016. (Nucccio Dinuzzo/Chicago Tribune)
The same thing was that Tom Helman had said for years. Long -term cub clubhouse manager, known as Otis, died in January at the age of 67, before his last spring training before retirement. I had never covered a cub camp without Helman, so their presence missed on day.
But the manager of the Youth Club House Danny Muller helped keep the Helman’s spirit alive, passing the T-shirts to the players who read “Otis” at the front and “A Cube Forever” on the back. Shaw wore one when I talked to her friendship with Gammon, a cub paid tribute to legend, which he never knew.
This renewed my belief in the power of spring training.
Games can be meaningless, but memories are precious.