The Grind Starts Here

by Gabe Souza

Editorial. Photos by Gabe Souza, AP News

FORT MYERS, Fla. – His fingers slowly fumble over the knobs of roughly a dozen baseball bats.

Occasionally he removes one from the stack, carefully and deliberately rubbing the wood grain to determine its worth.

They vary in size and color. Some black, some ashen, some long and some short. He’s in search for the perfect one. The one that will get the job done.

After rejecting many, he finally settles on a tan, 34-inch Louisville Slugger, one that, judging by the marks on its barrel, had seen its far share of hits.

He tests the bat with a few mock swings, nods his head in slight affirmation and steps out of the cool, shady dugout and into the bright sunshine.

The sweet smell of pine tar cuts the air as the batter coats the grip of his bat in the sticky substance.

He double and triple checks the straps on his batting gloves, pops on a helmet and heads toward the batting cage.

It’s three hours before game time at City of Palms Park and Ben Zobrist of the Tampa Bay Rays is preparing for an in-division game vs. the Boston Red Sox later that afternoon.

Zobrist grips the bat so hard, the pine tar seems completely unnecessary.

Within a few pitches, the newly converted right fielder has worked up an unrivaled sweat and the shaped piece of wood is scattering line drives throughout the field.

While opening day is still about a month away, Major League Baseball players all across Florida and Arizona are shaping up for the 162-game regular season that awaits them. It’s a six-month grind that will test both their physical and mental endurance.

“If you’re expected to play a lot of games in the year, you really have to be smart and pay attention to what you’re doing in spring training,” said Zobrist, an Illinois native. “This is the time to just get comfortable and hopefully be 100 percent on opening day.”

For many years, though, spring training was a time to relax, bring the family to Florida and enjoy some fun in the sun. Spectators usually took more interest in March baseball than did the players.

“It’s the fans that need spring training,” Harry Caray, long-time announcer for the Chicago Cubs once said. “You gotta get ‘em interested. Wake ‘em up and let ‘em know that their season is coming.”

But to the ballplayers who now make their living on the diamond, they say spring training is a serious and indispensable duty, one that can be the difference between a successful season and a meager one.

“Regardless of when we play we try to play the game the right way,” said Red Sox manager Terry Francona, in an interview with the Beacon. “You can’t push a button and all of the sudden make yourself get hits. You can’t predict whose going to be hot and whose not going to be hot. You just try to get guys ready.”

And while Zobrist was hacking away three house prior to game time, Francona had his own players on the field five hours before the first pitch.

Some spent their time in the batting cage honing their swing. Others took repeated ground balls working on their defense while pitchers did strength and conditioning drills in the outfield.

Even the Sox’ most accomplished players took their repetitions. Slugger David Ortiz spent over a half an hour in the cage before sending a shot way over the left field wall, inciting some cheers from the crowd.

Second baseman Dustin Pedroia also took his hacks, but once he was through, it was off to the field where he took ground balls for an hour before packing it in.

Kevin Youkilis, a gold-glover at first base, picked balls from the dirt and practiced his technique for the better part of the morning.

The Sox’ manager says there is no room to ignore a single area of play.

“We work on every aspect of the game,” said Francona. “If you don’t, it’ll over the course of a long season, show itself if you’re not ready.”

For some players it’s an intangible kind of thing. You keep working till you feel ready.

“My focus is trying to take what I did last year and build on it,” said Zobrist. “Get back to what I was doing that made me successful and figure out how I can get better from there.”

For others, it’s more of a rigid system that requires specific workouts.

“Regular players need maybe 35, 40 at-bats in spring training,” said Tampa Bay senior baseball advisor and former New York Yankees bench coach Don Zimmer. “Other guys need 60 or 70 at-bats. You go accordingly. You go with what they need to do to get started.”

The process of preparation is a long one. When the World Series finishes in late October, most players only take a couple of weeks off before beginning personal workouts that serve as a segue to spring training in late February.

It’s a mission that requires a love for the game.

“It starts in the offseason,” said retired Red Sox infielder Lou Merloni. “The conditioning part, getting your body prepared for that marathon. When you come down to spring training it’s a pace yourself kind of thing. It’s really a game you play in your mind.”

And while all eyes are on the World Series trophy at the end of the year, each step, all the workouts along the way, boil down to one thing: winning.

“It’s fun to win,” said the 79-year old Zimmer, who has been involved in baseball for over 60 years. “I don’t care what it is, whether it’s a little league game, or a minor league game or a major league game. It’s fun to win.”

And that winning means hard work. For the over 700 MLB players, it’s the hope of playing in October that has them on the field early in the morning to late in the evening a month before games officially count.

For Zobrist, that extra work is already paying off.

In the fourth inning of that afternoon’s game, the right fielder grabbed his Louisville Slugger, the same one he had so selectively chose four hours earlier, slapped on some pine tar and dug into the batters’ box.

It had been a frustrating start for Zobrist, who had popped out and stuck out in his first two at-bats.

But he was determined to keep fighting. Patiently, he waited for his pitch, letting the first few go by.

Then, he nailed a fastball from Red Sox reliever Adam Mills back up the middle to drive in a run and give Tampa Bay the early lead.

Zobrist played the first five innings in the game that his Rays ended up winning, 8-6.

It may have been a successful day at the ballpark for Zobrist and his team, but he won’t be satisfied with just one win and one run batted in.

No, he wants more.

That’s why the right fielder will continually return to the batting cage and keep working on the same grueling routine till the season is over.

Some 220 days from now.