Busy Times in Aussie

G'Day everybody. Sorry I've been slow in updating the blog. Have become extremely busy, as Marshall and I are now working 40 hour a week jobs along with our other responsibilities. I will explain our job a little bit. We are working at a port where they refurbish and work on old ships. Originally we were told that we were going to be doing some type of security work, but that is not the case at all. We are what they call "sentries" and basically what we do is sit around all day and wait. Our responsibility is to go with tradesman into the boat when they are working in "confined spaces" and we basically monitor them and make sure they are safe. Right now they are working on a Navy submarine, so I get to actually go inside the submarine. Pretty cool stuff, but those things definitely are not made for people over 6 foot! For the first three days we have sat in the work room for at least 6 hours each day waiting for people to come get us, and then when we are "working" we just sit there. I don't know if it will stay this way for the next 3 months but if it I will get a lot of reading done while I'm waiting to be assigned. Our hours are 6:30-3, with a half hour lunch break.........Now to some baseball, this was a much better weekend for me both as a coach and a player. My U-16 actually lost on Saturday but we played a good team and we are getting better. The U-18's won big, 20-2. They are a good group and should be the favorites to win the whole league if their coach doesn't screw it up. On Sunday I started and had a good outing. We won the game 12-4. I gave up 3 runs in 4 1/3 innings. I'm still getting my pitch count up, and I really ran out of gas in the 5th inning. It was good to see our offense explode like that, that was the first game they scored more then 3 runs! I have some pictures to post on here of the "field" we played at on Sunday, by far the worst thing that I've played on since I was in middle school. Everybody should get a good laugh about it......Had a pretty scary incident happen last night at our practice, I was stretching with a rubber tube and had it come undone and come back and hit me square in the left eye. It was probably the most painful thing I've had in quite sometime, and I had blurred/to zero vision for the next 4 hours out of the left eye. After icing the eye twice though, my vision started to come back and by the time I went to bed it was basically normal. I woke up this morning being able to see, but with a very sore eye! Needless to say I was a little rattled. Other then that things are going great, staying super busy! Friday night will be our first free night in about two weeks, so hopefully we'll go find some fun!.....Forgot to mention, saw a pretty strange thing to me the other day. Went to the mall on a nice day, was probably about 90 degrees, walked through the Target store and they were putting up their full display of X-Mas items. Seemed wierd, doesn't feel like winter time. Here is some Aussie slang for you.....
Bogan- basically White Trash....some of the team members say that me and Marshalls neighborhood is rather bogan.
Bottle Shop- liquor/beer store. Only place you can buy alcoholic beverages from.
brekky- breakfast....McDonalds advertises serving "brekky" until 10:30
"how you going"- thats how they say "how are you doing"
Sausage Sizzle- A barbeque serving hot dogs/burgers. We have a "sausage sizzle" at all of our games.
Dodgy- means sketchy...Like that part of town is very Dodgy.
Footie- Aussie rules football
Soccer- is soccer
Gridiron Football- Is American Football
Cheers- What they say instead of "Thank you"

A Wild Week on the Diamond

So it was another interesting week on the baseball field for me down here in Australia. Unfortunately I was on the losing end of 3 different games! I’ll start first with the game that I pitched in on Friday night. We were playing at baseball park which is the main field (and the nicest field by far) in the city of Perth. Since it’s the nicest field, everybody in the league likes to play there so they pack as many games in their as possible. We had the early 6:30 game on Friday night, and one of the stipulations of playing at baseball park is that there is a 2 hour time limit or 7 inning limit, whatever comes first. So I was scheduled to pitch in relief that night. Our pitcher was throwing very well but was nearing his pitch limit in the 4th inning so I was either coming in during that inning or starting the 5th. He made it through the 4th and I enter the bottom of the 5th inning with a 1-0 lead. Well apparently we also hadn’t given up a hit yet, which I had no clue about. Well I proceeded to walk/hit the bases loaded and then hit two more batters and they won the game. I recorded two outs but walked 2 guys and beaned 3 others and they one the game as the 2 hour time limit was up. So I was part of a no-hitter where we lost and I was the losing pitcher. Haha I was mad at the time, but all I can do is laugh about it now. On Saturday my U-16 team suffered a big loss where we were defeated 23-12, we were down by 1 going into the last inning and gave up 9 runs. Yesterday my U-18 teams had one of the worst losses I’ve ever been a part of, we had a 14-2 lead going into the last inning, and gave up 13 runs in the last inning to lose it!!!! We made 6 errors to help their cause! In both instances the fact that they have weird pitch count rules for their junior players down here hurt my teams. Both of the teams only carry 10 players, but if the pitcher throws more then a certain amount of pitches he has to exit the game, and can’t even play the field. Yesterday my next best pitcher was playing a level higher, so I had to use someone new on the mound and we consequently blew it. All we can do is learn from it, and I actually think we have the best U-18 team in the league as long as yesterdays shenanigans don’t affect us too much. Also one of the more interesting things I’ve seen on a field occurred during that game, as all of a sudden the whole left side of our infield and left fielder took off running in the middle of an at bat. Apparently a huge swarm of bees was passing through, which I guess was totally normal. Our state league team also played yesterday and pulled away with a 5-2 win, it was nice to notch a “W” as we had been struggling. We are now 2-4. It is crazy when we win, as it is tradition to sing a victory song in the locker room after the game. Reminds me of high school football and singing the fight song after wins.
We made it out to the beach last Monday and plan on going again today or tomorrow. The beaches from what I’ve seen our absolutely gorgeous, and have white sand up and down them. Very cool stuff.
Marshall and I got another roommate last week, a guy from Cornell named David Bredhoff. He is older, Marshalls age 28. Didn’t play ball after college for like 3 years but played in the German league this past summer and had some kind of connection to a guy on our team, and since I was the only import they invited him down since you can have 3 total. He’s a decent little player and should help us out. Either way its nice to have another guy in the house and just another American around. The guy has some amazing stories as after he graduated college he worked in President Clintons office in NYC as an intern and also spent like 18 months in Africa with the peace corps. Well that’s all I’ll write for now, I’m going to include some Australian slang at the end of this to give you guys a taste of what I have to translate haha. The guys get on us when we ask them what something means. Its all good fun.
Bloke- a man, guy. That bloke over there is a good one to have on your team.
Get on the piss- To go out drinking for the night. That bloke had a gutful of piss last night.
Avo- the afternoon. What do you have going on this avo?
Yep- The say yep instead of okay.
Bucks Night- A bachelor party. Which I was able to see in person, as we were able to meet up with the club members one night for the tale end of one of the guys bachelor parties. We ended up at a pub that has 144 different beers around the world and if the group tries everyone the groom gets his name on the wall. Needless to say Trevor Smales has his name on the wall. (Their were like over 30 of us in the group)
Too Easy- I hear this saying all the time. Its what they say when you make an agreement or schedule to do something. Like they would end a phone call where you said you were meeting at 6 pm and they end it with “too easy mate”.
Mate- that’s your friend

First 2 weeks in Perth

Greetings from the Land Down Under. Things have been going well down in Australia, I've been here for two weeks and its already been quite the experience. I have been extremely busy since I've been here, with baseball related activities. I am coaching two teams and playing on another, which I will expand on as I write more. The weather is starting to get hot, and supposedly is consistently around 95-100 in the coming months, the sun feels like it is right on top of you down here, and sunscreen is almost a requirement. The culture here in Perth is very relaxed and seems very pleasant. It is a big city (i think close to 2 million) that is pretty spread out. Unfortunately the house I live in is almost 30 mins away from the actual downtown. The beaches here are very cool, and I have been able to visit them a couple of times. Marshall and I have also found a couple of breweries/pubs that we enjoy, the beer down here in Australia is very good.

As for the baseball........It is very interesting compared to what I'm used to playing back home. Baseball down here is played at a "club" level. With Western Australia having 10 main clubs in the greater Perth Area. Each club has a number of teams from little league all the way up to the "State League" level which is what I'm playing at. Along with the State League level, each club also has 2 or 3 teams that would be the equivalent to adult league teams back in the states. The club is very social, and club members are very proud to be part of their respective club. Baseball is like the 4th or 5th most popular sport down here (maybe lower then that?), but the people who do know about it are absolutely passionate about the game and their respective club. Our club is the South Perth baseball club and our team is called either the Souths or also known as the Cubs. Along with playing on the State League team, I am coaching the U-16 team and the U-18 team. Both teams have some talented players, and I would compare the experience to coaching American Legion teams in the states. So with my coaching duties and playing responsibilities I am at the ballpark every night. The State League teams practice tuesday and thursday and we play Friday and Sunday. While the U-16s practice on Monday/Wednesday and play on Saturdays. That is another wierd thing about the sport down here, you just don't play very many games. Over a 5 month span we only play around 40 games, while the younger teams I'm coaching only will play around 20.
So now I'll talk about the demographic about the state league teams. All the 10 clubs in the league have some very talented players. Each club seems to have at least 3-5 guys who either played professional baseball or are still playing for a professional team. Our club has 1 pitcher who is currently in the A's farm system and another pitcher who was with the Phillies and now just got done playing in Japan. We also have another kid who's 19 who will probably sign with a team this year. The age demographic on our team is anywhere from 17-32! Each club is only allowed 3 import players and only 2 of them can be playing at the same time. Import pitchers (like myself) can not pitch in consecutive games. So each team usually has at least 6-7 good young players, with the rest of the players being comprised of Australian guys who are younger and have decent caliber and elected not to play college ball in the states or older guys (25-32) who came back from playing in the states and still love to play. It seems pretty wierd since most of the guys have full time jobs. I don't know how familiar everybody is with summer collegiate baseball but I would compare the talent level to the old PIL. With some good ex-pros in the league, some really talented players, and also just some good solid players. I hope that painted a decent picture of what the league is like, I'll try and keep explaining it as the season progresses.

As for the actual action. Our team has played 4 games so far and are off to a 1-3 start. We played a doubleheader the first weekend and got swept 9-3 and 1-0 in 10 innings. I didn't pitch in either game as they wanted to give me an extra week to get acclimated. I ended up pitching on Friday night in relief against a team called the Wanneroo Giants. We won 2-0, I pitched the last 4 innings and got the win. Went 4 innings, 6 k's 2 walks and 3 hits. It was just good to get back out on the mound, it had been since last may that I'd pitched in live competition. We played the same team yesterday, and got beat 11-1. But the really story of that game was the brawl that happened in the 2nd inning. First time I'd ever been a part of something like that. One of their imports a huge black guy who is like 32 and played pro ball for like 10 years, ran our pitcher over who was covering home plate on a passed ball and sort of hurt him. The score was 8-0 at the time, and the play was totally uncalled for. So needless to say we started yelling and chirping at the guy and shit hit the fan from there. He went after our SS who ran into the plate and the benches cleared. 4 guys (2 from each team) got tossed, I didn't throw any punches or get hit. I was just trying to pull guys apart and stay out of the huge black guys way. I have more to tell about the league later, you guys will all love the "fields" we play at but I will wait til I have some pictures. G'day Mate.