Wrestling with the realities of one long road trip
Editors note: On Friday, March 26, the Grayslake Central Rams baseball team flew from Milwaukee, Wis. to Orlando, Fla. to compete in the Disney Classic hosted at the ESPN Wide World of Sports complex, which also doubles as the spring break facility for the Atlanta Braves. Rams senior catcher Josh DeAngelis has provided the Daily Herald with daily highlights of the trip.
Day 1 - Saturday, March 27: This morning we all woke up a little tired from the travel day prior. We had practice around 10, just to get used to the fields. Aside from the grogginess, we actually had a pretty clean round of batting practice. It's too bad we couldn't hit that well in the game. The team we played had a good pitcher, but it wasn't anything we couldn't handle. One big hit and we'd still be undefeated; it's a loss to learn from, no doubt.
Day 2 - Sunday, March 28: Early mornings are the worst; we woke up at 6:30 here, 5:30 our time. The JV squad won big over a team from PA, and varsity followed suit. It feels like the other states play a different style of ball: a lot more smack talk than in Illinois. We layed it into them, though, so I guess it didn't really matter as we won 10-2 to help Matt Murphy pick up his second win on the season. It started raining around 1, so our tanning time would have to wait. We decided to take a trip to Hollywood Studios and Magic Kingdom; Derek Idstein had never been on a rollercoaster before tonight, but we forced him onto Rockin' Rollercoaster. He didn't puke, but I did hear him crying a little bit in the back of the car. Mike Gentile decided it would be a good idea to take his shirt off for the picture on Space Mountain; little did he know the lack of clothing constituted 'inappropriate material' and therefore he couldn't buy his picture. It's OK though - we took a picture of it on my phone.
Day 3 - Monday, March 29: Since it rained like a monsoon yesterday, our games got moved back to 8 p.m. JV had two games back-to-back, so they didn't even get home until 2 in the morning. They dropped both of their games, but our sophomore pitchers looked solid and the hitters just hit a bit of a slump. The varsity game, however, was a game to remember. The team we played is from Ohio, they're actually all staying in the floor above us. Their pitcher wasn't as good as the kid we faced our first game, but he was definitely their ace. We started off ahead, but only by a couple runs, and Kevin DeRue took us deep into the seventh inning. After a quick error and a beaned batter, we had no outs, guys on first and second, and a kid in the bullpen who had never pitched a varsity inning: Austin Leggett. He came in firing, but after colliding on a dinker to the first base side with Angelo Gargano, it was now bases loaded. One of the best plays of the year came from a voice in the dugout: Nick Richter, a pitcher, told coach Whalen that they were going to attempt to squeeze on 0-2. They did, but we called a pitchout, making it an easy toss for me to Joe Shaiper to get the first out. We got out of the inning tied, and after Jackson White hit a sacrifice fly to right, Leggett struck out the side to end the game. The parents had pizza waiting for us back at the hotel, so it was a few quick bites and then right to bed as we have to wake up early again, around 6:30. We got back to the hotel around midnight, but we were so pumped from the game, we had a hard time falling asleep. The game had the intensity of our supersectional game last year against Nazareth.
Day 4 - Tuesday, March 30: We had another early game this morning, and we won big. The hitters are looking a lot better than on Saturday, and hopefully the hitting follows us back to Illinois. We bought tickets to the Yankees v. Braves game, and there were definitely some laughs. First of all, CC Sabathia is a boss: he's huge, and he actually made an appearance at the game next to our JV game in the afternoon. Robinson Cano hit a bomb in batting practice over the scoreboard, which was also awesome. The real excitement came, however, when Jackson White and a 9-year-old boy both went after a BP homer off the bat of Nick Swisher. The rest of us went after it as well, but, Jackson came out of the pile with the ball and heaved it back onto the field. Somehow, the 9-year-old boy ended up with a bloody lip. We all blamed Jackson, and Mike Gentile led a pile-on, so order was restored - it was the funniest part of the trip. On our last night in Disney, we went to Epcot. Epcot was frustrating: Soarin' was better than imax, but the line was ridiculous. Stefan Falbo forgot his room key so we had to sneak into Test Track. The rides don't compare to Six Flags, but I'm not complaining.
Day 5 - Wednesday, March 31: Just got done packing our stuff. We did a lot of eating, since our meal cards are useless at home. Most of us went to Downtown Disney to buy some t-shirts. The rest of the day we just sat under the sun to complete the tanning process. It's going to be a sad flight home, but we'll definitely have a lot to talk about. After all the screaming, wrestling, and eating, the Rams are the ready to take on the rest of Illinois.