Living the baseball dream: A visit from Ron Santo
Editor's note: On the cusp of his 60th birthday, John Fieser's daughter arranged for him to attend former Chicago Cubs catcher Randy Hundley's fantasy baseball camp. Fieser, of Naperville, has played with and captained competitive softball teams since the mid-70s and is a long-suffering Cubs fan.
The weeklong camp in Mesa, Ariz., includes twice-daily intersquad games, building up to a game at the Cubs' Hohokam Park pitting the campers against former Cubs players who serve as coaches.
Fieser took his laptop to camp, too, and e-mailed reports to family and friends back home. We're printing edited versions of his dispatches, which will run through Friday.
Day 4 - Thursday, Jan. 29
The clubhouse meeting went for 90 minutes, mostly because Ron Santo arrived today. He got MEGA applause when he walked into the room. It was great. This time, I got there early, so had a good seat. I was right next to the guy running the camcorder.
Once the applause died down, Santo told why he wasn't at camp earlier. He had been at the Cubs Convention a couple weekends ago when he began to feel some pain in his neck and jaw. Feeling that he knew his body well enough to know that this was not good, he cut the Cubs Convention stay short, came back to Arizona, and went to his cardiologist.
He went into the hospital, had an angiogram done, and what was found was a blocked artery, which was fixed. That he appeared here today speaks volumes about how he "bleeds Cubby blue." He said he really enjoys being here and didn't want to miss it.
The consensus of the coaches was that we were overmatched by the Giants campers because of the pitching. Giants Fantasy Camp pitching is done by campers. Cubs' pitching is done by machines.
The coaches think, and I agree with them, that hitting is different against the machine vs. a person. Because the pitcher we faced threw slower than the slowest machines here, we all had trouble adjusting.
Also, with the machine, you can count on the pitch being somewhere near the plate every time. My last time at bat, I approached hitting like I do playing softball, but I still couldn't hit it.
Today, I began to get autographs. Jenkins twice, Reuschel, Cardenal, Durham, Santo twice. I bought four baseballs at $10 apiece, which they tell me is a bargain. I'm clueless - last I recall, baseballs cost a couple bucks at the local sport shop in Palatine, but that was a few years ago, like about 45 or 50. The coaches are very cooperative regarding autographs.
Our morning game was against the Lynch/Dernier team. We were behind early but came back to tie it up late in the game, and went to extra innings and won. I was a fairly ugly 4 for 5 in this game with 2 RBI and 1 run scored, but just one solid hit. The only out I made in the game was during the 8th inning rally where nearly everyone else got on base.
During most of the game, Ron Santo watched, signing autographs and posing for pictures with Campers. During the game, Ed Lynch told a story about the AstroTurf in St. Louis' old ballpark. During day games in the summer, the turf was so hot it would melt the plastic souls on the baseball spikes.
He said some of the players would put their shoes on "ammonia ice" between innings to cool them off. Towels with ammonia ice in them would be wrapped around players' heads to cool them off.
In the afternoon, we played the Jenkins/Pepitone team sans Pepitone - Fergy told us he had no idea where "Pepi" was. We won our third straight game, beating them by the largest margin of victory that we've had so far. I was much better - 2 for 3 in this game with an RBI.
We were all feeling pretty good about ourselves after that victory. Significant today was that one of our guys, the 5-tool-player, hit the wall twice: in the morning reaching the left center field fence about 3 feet above the ground on the fly (about 385 feet), and in the afternoon reaching the left field fence foul pole about 6 feet above the ground (about 365 ft). Those were the farthest I'd seen balls hit all week.
Finally, there was the "cookout" by the pool at the hotel that we were told would occur no matter the weather - rain, snow, sleet, hail, wind, dust storm, typhoon, meteor shower. The cooking and serving were all done by the coaches. Good food, lots of free beer, and good company.
Coming Thursday: A fantasy almost becomes reality.
<div class="infoBox"> <h1>More Coverage</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> <h2>Stories</h2> <ul class="links"> <li><a href="/story/?id=272675">Day 1: 'I will die a happy man' <span class="date">[2/15/09]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=271888">Day 2: Living a baseball dream<span class="date">[2/16/09]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=271940">Day 3: Playing the Giants<span class="date">[2/17/09]</span></a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div>