Day 4-practice, practice, practice

We left the motel around 11:00 to make our way over to Grand Park field for our first practice of the trip. As we pulled into the lot, we noticed that the word "field" should have had an "s" on the end because there were NINE fields at the complex. All of them had synthetic turf, green for grass and brown for dirt (yes the brown you see by the bases is synthetic turf!), great dugouts, great fences, and all had lights. The guys were so excited there was even very little complaining when we ran a lap to warm up before our practice! We spent our two hours at the complex taking ground and fly balls to our hearts desire, working on leads, steals, pickoff moves, bunt coverage, and 1st/3rd situations.

After a quick lunch, we moved on to the Ripken complex, which is where we will be playing all of our games. We were VERY excited to see the fields and practice facilities. We spent the whole two-hour practice time in the cages, getting more swings in a day than we knew was possible. There were enough cages in our "pod" of cages for each player to be throwing or hitting at one time (see the picture below). We're planning on going back tomorrow to work on pitching on the twelve mounds they have available for our use as well as more hitting and some bunting work.

As much as we were excited to arrive at the Ripken complex, many guys were almost as excited to head to the beach for an afternoon in the sun. We spent a couple hours at the beach, taking in the sun and 80 degree weather. The water was a bit chilly, so running in and out of the water became a common theme. We also spent time messing with jellyfish that washed up on shore, making sand castles (sand lumps, since we didn't have buckets or scoops), and searching the ocean for glimpses of a dolphin.

Stat number of the day: 3 (the number of boys who saw the ocean for the first time and the number of jellyfish laid to rest by the boys)

Tonight's Wooden phrase: Drink deeply from good books, especially the Bible.