Friday, April 12, 2013

First Month in Czech Republic

I've been searching for the write phrasing to get this post started and I realized when I sat down to write, as different of an experience as living in a new country usually is - when you're playing baseball for a job in Europe, so many things are strangely familiar. I've lived in Belgium, Israel, Australia, Netherlands, Germany, and Hungary before setting up shop in Brno Czech Repubic this year and one consistent is that baseball players love to stop at McDonalds or KFC whenever they are on the road... I arrived on March 15th in the early afternoon, and two of my teammates picked me up from the Prague airport, and as soon as I mentioned that I was hungry - it was "let's take you to McDonalds to make you feel at home." Of course I only have eaten McD's on road trips in Europe and Australia with baseball players. Standard.

So many of the new experiences I've written about on this blog in past years, I begin to experience every year, regardless of the country. There is a language barrier, I am always struggling to translate menus and ask waitresses at restaurants whether the food contains dairy or lactose - and the first phrase I end up learning is "No Cheese Please" - "Bez syr prossim"

This year has presented two unique challenges. The first has been trying to practice baseball while it snowed, rained, with freezing temperatures and unplayable fields for the first 3 weeks here. In 7 years in Europe, I have never experienced weather this bad to begin a season. Our opening series was cancelled and we were finally able to go outside a mere three days before our season opener in Olomouc. As Head Coach, I had to somehow figure out who was what and how good everyone was in the organization before I could put a team together on a field. In the States, pro baseball has a month and a half of spring training to figure this out - we had 2 practices and no warm-up games.
The other challenge is for the first time in my career, I have to balance playing responsibilities while also overseeing and managing everything. It's hard to focus on my own training and practices when I'm also running a practice for 25 guys and needing to observe how good they are, where they need better instruction and get a system in place that everyone understands despite the vastly different baseball uprbringings and constant language barrier. In a game, I have to warm-up to pitch while making sure everything is going right AND making sure my pitchers don't lose confidence in their own abilities if I replace them with myself (especially when I know I can do the job). The easy thing to do is just put myself in the game where I see fit, but that doesn't necessarily accomplish the goal of getting our guys better and understanding our strengths and weaknesses of our team. So I've relegated myself to the bench for the first few weeks to all of this out. In years past, I would probably be ranting and raving that the coach hasn't used me in situations that I would definitely excel and help our team, but in this instance - I can't be upset with the coach, because the coach is me!

Meanwhile, for maybe the first time in my international baseball career I have been completely satisfied with my living quarters, my salary, and having the confidence of my boss to do what I need to in order to get maximum return on my baseball knowledge and strategies. Finally, at 29 years of age I've come to homeostasis for the first time in my career. Comfortable with my team, comfortable with my role, and having the authority and mandate to do what I see fit on the baseball field. So many times I've thought about hanging up my spikes and settling down in the States finally, but I'm glad I haven't had fortitude to follow through on my innate threats, as I would have never known what it would have been like to be totally happy with a baseball situation. I've had countless run-ins and issues with coaches, their decisions, and my roles on various teams dating back to my youth - but now I'm in control of my own baseball playing destiny, and as challenging as that is to balance everything, the feeling is the best I've ever had.

I've fallen into a day to day pattern of a Czech lifestyle - delicious coffee just down the block from where I live, researching and writing reports on the best European prospects for my scouting job with the Orioles, planning and executing practices and games to the best of my baseball abilities, and the confidence in my own abilities to play where I see fit. Once again, I'm in a far away strange land, with no prior friendships or anyone that I knew personally, even just a month ago, but maybe that's what I find so comforting in my life at this point - the non-comforting unfamiliarity and new experiences of this baseball vagabond lifestyle.


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