Travel News

Returning To Fantasy Baseball Camp: Attrition Day

Locations in this article:  Atlanta, GA Detroit, MI Pittsburgh, PA

Old Baseball - Tigers Baseball Fantasy CampIt’s down to the final two games before the playoff, and this group of campers is feeling the pain. Roy Berger reports on his week at Detroit Tigers Fantasy Camp, where injuries abound, but that doesn’t stop this team from playing their hearts out.

Today was scheduled to be Moving Day at Detroit Tigers Fantasy Camp.

The final two games of the regular schedule among the six teams would determine playoff seeds and what is becoming the all-important first round playoff bye.

Instead it became Black and Blue Attrition Day.

Breakfast at 7 a.m. the first couple of days would have a couple dozen early birds grabbing some cereal and coffee. This morning there were four of us.

Arriving in the Clubhouse at 8 a.m., the line in the trainer’s room was longer than the line at the breakfast buffet.

All were feeling the impact of four games in less than 24 hours and almost everyone showed some noticeable ailment.

Roy Berger At Bat - Tigers Fantasy CampI was pretty proud of myself. A year ago at Pirates camp I spent some time with the trainers and ice and Icy Hot. This year I’ve been on base a lot and have done all my own running. I’ve been feeling pretty good. As a bonus I have been able to get my legs in and out of bed all by themselves.

All was good until I attempted to put on my uniform pants this morning. It took about 5 minutes a leg.

I didn’t realize it until then but I was feeling sore in the quads and worse as the day wore on.

Frank Tanana said, “You have 51 weeks to get better, so get dressed!” Yes, sir.

Fred didn’t fare as well. He had an 8 a.m. call to visit the training room to get his hamstring iced and rolled.

He limped out about 15 minutes later but now with his right hand bandaged as well! He got hit with a pitch on Wednesday and it swelled to bandaged proportion. The guy is a mess

Kangaroo Court followed and I got popped for a fine I really didn’t see coming. In our game on Wednesday night when our pitcher lost the plate, I turned to Tanana hoping with his Major League experience he might come out and give a word or two of advice.

Instead he looked at me, shrugged his shoulders and said, “What do you want me to do?” He then yelled, “Roy, go settle him down.” A couple of pitches later our pitcher found the strike zone again.

This morning Judge Warden says “Berger, when your coach tells you to go settle a pitcher down, it might be a good idea to not wait until he throws 15 balls in a row and then he finally throws a strike and gets an out and then you go talk to him. He doesn’t need you anymore.”

The fine was $2 and I decided to test the appeal process. I told the Judge I appealed because I went over and told the pitcher what a good job he just did. The Judge contemplated and then almost immediately denied the appeal which now cost me $4.

As soon as he denied the appeal I told him I wanted to withdraw my appeal. After he got done laughing he hit me with another $2 upping the total to $6. I’ve paid almost as much in fines in three days as I have tuition for this camp!

Previously in this series:

Finally it was time to play ball and Ernie Banks would indeed be proud on a sun-drenched day and two seven inning doubleheaders slated.

Roy Berger Walks To The PlateWe were tied for the best record in camp at 3 wins and 1 loss. Our first game today was against the other team with the identical record in a game that ultimately would decide the top seed in the playoffs. They are coached by Dave Rozema and the very affable Tony Phillips.

We jumped out to a 4-1 lead after three innings and then got victimized by the camp rule that says a pitcher can only pitch three innings in a game. Our ace was done, we had no arms left, and ultimately we slopped our way out of the top seed with a 9-5 spanking.

I was 1 for 1, a single to right and two more walks. I’ve walked a lot this week but I am waiting for pitches to hit and not swinging for the sake of swinging. I fully understand the downside of walking is having to run the bases, but I’ll trade that off rather than chase bad stuff.

I also made my first fielding error of camp, booting a very playable ground ball. All I kept thinking was how much I hate my new glove.

Fred didn’t fare as well at the plate going 0 for 3. More importantly, he aggravated the hamstring once again by stretching for a ball at second base and going down (or in baseball parlance he was “snipered”).

The trainer came out and helped Fred off the field as someone else was using Fred’s walker on another field.

Fred At Bat - pre-mummificationLunch with Frank Tanana followed our loss and was enjoyable and getting to be a real treat. He’s a great, classy guy that really wants to know all about you.

Following lunch Detroit legend and Hall of Famer Al Kaline put on a hitting clinic and hosted a very interesting Q & A session.

We knew we had to win the afternoon game to clinch the second seed. Most importantly a win means we don’t have to report early on Friday for a first-round playoff game which sounded great to everyone.

We were able to use our top pitcher and gave him a bunch of support to get a 10-2 win over a team coached by Dan Petry and Larry Herndon.

Petry, a 125 game winner in the bigs for Detroit, California, Atlanta and Boston, has been on cloud nine all week as his son Jeff was called up 10 days ago to play for the Edmonton Oilers in the NHL.

The game itself was close for a little while but we broke it open in the middle innings and coasted to the second seed in the playoff round.

Read about Roy’s experiences last year at the Pittsburgh Pirates Camp:

Roy Berger At BatI had a good game going 2-3 with a solid single to center and then a rope to right with the bases loaded that knocked in two runs.

After my single to center I went back out to first base only to have Larry Herndon, a lifetime .274 Major League hitter with 107 home runs say, “nice poke.”

All I could think is what a wonderful world this is when a guy with over 1300 career hits tells a 58-year-old slug “nice poke!”

Fred, wrapped like a mummy, actually played the entire game in right field as we are getting pretty thin on our roster.

He had a good game, going 1 for 3, with a single to left and a very key RBI that helped break things open for us.

So the first round bye is secured, which means about an hour extra sleep in the morning and that was enough of a prize for everyone at this point of the week.

We learned after the game that another one has fallen as we lost our 33-year-old stud to a torn meniscus. There was no upside to that piece of news.

Players relaxing on the sidelinesInjuries combined with weather might have something to say about Friday with the forecast for storms. However everyone is hopeful we can get the playoff round finished and head to Saturday, which is the ballgame against the pro staff and is always fun.

Would be remiss if I didn’t mention the elderly couple from Detroit that was in the Lakeland area and decided to come to Tigertown and watch some of the Tigers off-season practice.

Unbeknownst to them they walked right in on a couple of fantasy camp games.

After about 10 minutes the wife turns to the husband and says “I sure hope they get better by April!”

So do the real Tigers!

By Roy Berger for PeterGreenberg.com.

Previously in this series:

Read about Roy’s experiences last year at the Pittsburgh Pirates Camp: