Posts Tagged ‘Red Sox’

Jaklewicz: Chowing down and chewing the fat at Mickey D’s

Years ago, I took my dad to Cooperstown in upstate New York to tour the Baseball Hall of Fame and celebrate the induction of Red Sox great Carl Yastrzemski. My dad, though raised in New York, was a huge Red Sox fan.

(Man, I’m glad I don’t have to type in his name more often …)

After a long day of viewing the exhibits, taking in the exhibition game and witnessing the induction of … Yaz … and Johnny Bench, we returned to the bed-and-breakfast at which we were staying. We enjoyed the cool of the evening with cooler drinks on a large porch while talking with other guests. We waved to and spoke to folks who passed by the house shaded by the leafy canopies of trees.

The proprietors sat with us. Some folks passing by they knew and addressed by name. To others, mostly in town for the inductions, the owners called out, “How’re y’all doin’?”

Obviously, they didn’t say “y’all.” This was New York state.

If it sounds idyllic, it was. Small-town America, the way it used to be. Moving slowly. Neighbors knowing neighbors. Relaxing at day’s end, and not with an electronic device anywhere in sight.

This was, after all, way back in 1989.

Flash to Abilene, just a few week ago.

I stopped for lunch at the new McDonald’s on North First Street, mainly to taste the new Fish McBites.

I chose to sit on a stool at a counter, where three other diners were enjoying lunch and/or their  smartphones.

A man across from me to my right started the  conversation.

It was, of course, about my beard, that he has grown one once but his wife had interrupted its progress. I told him my wife was not so cool with mine, either.

That launched us into conversation.

Imagine, two strangers not in any particular hurry, just … talking. Here is what I found out about my lunch buddy. Although a journalist is trained to ask questions and get information, this was not a Q-and-A.

Just two guys talking.

He was in the Air Force for 22 years.

Couldn’t grow a beard then. But has grown out his hair an inch or two more than it is now.

He works at the French Robertson Unit.

He was having lunch at Mickey D’s because he had a break from a class being ahead across the street in the Chase building.

He was from Houston.

He has two kids still at home, one recently graduated from Sam Houston State. Son’s looking for job but finding that tough. Needs experience, they tell him. Give me that experience, he tells them.

Dyess was my new friend’s first Air Force posting. They returned after he retired because his wife has family in the area.

Schools aren’t bad here. Schools where he grew up weren’t good then, not good now (Another reason to live here). Wanted to live near a military base to use his benefits.

Likes how military gets a break in town — 10 percent off here, 10 percent off there. It all helps.

Plans to work a few more years at the prison. Probably until his youngest, a boy in fourth grade, is through public schools. That was my take, anyway.

Said working at the prison is OK. Have to stay neutral. Give the inmates some dignity but remember “they are there for a reason.”

I don’t think I told him half that much about me.

I needed to squeeze in a two more errands before returning to work, so I was the first to get up to leave.

“Since we’ve been talking,” I said, extending my hand across the counter, “my name is Greg.”

He told me his name, returning the handshake. “You be careful out there.”

I left thinking how much I had enjoyed lunch. Fish McBites were OK.

Just two guys talking, hitting on some common ground. We had a few laughs and agreed on some truths in life. Better than sitting isolated in our own booths, eating while messing with our phones.

Kinda throwback. Like sitting on a big porch and saying hey to the neighbors as evening falls.

Article source: http://www.reporternews.com/news/2013/mar/09/jaklewicz-chowing-down-and-chewing-the-fat-at-ds/

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Brown fans on fat pitch at debate

The most innocuous question asked of Republican Sen. Scott Brown and his Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren in their debate Monday night has perhaps provided us with the most revealing look into the heart of the two candidates.

The Red Sox are suffering through one of their worst seasons in decades, and in Red Sox Nation it is hard to say which is generating the most pain and uncertainty, their embarrassingly failing team, or the flagging economy.

Things are so bad that one of the gravest insults you can heap on a Yankee fan these days is to suggest that the Red Sox are still their biggest rival.

And so on a night when Sen. Brown and Ms. Warren were given the chance by the debate moderator, David Gregory, to speak freely as the Red Sox fans they claim to be, one spoke of a broken heart, hope and redemption, and the other played politics.

Mr. Gregory asked whether Manager Bobby Valentine should be fired or allowed to stay another year.

“You know, I had such hopes for Bobby Valentine. I am still just in wounded mode on that,” Ms. Warren said, before allowing she would bring Mr. Valentine back for another year.

Now, there are a lot of Red Sox fans I know who would say Ms. Warren is off her rocker for wanting to give Mr. Valentine a second chance.

Indeed, the general consensus among fans and sports writers is that he won’t be coming back.

Yet, contrast her response to that of Mr. Brown, who seems to suggest that Ms. Warren is a flawed candidate because of her optimistic outlook for the Red Sox.

“I remember in the beginning of the season professor Brown said the Red Sox are going to win 90 games, and obviously that didn’t happen,” he said.

Pressed to commit one way or the other to whether he would keep or fire Mr. Valentine, Mr. Brown declined to take a position, saying he would leave it up to Red Sox management.

This tells me that the Red Sox jersey he wears on the campaign trail is just for show, a proclivity that seems to shadow his political positions.

Consider the answer he gave, for example, when Mr. Gregory asked him whether he would support Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky as leader, should the Republicans win the majority in the Senate in November.

Mr. McConnell is the staunchest blocker of President Obama’s agenda in the Senate.

Mr. Brown wouldn’t say definitively whether he would support Sen. McConnell, even though the Massachusetts senator is currently soliciting campaign donations by saying his re-election will allow him to help block President Obama’s economic agenda.

Now, I know this is a campaign season in which candidates are asking us to trust them on their vague, and sometimes absent plans to revitalize the economy, and I understand they think they can get away with this because the home economics classes taken in high school are the closest some of us have come to understanding modern day economic theories.

I also understand that politicians often speak differently to different audiences. But it is hard to imagine any other Red Sox fan out there, witnessing this dreadful season, who would stand on propriety when it comes to speaking their minds on whether Mr. Valentine should stay or go.

Mr. Brown’s inability to forgo politics for just a moment and tell us whether the manager of the worst Red Sox team in decades should stay is not the same as Attorney General Martha Coakley, his challenger two years ago, calling former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling a Yankee fan and speaking condescendingly of the prospect of campaigning outside Fenway Park in the cold, shaking hands.

Nevertheless, his noncommittal response should be seen as a strikeout anyway to all deflated and diehard Red Sox fans.

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Article source: http://www.telegram.com/article/20121003/COLUMN44/110039915

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Red Sox-Dodgers Trade: Bobby Valentine Continues to Trim the Fat from the …

Carl Crawford, Adrian Gonzalez and Josh Beckett are the latest subtractions from the Boston Red Sox lineup under the Bobby Valentine regime.

The Valentine-led Red Sox have completed a fire sale via a blockbuster trade that will send left fielder Crawford, first baseman Gonzalez, right-handed starting pitcher Beckett, infielder Nick Punto and cash to the Los Angeles Dodgers, according to USA Today. In exchange, the Red Sox will receive pitchers Rubby De La Rosa and Allen Webster, infielder Ivan De Jesus Jr. and outfielder Jerry Sands from the Dodgers.

The mighty Red Sox Nation is in desperate need of a change of attitude that can only come with a change of personnel. After the historical collapse the team endured last season, flaws in the management and leadership of the team grew too large to ignore.

The Red Sox have been absent from their reservations at the postseason dinner table since 2009. They haven’t won a playoff series since 2008, when they were eliminated by the surprise Tampa Bay Rays in the ALCS.

Since the 2009 season, the Rays have replaced the Red Sox as the team contending with the New York Yankees for AL East supremacy each season. This season, the Red Sox are currently fourth in the division.

The Red Sox seemed like they were going to be unstoppable when they brought in Crawford and Gonzalez before the 2011 season. However, the ridiculous financial investment didn’t pan out to success on the field. It appears the players didn’t fit into the type of team Valentine wants to manage.

It is safe to assume that Valentine has carte blanche authority in Boston when you look at the moves that have been made so far this season. Sure Ben Cherington is the GM, but these moves have Valentine’s prints all over them.

Kevin Youkilis was sent to the Chicago White Sox after tensions mounted from Valentine’s questioning whether he was as physically and emotionally into the game as he used to be.

The Red Sox also traded catcher Kelly Shoppach to the New York Mets. Shoppach was rumored to be the player who sent the text message to Boston ownership complaining about Valentine, according to the New York Daily News.

That brings us to the trio sent packing today.

Crawford made every boo-boo seem like a career-ending injury and just never adjusted to the pressures of playing in front of the Boston media and Red Sox Nation. Coming from the friendly atmosphere of Tampa Bay, he wasn’t prepared for the level of expectations and accountability.

Gonzalez also was involved in the text messaging scandal, and there also was a sentiment that he wasn’t able to adjust to playing in Boston after coming from the West Coast.

No beer, new manager, same Beckett.

Beckett was the ultimate disappointment. After all of the attention he garnered from the chicken and beer incident last year, he thought (or didn’t think) that playing golf after not pitching due to a back injury was acceptable.

If no other changes happened, Beckett needed to be sent packing. Punto, unfortunately, is a casualty of war.

These moves have solidified the facts that the Red Sox are a team in transition and Valentine is at the helm of the ship. After all of these moves and changes, the 2013 Boston Red Sox will look much different from the team we have become accustomed to seeing over the past decade.

That may be exactly what this team needs if they hope to return to dominance.

Jamal Wilburg is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report.

Like him on Facebook, follow him on Twitter or visit his website.

Article source: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1311093-red-sox-dodgers-trade-bobby-valentine-continues-to-trim-the-fat-from-the-roster

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Fat Cats teenager beats IBL’s best

Fat Cats 4, Red Sox 3

OTTAWA — For a 19-year-old facing the club that has been the Intercounty Baseball League’s best for the past half decade, James Amelotte certainly didn’t looked at all fazed.

All the Cornwall native did was toss a complete game in the Ottawa Fat Cats’ 4-3 win over the Brantford Red Sox on Sunday afternoon at Ottawa Stadium and offer up a bit of redemption following the Fat Cats’ 9-5 loss to the Red Sox on Saturday night.

The crowd certainly appreciated the effort of Amelotte and the rest of the Fat Cats on Fan Appreciation Day.

“Best feeling this year so far, beating that team especially,� Amelotte said. “Out of all people, I didn’t think I’d be the one to beat them.�

Amelotte allowed three earned runs on 10 hits and struck out four Red Sox hitters as the Fat Cats (16-18) closed out the home portion of the regular season. They have makeup games in Hamilton on Tuesday and Toronto on Wednesday before the playoffs begin, likely next weekend.

The Red Sox (28-6), the four-time defending league champions, scored single runs in the first, third and eighth innings off Amelotte, who was helped out by some spectacular defence, including a pair of improbable catches by centre-fielder Kevin Dietrich.

“Any time you beat a good team like that, especially with a young guy on the mound, you’re doing well,� first baseman Matt McGovern said. “Hopefully we keep going hard.�

The Fat Cats scored a run in the first inning, then added three in the fifth to take a 4-2 lead off Red Sox starter Nathan Forer. With two outs in the fifth, Wade Wilson walked. Cody Mombourquette singled and then Jason Coker singled to score Wilson. Eitan Maoz then doubled home the two baserunners.

“I was just glad that Coker got on to tie it up,� Maoz said. “I was just waiting for a pitch over the middle of the plate that I could handle. I got up in the count and after (Forer) hung up a curveball, I knew he was going to try to come back with a fastball and I just got the barrel to the ball.�

The win was important for more than just the standings. It also sends a message.

“Not so much to the rest of the league, but more to ourselves,� Maoz said. “If we know that we can beat the top team in the league … we proved that we’re a good club.

“This is a building block where we can gain some momentum and hopefully move up a spot or two before the playoffs.�

The Fat Cats will finish in either fifth, sixth or seventh and open the playoffs on the road.

Article source: http://www.canada.com/Sports/Baseball/Cats+teenager+beats+best/6972574/story.html

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Fat Cats wrap home schedule

It was around this time last year that the Ottawa Fat Cats started a run that eventually led them to the Intercounty Baseball League Championship Series, which they wound up losing in five games to the Brantford Red Sox.

This weekend, the Fat Cats will face those same Red Sox at Ottawa Stadium in their final two home games of the regular season. Once the post-season begins, the Fat Cats will be looking to clone the success they had last year, while the favoured Red Sox will be trying to claim their fifth consecutive IBL title.

The Red Sox have secured first place in the nine-team league with a 27-5 record, while the Fat Cats, currently seventh at 15-17, can finish either fifth, sixth or seventh heading into the playoffs.

The two things that are certain: They won’t have home field advantage in the opening round, but they also won’t have face the Red Sox in the opening round.

“We’re not exactly where we want to be in the standings,� Fat Cats manager Tim Nelson said. “It would be good to finish off the season strong and play a couple good games against the top team and see where we place. It would be good to play Brantford tough this weekend and hopefully come out with a win or two and gain some momentum heading into the playoffs and gain some confidence.�

The Fat Cats will be without Brandon Huffman, the IBL strikeout leader, for the weekend. He’s done for the regular season after experiencing some arm soreness.

“It’s nothing serious. It’s just arm fatigue, so we’ll give him a break this weekend and have him fresh for the playoffs,� Nelson said.

“The weekend will get another start for two pitchers and give our regular guys a few more at bats.�

The plan is also to get everyone ready for what they hope will be another long run. The current Fat Cats lineup is littered with players who took the team deep into last year’s post-season. Experience, then, is a key going forward.

“For the most part, we have the same guys we had last year who experienced that playoff run. They know what it takes, and really in this league, you just have to get hot at the right time. And that’s what we did last year,� Nelson said.

Sunday is Fan Appreciation Day at Ottawa Stadium and also the third birthday party for Fat Cats’ mascot, Grapes. The Fat Cats will then play makeup games in Hamilton Tuesday and Toronto Wednesday to close out the regular season.

Article source: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/sports/Cats+wrap+home+schedule/6966671/story.html

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Are fat baseball players a problem?

Jumping rope?

“We didn’t do that,” Hall of Fame hitter Jim Rice says while watching the kid from the driver’s seat of a golf cart. “None of us did it. I’d show up to spring training, get my glove and go in the field, get that 36-36 [his 36-inch, 36-ounce bat], and go in the cage and start swinging. That was it.”

“No one did this,” a teammate from the 1970s, pitcher Luis Tiant, agrees from the passenger seat. “No one jumped rope. No one lifted weights. Try to lift weights?—?they’d tell you to stop.”

“We got in shape to play baseball by playing baseball,” left-handed onetime philosopher Bill Lee adds, part of the group.

The place where the minor league outfielder does his work this day is a stretch of artificial turf outside the weight room at JetBlue Park, the Red Sox’ new spring training home. Inside the room are all the toys of modern fitness training: the large inflated balls, the polyester tubes to aid in rolling around the floor, the mats, the barbells, the assortment of resistance machines, grim and foreboding.

Every morning, the players spill out of the room to do various exercises, bending and pushing, twisting and sliding, then go back into the room to do more. On the fields, there are further drills, one special area lined like a football field just for workouts, rows of players sprinting or skipping, not a baseball or bat in sight. Little plastic cones are laid out as obstacles in some of the drills. Little plastic cones?

The old world smiles at this new world. The old world has a combined 49 big league seasons of experience.

Article source: http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/health/articles/2012/04/08/fat_baseball

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Are fat baseball players a problem?

THE MINOR LEAGUE OUTFIELDER jumps rope with great efficiency in the Fort Myers, Florida, sunshine. A rhythm seems to play through his head, a syncopation that keeps the leather rope moving in an almost invisible blur. His hands control the wooden handles at his sides, his feet move and dance. He has a determined look on his face, serious. A rolled-up bandana is tied around his head to keep the sweat from running into his eyes.

Take away the uniform of the Boston Red Sox, the practice edition with the red shirt and gray pants, and he could be a welterweight boxer, maybe a middleweight, training for a shot at the title. Leave the uniform on, though, and he looks a bit strange. He is a baseball player.

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Jumping rope?

“We didn’t do that,” Hall of Fame hitter Jim Rice says while watching the kid from the driver’s seat of a golf cart. “None of us did it. I’d show up to spring training, get my glove and go in the field, get that 36-36 [his 36-inch, 36-ounce bat], and go in the cage and start swinging. That was it.”

“No one did this,” a teammate from the 1970s, pitcher Luis Tiant, agrees from the passenger seat. “No one jumped rope. No one lifted weights. Try to lift weights — they’d tell you to stop.”

“We got in shape to play baseball by playing baseball,” left-handed onetime philosopher Bill Lee adds, part of the group.

The place where the minor league outfielder does his work this day is a stretch of artificial turf outside the weight room at JetBlue Park, the Red Sox’ new spring training home. Inside the room are all the toys of modern fitness training: the large inflated balls, the polyester tubes to aid in rolling around the floor, the mats, the barbells, the assortment of resistance machines, grim and foreboding.

Every morning, the players spill out of the room to do various exercises, bending and pushing, twisting and sliding, then go back into the room to do more. On the fields, there are further drills, one special area lined like a football field just for workouts, rows of players sprinting or skipping, not a baseball or bat in sight. Little plastic cones are laid out as obstacles in some of the drills. Little plastic cones?

The old world smiles at this new world. The old world has a combined 49 big league seasons of experience.

“I went to spring training with Cleveland for the first time in 1964,” Tiant says. “I’d been 15-1 in Triple A at Portland [Oregon]. I had a little eight-pound weight I sometimes used in my room. Built up my arm a little. I had a five-pound weighted baseball that I sometimes threw in the outfield, because when you did that, the real baseball felt like nothing. The trainer told me not to do either of them, they were not good for you. I said: ‘I was 15-1 in Portland doing this. Forget about you, I’m doing it here.’ ”

“You came down here to get in shape,” Lee says. “Sparky Lyle . . . the Red Sox were worried about his weight one year. They put a clause in his contract. He drove down to spring training. He was 217 pounds when he left up north. Great. The trip took three days. He was 231 pounds when he got here! George Scott, the Boomer, offered to let him wear his rubber workout jacket. Boomer would report heavy every year, put that thing on, and 10 minutes later he’d be sweating so much he looked like a black Lloyd Bridges from Sea Hunt. It was all different.”

“We had one trainer, three coaches,” Rice says. “Now . . .”

The Hall of Famer thinks about it all. Same as Tiant, he wears the Red Sox practice uniform as one of the many coaches and instructors at this camp. Weights? Cones? Exercises? He gets out of the golf cart, stands on the pavement, and starts to jump an imaginary rope, same as the minor league kid, no more than 30 feet away. He jumps the imaginary rope quite well.

“So I’m out in left field. . .” Jim Rice says.

“So I’m jumping rope. . .” he says.

“A ball is hit out there. . .” he says.

“Is this jumping rope going to help me get it?” he asks.

What kind of shape, anyway, does a man have to be in to play . . . baseball?

***

QUESTIONS ABOUT THE RED SOX’ conditioning arose, of course, at the turbulent, truncated end of the 2011 season. When the local edition of the Boys of Summer nose-dived to that 6-18 record after September 3, blew a nine-game lead in the wild card spot, and finished with that dramatic final embarrassment, unable to collect the final strike for that final out in the final inning of that final game in Baltimore, knocked out of the playoffs, a collapse of historic proportions even by local terms, the players quickly became known as the Fat Boys of Summer.

Fingers were pointed everywhere, but most often at a number of puffy stomachs. Reports arrived about takeout orders of Popeyes fried chicken washed down with frosty lagers in the Red Sox clubhouse during games. Names were named. A sequence of Before and After photos was laid across sports pages and websites as Exhibit A.

On the left, pitchers like Josh Beckett, Jon Lester, John Lackey, Tim Wakefield, and Clay Buchholz smiled with lean ambition, happy confidence. On the right, presumably after that extended relationship with those $10.99 eight-piece Popeyes boxes (two legs, two thighs, two wings, two breasts), perhaps bolstered with some signature sides like Cajun-battered fries and mashed potatoes with Cajun gravy, biscuits, and maybe some red beans and rice, not to mention that demon alcohol, jowls were heavier, smiles were gone. The pitchers looked more like Nick Nolte after a night on the town than threats to Nolan Ryan’s career statistics.

The narrative that developed quickly as manager Terry Francona was fired and replaced by Bobby Valentine, as general manager Theo Epstein took a job in Chicago and was replaced by assistant Ben Cherington, as assorted roster changes were made, was that this would not happen again. Fat would not be a factor. The new Red Sox, the 2012 version, would be in shape, damn it.

To underline the point, management fired strength and conditioning coach Dave Page, fired assistant trainer Greg Barajas, told Dr. Thomas Gill he no longer would be their chief medical officer, and reassigned clubhouse personnel, switching Tom McLaughlin, visiting clubhouse man, to the home locker room. Different voices would be brought onto the scene to perhaps reawaken the troops.

Disappointment was hung on a convenient hook.

Page, the strength coach, had worked with the Sox for six years. He was a baseball guy, a former player at the University of Southern Maine who had followed a winding road through the minor leagues in two different organizations before he landed in Boston. He had tailored exercises for each of the big leaguers, individual workout plans to be followed during both the regular season and the offseason. His concentration was baseball fitness, exercises that would help baseball skills.

“I’ve always in the past used the example of cutting wood for the wood stove,” he said on WEEI sports radio after he was dismissed. “If you’re going to get through the winter at the end of the year, you’d better have some wood to keep yourself warm. I think some guys ran out.”

Page said he was as amazed as anyone at the grim finish. He said he had been available every day, at home and on the road, for workouts. Sometimes, yes, a few players had missed those sessions as the year progressed. The Red Sox had been the best team in baseball for the middle four months of the season. How had that fallen apart so easily at the end? He was surprised when Beckett admitted what everyone else saw, that he had gotten “a little sideways” as regards his weight. The surprises kept coming.

“I had a good conversation with one player at the end of the year in Baltimore that really kind of opened my eyes,” Page continued. “I said: ‘Hey, what’s going on here? It seemed like you pulled the plug a little bit. Why?’ He kind of looked down at the ground, looked back at me, and said: ‘I don’t know why. I can’t answer that question.’ Which was kind of a shock.”

So Page and Francona and those other people in charge were gone. Apologies of sorts eventually were twisted out of different players. Beckett said that a sprained ankle had kept him from running and that the impending birth of his daughter had captured some of his attention, but that he had done his other workouts and tried as hard as he could. Lester said, “We stunk, I stunk,” but claimed he always had done his workouts and promised to spend more time on the dugout bench during games this year. Team owner John Henry, chairman Tom Werner, and president Larry Lucchino mumbled the appropriate mea
culpas. Valentine came in and banned alcohol in the clubhouse. The image of the Red Sox ballplayer was dusted off and dry-cleaned as well as possible, brought back for the new year on a hanger inside a plastic bag.

And Mike Boyle was hired as the new strength and conditioning coach.

***

“I HAVE TO GET THE TERMINOLOGY down,” the new man said as he installed his system at Fort Myers. “Every sport has its own language that you have to use. Like I keep calling Bobby Valentine ‘the coach.’ He’s very nice about it, but I have to start calling him ‘the manager.’ That’s baseball.”

Fifty-two years old, born in Malden to a Boston University Hall of Fame football player, Boyle has been around the Boston athletic scene since he earned his master’s from Springfield College in 1982 and started as an assistant trainer at BU. He was one of the first, maybe the first, full-time strength and conditioning coaches in the country. As the field has expanded and as more and more money has poured into professional and college sports, his business and stature have grown. He has helped a range of athletes build bodies for football, basketball, baseball, and especially hockey from his MBSC gym, which is now based in Woburn. He spent eight years in the 1990s working with the Boston Bruins. He has a website, DVDs, a list of clients that runs from the famous to exercise beginners.

The call from the Red Sox was a refreshing challenge. Yes. Sure. Why not?

“I wanted to do this,” Boyle says. “I’ve always said that Major League baseball players are the best athletes in the country. People forget how good they are. Think about it. They were the stars. Not many of them played just baseball in high school. Not many of them played the positions they play now in the big leagues. Everybody was the all-star shortstop, the big pitcher, the quarterback, the point guard in basketball. These guys are the best of the best.”

His job, he thinks, is to add a foundation of strength and fitness to that natural athleticism. (“Everybody can be better in whatever they do. Isn’t that the truth? I can be better, you can be better. Everybody.”) He isn’t looking for bodybuilders, honed for competition. He is looking for better-conditioned baseball players.

“I think there’s a common denominator at work among athletes in all sports,” Boyle says. “Everybody needs to warm up. Everybody needs to stretch for flexibility. Everybody needs a little weight training.

“That doesn’t mean that baseball isn’t a little different. They’re deceiving, baseball players. They sometimes don’t look like a lot of other athletes. They can operate with an extra layer of fat and do fine. If you’re a hockey player and you lose 20 pounds, that can really help. Twenty pounds is a lot of extra weight to be dragging around on the ice. Not so much in baseball. You’re not moving around so much.”

The baseball player traditionally has been one of the least athletic-looking millionaires on the professional sports grid, perhaps more fit than professional golfers, perhaps not, but definitely behind the athletes in most other sports. The chiseled bodies the game has seen often belonged to the biggest steroid users of the past 20 years, different from the long continuum of baseball players. Were Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire and, yes, Roger Clemens cheating? Their bodies were the evidence.

The beauty of the continuum always has been that players come in all sizes and shapes. Dustin Pedroia can play at a listed 5-feet-8, 165 pounds. David Ortiz can play at 6-feet-4, 230 pounds. And 27-year-old Prince Fielder, listed at 5-feet-11, 275 pounds, can sign the largest contract of the offseason, $214 million for nine years with the Detroit Tigers. “A thing people have to realize is that baseball players aren’t supermodels,” Josh Beckett said in a recent interview. “We don’t all look like Jacoby Ellsbury. I wish I did, but I don’t. I never have and I never will.”

The 162-game regular season, half of those on the road, plus spring training and potential playoffs limit how much exercising players can do once the season begins. Boyle already knows his programs will be modified, reduced, especially for position players. Just being in the games is a lot of exercise.

“This isn’t football. Just one game a week,” Boyle says. “That’s another thing people miss out on when they talk about baseball players: There’s a mental and physical grind that doesn’t exist in any other sport. They’re playing every day. Playing and traveling. It’s a lot.”

This does not mean that exercise can’t help. Even Babe Ruth, the greatest hitter in the game, the first fat baseball player that comes to any mind, legendary for his consumption of hot dogs, beer, and bicarbonate of soda, not to mention for his late-night schedule, added a physical fitness regimen for the second half of his career. A miserable, injury-laden, scandal-filled season in 1925 at the age of 30 sent him off to find a personal trainer. His choice was Artie McGovern, a former boxer who worked in Manhattan with Wall Street tycoons and clients like composer John Philip Sousa and bandleader Paul Whiteman.

“About the middle of December, 1925, Babe Ruth came into my gymnasium a total wreck,” McGovern said in Collier’s magazine. “He weighed 254 pounds. His blood pressure was low and his pulse was high. He was as near to a total loss as any patient I ever had under my care. He had lived a life of excess and was suffering the inevitable consequences. His stomach had gone back on him completely. His eyes had been affected. The slightest exertion left him short of breath. His muscles were soft and flabby.”

McGovern made the Babe cut out red meat and sweets, stuffed him full of salad and fruit, made him drink glasses of hot water every day. The workouts — much like Mike Boyle’s idea — were not baseball specific. McGovern said Ruth’s baseball muscles were fine because they were used so much. He wanted stronger legs, a stronger and more slender core. In the six weeks before spring training started, Ruth lost 44 pounds. His waistline shrank 8¾ inches, down to 40. His blood pressure rose from 107 to 128. His pulse rate dropped from 92 to 78.

In 1926, the reconditioned Babe led the league in home runs (47) and runs batted in (146) and had a .372 batting average. In 1927, he hit his record 60 home runs. Artie McGovern was part of his life for the final 10 years of his career.

“Old players will talk in all sports about how nobody needed training,” Boyle says. “Derek Sanderson will talk about how the Bruins used to smoke cigarettes between the periods. But a lot has changed since then. If you told me 20 years ago that the captain of the Bruins would be a 6-feet-9, 275-pound defenseman, I’d have said you were crazy. It’s the same in baseball. How many pitchers were throwing 100 miles an hour? I’d say there’s a lot more now.”

So he works every day to bring his training concepts from other sports to baseball, to recondition the local troops. So sometimes players jump rope as if they are getting ready to climb in the boxing ring. So sometimes they slide back and forth as if they are getting ready to face the Montreal Canadiens instead of the Tampa Bay Rays. So sometimes they bend and sprint as if they are trying out for the New England Patriots. The discontent of the fall is replaced by the optimism of the spring. Trouble always brings change.

“Friends back home gave me a lot of grief,” Boyle says. “They said: ‘Wait’ll you try to work with these guys! The Red Sox!’ Well these guys have been great. They’ve all been open. . . . I haven’t had one guy refuse to do anything. And the older guys, they’ve bought into it more than anyone.”

***

EVEN THE LEGENDS ADMIT THEY would be doing plyometrics, lifting weights, and all the rest if management wanted them to. The legends maybe don’t think conditioning is the answer — or that lack of conditioning was the problem a year ago — but they understand the dance that is being done. The boss is the boss. Times are different. The baseball life is different.

The more simple life is gone forever.

“I played winter baseball for 22 seasons,” Luis Tiant says. “Not many guys play winter ball now. I was never out of shape. I’d pitch over 200 innings in the big leagues — nobody does that, either. . . .  I’d pitch 175 innings or so in winter ball, depending on how far we would go into the playoffs. So I’d take a week off, maybe two, and I’d be back pitching again.”

“We’d only have 45 guys in camp,” Jim Rice says. “Not like today. So you’d pretty much play seven or nine innings every day while you were down here. That was the way you’d get in shape.”

“I’d pull into Winter Haven, Florida, a week early in my 1962 Chevy,” Bill Lee says. “I’d go out to the field and the first thing I’d do, all by myself, is lie down, feel the sun. I’d bring a football with me, and after a while I’d get up and punt the football. Then I’d run and get the football. Then I’d punt it again. Then I’d run again.”

Come to think of it, he says, the lined football field of today would have been perfect for his workouts. The lines would have told him how far his punts traveled. And how far he ran. He would have felt almost legitimate.

“Would you keep kicking the football when the rest of the team appeared?” the left-handed onetime philosopher is asked.

“Oh, no. I’d put it away. They wouldn’t want to see you kicking a football. You’d get in trouble.”

Try BostonGlobe.com today and get two weeks FREE.Leigh Montville is a former sportswriter for The Boston Globe and Sports Illustrated and the author of numerous books, including Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero and The Big Bam, a biography of Babe Ruth. Send comments to magazine@globe.com.

Article source: http://bostonglobe.com/magazine/2012/04/06/are-fat-baseball-players-problem/SMrVdcqeQWH2UDXdvtOP9I/story.html

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