2006 Fantasy Camp Diary

Veteran's Tournament Day Two & The Draft

Sunday, January 29

by Meg Goldsmith for Kerry

Today was the second day of action in the Veteran's Tournament as well as being draft selection day.  

Kerry said that his team decided that since there was no chance they could make the championship game of the Veteran's Tournament they would hold out their best pitchers for the consolation game.  This included him.  As a result, they lost the first game 6-5 but they were in it the whole way.  They were playing David Berson's team and his team needed a win to make it into the championship game.  Kerry had three at bats and lined out to second the first time up, grounded out sharply to second in his second AB, and walked the third time up but didn't come around to score.  

Their strategy of holding back some pitching worked because they won the consolation game 3-1 in what turned out to be a quick game.  Only two batters for the opposing team reached base.  Kerry pitched the middle innings--3 & 4-- and gave up no hits or walks, getting a lineout to short and two soft fly balls to center plus three strikeouts.  He said his curveball was really working well for him.  At the plate he popped out to first and had a sharp single to left.  He had a lot of action in the middle of the diamond, being the pivot man in a 6-4-3 double play and in the game-ending 4-6-3 double play.  He fielded three pop flies and three or four ground balls.

This evening he found out that he would not be playing on Wayne Gross' team before the draft results were released.  He ran into Wayne in the lobby of the hotel and Wayne told him someone else had "stolen" Kerry from him.  When the draft was announced, Kerry learned he was chosen by Andy Etchebarren.  Kerry has never played for Etch before.  The coaches will be Gary Kendall and Mo Drabowsky when Mo is feeling up to it.  Kerry looked at the roster and while he doesn't know anything about the rookies he views himself as the third best pitcher on their team and he called that a sign of a good team.  

The other pros who are managing teams are Grant Jackson (Kerry's been on his team twice), Rocky Johnson (Kerry was drafted by Rocky once), Wayne Gross (two times), Jim Gentile (two times), Bill Swaggerty (not yet), Jack Voight (never played for), and Glenn Gulliver (still hasn't played for him either).  They'll be playing Voight's team on the road and Gulliver's team at home tomorrow and he commented that he doesn't like it when they have to change uniforms midway through the day.  I asked why and he said it's already sweaty so he'd prefer to leave it on rather than dirty up another uniform.  

Kerry noted that this is a small camp, with only 87 or so players and quite a few "rookies" -- campers who are there for the first time.  Five teams have 11 players and three have 10 and each team has approximately 4 rookies.  A couple of people are coming down midweek due to work considerations so only one team will have to face the entire week with only 10 players.  Kerry said the ideal number of campers per team is 12 because guys get injured.  He said that one year they had to redraft some players because a couple of teams were decimated by injuries.

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Veteran's Tournament Day One