Preparing for Camp  (Fri., Jan. 30) 

(Written by Meg Goldsmith on behalf of Kerry)

Kerry flies to Florida this afternoon so he'll be ready for the start of Fantasy Camp.  For those campers who live in the Baltimore area, they will leave BWI very early Sat. morning and then be expected to play two games in the Veteran's Tournament tomorrow.  Kerry doesn't have that option since he has to leave from Chicago.  But this allows him to get a little extra rest before the grind of the week begins.  And make no mistake about it; while it's a lot of fun, it's a grueling experience for all the camp participants.  Despite that, somehow, it still remains a fun experience even though, at least in Kerry's case, he comes home with bruises all over his body not to mention the occasional raspberry and damaged toenail.

To prepare for camp, Kerry has been throwing with a friend of his three days a week for the last two months.  All year long, he continues with a variety of weight exercises to keep his shoulder strong.  This started after he developed a severe case of tendonitis his first year at Fantasy Camp.  Not wanting a repeat of that pain and misery, he kept up with the exercises he was given to rehab the tendonitis.  As a result, he now throws harder and farther than he's ever been able to throw in his life!  He commented to me that his arm has never been stronger and he suspects he'll be doing a fair amount of pitching in addition to playing the infield (now primarily at third and short).  Besides the exercises and throwing, he's been running sprints the past couple of weeks with the hope that this will condition his quads a bit for all the dynamic movements entailed in competitive baseball.  Despite the fact that he runs or bikes on a daily basis for a full cardio workout, he ends the week at camp with very sore quadriceps muscles due to all the starting and stopping he has to do on the basepaths and in the field.  As if this isn't enough, he also swings a bat at a batting cage once a week.  This year, he got a late start on that activity because he developed tendonitis in one of his fingers and the doctor told him not to grip anything with that hand for a few weeks.  So we'll have to wait and see if he's had enough BP.

For the first time ever, I plan to join him.  I'll be going down for the weekend so I can meet and chat with the "weekend pros" as they're referred to and attend the Awards Banquet.  Last year, the team Kerry was on was runner up for The Ring.  He's hoping for even better results this year.  And he's hoping to avoid winning the dreaded Trainers Award, which he won with little competition at the 2003 camp.  Who knows... maybe he'll finally crack the lineup and win his first defensive trophy (he's been runner up a couple of times).  I'll be taking his camera along to get some photos which we can then post here on the site.

As for the pros, the week-long pros are the former Orioles players who do the brunt of the work at the camp.  They serve as coaches and managers for the camp participants and award the gold and brown ropes to players who have memorable moments (good and bad, respectively).  The weekend pros come down for the final few days of camp and participate in the "Pro Game" where campers play with and against the former pros.  At one time, it was the pros against the campers but now they mix them up.  They let Earl Weaver manage both teams, though, so he can win regardless of who is playing.  (Earl is still competitive in that respect.)  Some of the weekend pros include Earl Weaver, Brooks Robinson, Jim Palmer, Scott McGregor, and Gary Roenicke.  The weeklong pros include Jim Gentile, Grant Jackson, Don Buford and Ross Grimsley.

The only concern about this year's camp is the weather.  Kerry has been monitoring the forecast via weather.com and it's been projecting rain for at least part of the week.  When he arrived tonight, he had to drive in a steady rain from Tampa to Sarasota and the local weatherman was projecting rain on Sat. with intermittent showers for Sun.  He's not sure what the fallback position is in the event of rainouts but he's hopeful that it won't be a problem.  While waiting for his bags at Tampa International Airport, he ran into a long-time camper who told him that he'd only had one game called due to rain in over ten years of participation.  So we'll have to keep our fingers crossed that this is the worst case scenario for the 2004 camp.  Afterall, Kerry has some "catching up" to do after missing most of the action last year.

For those of you who aren't aware of the general setup for Fantasy Camp, you can read about it in last year's report.