Friday, January 25
Kerry flies out to Florida late this afternoon because the veteran's tournament begins Saturday afternoon and he wanted to avoid a pre-dawn flight, although veteran participants from Baltimore have to arrive at BWI at 5:00 am tomorrow morning for their group flight. Rookies have a similarly early flight on Sunday morning.
In preparation for what's going to follow over the next ten days, a few words about the structure of Fantasy Camp are in order. Rookies, or those individuals who have never participated before, show up on Sunday for drills and an evaluation game. Veterans, also known as anybody who has participated in the past, can show up for the Veteran's Tournament, which involves two games on both Saturday and Sunday and a Championship Game on Monday while the rookies play their exhibition game so the pros can evaluate them prior to the draft. The pros then draft their teams and the first regular game is played. Starting on Tuesday, two games a day are played through Friday. On either Friday or Saturday, each team plays a game with the "weekend pros" ;which lasts for three innings. Here, campers have the opportunity to hit against a former Oriole such as Mark Williamson, Scott McGregor, and sometimes even Jim Palmer. Who the campers face depends on which former Orioles are present for the weekend and happens to be pitching.
The Tournament is played in two brackets starting Friday afternoon, with the top four teams playing for the "Ring Championship" where the winner takes home a ring while the next four teams play in the "Trophy Championship" bracket. If ten teams are drafted the bottom two teams play in what campers refer to as the "Toilet Bowl Championship" (but is actually called the "Low-Men-On-The-Totem-Pole.com Championship"). The championship rings are handed out at Camden Yards at some point during the regular season prior to the start of one of the Orioles home games while the trophies are handed out at the awards banquet which is held Saturday evening. On Sunday, the exhausted, bruised and battered campers fly home to rest up for their reunion game at Camden Yards in the summer.
As a review, in the past three years, Kerry has played for Grant
Jackson (1999), Jim Gentile (2000), and Rocky Johnson (2001). While on
Diamond's Jim's (that was the team's name), they reached the Ring Championship
series which was a first for Jim Gentile. Unfortunately, they lost the
first game in the series. Had they won, they would've played for The
Ring. This was the only time Kerry has been on a team aiming for The
Ring. It is also worth noting that was voted the MVP of "The
Rock" by his teammates last year and has been a finalist for the Gold Glove
Award in each of his three seasons at camp. Perhaps this year will be the
lucky year when he breaks through and wins but he tells me there is a fair
amount of competition for it.
As for the pro game, up until last year, each camp team played against the pros
who were managed by Earl Weaver. Last year, they split the campers and
pros so they were playing side-by-side, with Earl managing both teams.
Turns out Earl is very competitive and doesn't like to loose, and this format
gives the campers a better feel for what it's like to play the pros while
allowing Earl to win. It should be noted that the pros never lost a game
to the campers. And Craig can attest to the power some of the former
Orioles still have. After the 1999 session, which Kerry and Craig both
attended as rookies, they commented about the bomb Tito Landrum hit out of one
of the parks at Twin Lakes Park off one of the campers.