Surviving Extended Spring

Editor’s note: Former Harvard hurler Frank Herrmann ’06 is a prospect with the Class A Lake County (Oh.) Captains of the Clevelans organization. This is his diary.

I survived three days in baseball purgatory.

The place I am talking about is Extended Spring. As one Indians coach aptly described Central Florida in June, “Hell is hot...and then there is Extended.” “Extendo,” as it is called, is more or less like being put in a holding pattern. It is a place with no real games and no real statistics. Its members are composed of those unlucky players who fail initially to break camp when Spring Training ends on April 3.

Just about 60 of the 150 players invited to spring training are forced to stay in Winter Haven for various reasons, from injuries to the need for more one-on-one attention to simply not having what it takes to make a full-season roster.

Making a full-season squad is the ultimate goal for every player at Spring Training. Doing so affords you a certain amount of security, which is a precious commodity in the life of a minor leaguer.

When you are with a full-season team (A ball, Double A, etc.), you are able to settle into a place you can call home, as opposed to shacking up at the local Holiday Inn.

More importantly, when you are stuck in Extendo there is no safe ground below you; if you aren’t cutting it there, the next step is to be released. And this is a possibility that every player is aware of.

The reason given to me for my prolonged stay in Winter Haven was to “iron out” some flaws in my delivery.

Although I was never given an ETD out of Florida, I felt confident that my stay would not last the entire two and a half months.

However, being more of a realist than an optimist, I could never have anticipated staying in Extendo for only three days. Upon meeting up with my new team in Hickory, N.C. this weekend for the first time, one of my veteran teammates proclaimed my magic act “the shortest stay” he had “ever heard of.”

It turns out it wasn’t a magic act but a sore arm that enabled my promotion to the Indians’ Class A affiliate Lake County Captains. One of the starting pitchers felt a twinge in his shoulder after the team arrived in Ohio and attempted to practice during a light snow flurry. Though this is admittedly not the ideal way to earn a promotion, I am nevertheless thrilled to be with a team and playing meaningful games in front of thousands of fans.

At about five dollars a ticket, minor league games are infinitely more affordable for families than Major League games, where tickets, parking, and snacks for a family of five can easily run you over $300.

It is no secret that for most fans, a minor league game is more of a “night out” than a trial in dissecting and appreciating the essence of baseball. The players seem to accept and understand this as a reality, considering the talent level is admittedly not on par with that in the majors.

That said, minor league owners are forced to gear their product towards a target audience. In this case, that audience happens to be children between five and 12 years old.

With an inordinate number of young children, the baseball parks more closely resemble Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch than Yankee Stadium.

Each team we have played against so far has been home to some kind of a mascot, from a six-foot crawfish named “Conrad the Crawdad” to a ridiculously indescribable neon colored bird.

And what does that make these mascots? The most popular people at the park.

Both stadiums we have played at have also featured horse carousels along the outfield lines, fireworks after the games and music in between innings that is more suited for bat mitzvahs than baseball games (“Cotton Eye Joe,” the “Electric Slide,” and “Shout” are just a few examples).

The field in Salisbury, Md. where I made my professional debut on Monday night actually had a hot tub for some fans to sit in while watching the game in 40-degree weather.

The worst idea by far was the “shouting contest” put on by the Crawdads, in which everyone was encouraged literally to yell at the top of their lungs, with the winner getting a free Dominos pizza.

Other than that I have enjoyed the light family atmosphere at the ballparks.There is also some leeway in taunting the opposing players.

Each of the sixteen times our Spanish-speaking shortstop Niuman (pronounced New-man) Romero came to the plate in our four-game series against the Hickory (N.C.) Crawdads, the announcer said, “Now batting, Newmannnnn......Romero,” and then followed it with the quirky theme music from Seinfeld. A few times they even played a sound bite of Jerry saying, “Hello Newman.”

These games elicit a small town, at-home type feeling that businesslike big-league ballparks, with their six-dollar hot dogs, lack.

Minor league parks capture that certain intimate feeling that you get in seeing your favorite band in a small local bar as opposed to in a large, overcrowded amphitheater.

Still, the whole experience was very new for me and vastly different from playing a Sunday doubleheader at O’Donnell Field in front of parents, girlfriends and the few roommates who brave the chilly weather to take in a game.

Though playing for Harvard in that atmosphere afforded me some of my fondest memories as an athlete, I think I could get used to being a sideshow for Conrad the Crawdad.

—Frank Herrmann, who allowed one run in three innings in his first professional start on Monday, can be reached at fherrman@fas.harvard.edu. His diary appears every Wednesday.