2010 Spokane Indians

A lot has changed in the last month since I last posted. Extended finished. I got to go home for about 4 days to relax and recharge. I drove about 1500 miles from Albuquerque, NM to Spokane, WA. We had a mini-camp in Spokane. We played our first home series. We had a rain out. Whew. That's a lot.

My last week has been very hectic. I want to start posting again on a regular basis, but I am just getting around to it now. I arrived in Spokane last Sunday and had the afternoon and all day Monday to unpack and set up the athletic training room. Easy enough.

Starting Tuesday, however, I started to get really busy. We had 13 new players from the draft that needed physicals. Tuesday night after our workout, we herded them all together and took them down to the doctor's offices where they could get everything done much easier than we could in the cramped clubhouse. That took almost 2 hours. The next morning, I had to get everybody up to get bloodwork done at 8:00. That took about an hour since they only had one guy drawing blood.

Wednesday's and Thursday's workouts ended up altered by rain. Pitcher's were able to get most everything done on the field, but the position players had to ride over to an indoor batting cage to get their work in. Mixed in all of this, I had to get contracts to players who had not signed them yet and try to get all of their other paperwork (insurance, W-4, I-9) straightened out.

Sound hectic? Did I mention that we are carrying 33 players right now?

Friday was the season opener. Finally, some real baseball under the lights. There were almost 7,000 people at the game so it was nice. Unfortunately we lost. Saturday was game 2...another loss. Sunday was our chance to avoid the sweep before hitting the road, but alas, we were rained out.

That brings us to this road trip. If I wasn't busy enough with everything I explained earlier, our first road trip is in Vancouver, BC. That means everybody needs passports to cross the border. It is pretty tough to get passports in a week as many of our new draftees found out. I try to get all my border crossing paperwork in order and hope we get a friendly agent who can get us through quick. We had 4 guys without passports, but they were all Americans so were able to show their IDs, answer a few questions, and get across with the team. Whew! Potential disaster avoided.

Now I am sitting here in my room, waiting for my family to arrive or the bus time, whichever comes first. I'm glad the headache of crossing the border is over and now I can relax on the road trip and check out some sights of Vancouver.

Until next time.........sometime you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.