The Countdown Begins

Well..it's almost here! Minor League Baseball season that is. Sorry I haven't written in a while, I've been extremely busy. Finally I got a minute to write a little bit about what I've been doing and what is to come.

Obviously the broadcast part of my job is dealing with prep work and getting as much practice as I can. I had the high school showcase for my "debut" and then we did a Bethune Cookman game this past week too. I was pretty nervous for the first one and felt a little more at ease during the Cookman game. I recently purchased MLBTV and that is helping me quite a bit. Like I was telling Shannon, I'm able to listen or watch whatever game I want to in the Major Leagues so I listen to radio broadcasters and just get ideas on how they say things and how they call "the action". Everybody is different but you still need to be smooth with your delivery of the actual gameplay and try to paint a picture for the listener since they can't see what is happening. I also like it because I can watch Brewer games...I need my fix!

On the media relations side, it's pretty stressful right now. We put together our program for all of our fans, record commercials, and do other random things like get music and sound clips ready. The program was very difficult because none of us had used Quark so it was a long process. We produce monthly issues so hopefully May, June, July, etc will go much better because we'll just go off of what we have now and swap some things out when need be.

Other than that, everything is pretty good at work. For the most part, everybody in the office gets along and works well together. This past week was a TON of stadium prep. It's amazing the things that need to be done that you'd never think about. The days are long and are about to get even longer with the season starts. I can't wait to travel so I don't have to go to work til 3 pm. Then it will be prep work for the game and the actual broadcast and that will be it. Our season starts April 7 on the road against Brevard County and then the following night we have our home opener. My actual debut will be April 8 for the home opener and you can listen on www.daytonacubs.com. I'm excited but I'll be very nervous.

Outside of work I haven't had much of a life. Weekends are now filled with work for the most part. I have gone golfing a few times in the past week and shot pretty good. Getting better but I'll probably get rusty again once the season starts. The weather has been crazy for the past month. There was about a 2 week stretch where I honestly don't believe I saw a cloud. Before this week we didn't get any rain in a long time but it came down hard Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. There were some very bad storms and we got hit with a "micro blast". It was pretty scary actually as we were up in the press box and probably shouldn't have been. The rain was going up, sideways and down all at the same time. Water was starting to come thru the windows so we scrambled to move our computers and everything else. We all kind of looked at each other like, "is this a tornado"? I sure thought it was but I don't think it actually was. The press box was shaking!

I think that will be all for now as I have to get up early again to work all day on Saturday, which sucks! Grandpa, if you are reading this, I hope you are feeling better...you know my number if you ever want to just talk. I miss you all very much. I try to not think about how far away I actually am but there are days where I can't help it. I look forward to seeing you all soon, whether it's in late April/early May or in June when I come home for the All-Star Break.

Thanks for reading! Go Cubs....April fools day! GO BREWERS!!