2012 Spring Training by Tim MacDonald '58

This is not the first time Tim McDonald '58 has written about Hackley baseball. To read the previous installments, see below:
Hackley Baseball 1956 – 1958 | 2010 Spring Training | Cinco Ocho Rules! | 2011 Spring Training | 2012 Spring Training

2012 Spring Training

Hackley Baseball features some downright intriguing potential this year. You could literally see things coming together for JV athletes as the days went by. The squad, composed of sophomores and freshmen, had games against two Florida all-star teams, and when we played that second club toward the end of our Florida stay, our hitters outmatched their all-star pitchers, and tough grabs in the Hackley outfield became routine.

The ballplayers laughed when I asked Coach Fisher if he’d try to get the all-star coach to let us play all night, but the boys had to agree with me on one point: executing the game this well against a team that strong is really, really fun.

And you read that right, fellow alums: Hackley went back to 1975 and brought former Hackley teacher Bill Fisher back to the Hilltop, this time to replace Dale Mueller as Head JV Baseball Coach. An experienced hand at youth sports, Bill brings this engaging mix of determination and no-nonsense intensity, and clearly enjoys the work. He worked with the Head Varsity Baseball Coach in past years, assisting in basketball, so this marks Bill’s third on-campus sojourn at Hackley.

Dale left us to become General Manager at House of Sports, Ardsley’s brand new indoor training complex, scheduled to open this summer, and we wish the former college standout all the best in his exciting and well-deserved new role.

This is my third go-around at Baseball Spring Training, and the six ballplayers who were sophomores on JV that first year are now graduating seniors. I figured alums reading this would remember their own final months at Hackley and relate, so I asked these guys what they were thinking at this unique juncture in their lives as they count down to the upheaval their diploma is sure to bring at the end of these last few remaining weeks of Upper School.

Brady '12 is focused on the season and, most important, getting himself ready for the opener back in New York. The ball club has a lot of work to do, and Brady feels he needs to stay focused. He agrees he has no idea what looms on the horizon anyway, and will deal with that when the time comes. Grading on a curve, Brady gets the A+. That’s the best answer possible, at Baseball Spring Training anyway -- the Crash Davis response, this unrepentant Bull Durham buff rushes to point out.

Nick ’12 knows that engineering is going to be a part of his life in some major way, and really enjoys that stuff. Several of his classmates remarked that Nick has a talent for math, certainly a necessary foundation for his interest. Although he’s a practical guy, they agreed Nick is also concerned with people, and seems likely to find himself in service somewhere before he’s done maneuvering into his impending future.

Like so many of my Hackley contemporaries, David ’12 has a thing for water. He’s heading off to SUNY Maritime College this fall. David’s already known for his photography – he’s the guy with the police radio and a Yonkers FD dad whose gripping portfolio of that city’s fire scenes is familiar to us all – and will be interning with Hackley’s school photographer, Chris Taggart, this spring under the Hilltop’s brand new Senior Projects initiative.

Senior Projects, Conor ’12 explained, tap into Hackley’s now-expansive footprint throughout the business world to match senior career interests with real-time job opportunities. Conor scored a spring marketing gig with an advertising firm through the fledgling program.

Conor genuinely wants to find a way to stay tight with the ballplayers in his class after graduation, as all his ’12 teammates do. One of the two “lifers” in this senior group, he has spent all 13 years of his education so far at Hackley, The Hilltop has encompassed so much of, well, his existence, really…. It’s easy to understand why.

Dolan ’12 may land back in Louisiana for college. He pretty much emigrated to Hackley from New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the tragic flooding there. Having already been through one huge regional change, he’s wary of taking on another, but talking to him, you sense he almost has to go back. Somehow, someday, anyway.

Dolan wants to play ball next year. I really hope he goes for it. Even through college, an athlete’s baseball skills improve markedly each year, and nobody knows who they will be, out there on the diamond in a season or two. Why not give great things a chance to happen? Other walk-ons have, and many with famous faces too.

Shane ’12 will either become an astrophysicist, according to an informed source who’s known him for at least 13 years, or run ESPN. Between Shane’s ardent love of sport and his talent with numbers, we could also be discussing the next Billy Beane here, General Manager of the Oakland Athletics whose innovative statistical stamp on the game was documented in Michael Lewis’ bestselling page-turner, Moneyball (and glamorized by the ensuing Brad Pitt movie, which I’d just go ahead and miss if you know how to read).

Shane is the nysportscookie.com football reporter. That website, started by Hackley alum, Peter Barrett ’11 in Pete’s Senior year, had 32,754 all-time page views as of 2:25:39 on 03/22/2012, when Shane Googled it – or whatever it was he did --for me on that cell phone, I think, of his.

Anyway, Brady, Nick, David, Conor, Dolan, and Shane, I’m going to miss you guys next year. Best of luck, and I’m delighted to be the one welcoming you into our alumni community.

Alex ’13 has had his name mentioned in every Baseball Spring Training piece I’ve done, but I didn’t see it anywhere in my notes this time. Maybe I’ll figure out how to sneak something about Alex in anyway. Might jinx his season if I don’t.

While we were taking in a New York Mets preseason game at Port St. Lucie’s Digital Domain Park, Matt Sinatro, uncle of Alex Sinatro ’11, saw Hackley t-shirts above him and introduced himself. Matt, listed as “Coordinator, Catching” on the Houston Astros roster, was sitting in the bullpen directly below a large group of Hilltop ballplayers.

During the game, Joey ’14 scooped up a foul ball from the fourth row 300 feet down the right field line, and made me write that Ruben Tejada hit it. In other action, Robert ’13 and Alex ’15 each snagged baseballs tossed into the stands by Astros right fielder Brad Snyder, a former Met. I can’t remember what the Mets or Astros did, but Hackley had a great game out in the right field stands.

After the last varsity contest, I got a ball myself, signed by the whole club. It’s a huge deal to me, and I can’t thank them enough. The Seniors were behind it, I know. They really are a special group. By the time they’re done, a century of alums will have been proud to find their names associated with these by-then gentlemen, thanks in no small part to the jump-start this 71 year-old is giving them in that regard.

Hilltop students continue to draw compliments down here. A lady usher at Digital Domain Park, one of the training camp administrators, and a teacher who approached a coach out of the blue, made three “Hackley fans” more in 2012, and by now we've simply lost count of the cumulative total. It’s the boys’ deportment, how they all behave, every single one, and, in many cases, it’s what they are overheard talking about as well.

Arriving at the main Fort Pierce baseball complex for the first practice of 2012, I was stopped by a girl identifying herself as the groundskeeper’s daughter. Girl said she recognized the silver “H” on my black cap and had been waiting for it to show up. She’s a big silver “H” fan, and so is her father.

The Hackley ball-clubs always leave their dugouts spotless before we exit a field, and that may have something to do with it, but whatever the case, Hackley has been this girl’s favorite “northern high school” for years; she was anxious to see when the first silver “H” would arrive.

Things like that makes you feel like The Lone Ranger, or one of them, riding into town.

Hey, Dolan, there are two old-time baseball posters hanging in the weight room at the ZAC. The posters are mine, illustrating a piece of the offensive game my grandfather and uncle played from about the time Hackley was founded through its first half century of secondary education excellence. Then, batting was based on mental skills linked to sacrifice bunting:

How to best see the ball, go after it with the hands, use the hands to set the sweet spot of the bat on the epicenter of the baseball, (and then optimize power, an additive once you’ve got the rest down pat.)

Those are the basics of yesteryear, and I spent the last three Marches with you at your Spring Training figuring out how to pass the ancients’ ways along to Hilltop ballplayers. Nail down that mental game, Dolan; add it to the mechanics you’ve already got. Brainpower is what hitters still turn to when pitching levels crank up the contest at the plate to something resembling armed combat.

A while back, when I was a college fastpitch hitting instructor myself, the job owed totally to handed-down knowledge. I had to convince walk-ons they could compete with scholarship athletes. The stuff on your weight room wall is that specific program. Three hours of old-time baseball, including the drills shown on the yellow poster, and incoming college freshmen saw for themselves that leveling up to college pitching was easily within their grasp.

We are Hackley, Dolan, you and I. Your Headmaster sends you guys forth with the same kind of marching order mine handed earlier generations: think for yourself out there (though far more eloquently put, to be sure).

The posters will return you to the day you first picked up a bat; they will focus your efforts on the most elementary fundamentals of hitting. You want to walk on in college ball, Dolan, go back to the basics, rethink everything from the start of Day One.

Where our Headmaster’s charge obliges all of us to begin.