Everett, Wash.
Published: Sunday, March 23, 2008

Mariners have 'Breakfast' with Roger

The coffee is for one, the conversation is nil and the sun has yet to rise. For those Mariners who break the rules, the 'Breakfast Club' with coach Roger Hansen has but one purpose: 'You're going there to run.'

By Kirby Arnold
Herald Writer

 PEORIA, Ariz. -- Roger Hansen's "Breakfast Club" commences at 6 a.m. every day at the Seattle Mariners' training complex If you're 15 minutes early, then you're 15 minutes late. And that doesn't mean breakfast will be cold.

Contrary to what some ill-informed young ballplayer might believe, this isn't an opportunity to dine with Hansen, the Mariners' hard-nosed minor league catching coordinator from Stanwood.

The Breakfast Club is the early morning punishment they must serve for any number of transgressions. Show up late to the clubhouse, don't run hard to first base, break the dress code, do something wrong at the hotel, etc., and you're assigned to an hour with Hansen before the sun rises over Peoria.

Running shoes are mandatory attire.

"There's always a few guys who will ask, 'What's the Breakfast Club?'" said pitcher Ryan Feierabend, who learned all about it in his first pro season in 2003. "The older guys will say, 'Oh, you just go over there and have breakfast with Roger. All you've got to do is show up.'

"Occasionally there'll be an older guy who'll be on your side, and he'll tell you what it really is, 'No, it's not breakfast. You're going there to run.'"

The Breakfast Club has existed for 15 years and just about every farm-grown Mariner has gone through it -- among them Raul Ibanez, J.J. Putz and Feierabend during their first years with the organization.

"We had to wear collared shirts and sandals weren't allowed in the clubhouse, and there were guys who broke those rules," Feierabend said. "Mine was because I didn't lift one day. The following morning, I had to run eight laps at 6 o'clock while Roger watched. Never again after that."

At 5:50 one morning this month, with the Arizona sun still an hour from appearing over the Eastern horizon, Hansen sat in a golf cart with a cup of coffee in his right hand and his left foot propped up near the steering wheel.

On Practice Field No. 1, the figures of two runners were barely visible in the shadows cast by streetlights beyond the fence.

Some days there's one runner, other days a group. Hansen is their monitor because, No. 1, he's here at 4:30 a.m. every day and, No. 2, he's tough.

"We have had kids think, 'I'm showing up for Breakfast Club. I'll just go and it'll be nice and relaxed, have a cup of coffee and Roger will talk to me,'" Hansen said. "Well, at this time of the day, Roger doesn't like to talk."

Hansen usually is in the golf cart by 5:30, and the players assigned to that day's Breakfast Club will show up shortly after.

"I'll ask them what they did wrong and they'll tell me," he said. "I'll say, 'OK, we're not going to play that B.S. any more.' I'll talk to them a little bit about it and let them know how many days they have to be here, and then I'll start running them. I never tell them how much they're going to run. I just tell them, 'Stretch and start running, and I'll let you know when to stop.'"

Hansen rarely takes his eyes off the field, even when the players run out of sight in the darkness.

"They all think that I don't know how many laps they run, but I do," he said. "The key is that you never tell them how many they're running. You sit there and make them think 'That (bleeping bleep) is sitting up there drinking coffee. How does he know how many laps I'm running?'

"The rules are: You run until you can't run. If you can't run, you walk. If you can't walk, you crawl."

In other words, there's no getting out of it. Some will try, though.

Hansen has heard all kinds of reasons why it wasn't the kid's fault for breaking a rule. The most common is a faulty hotel wakeup call.

"The hotel gets blamed for a lot of things," Hansen said. "It's the wakeup call, or it's, 'The breakfast wasn't out and I need breakfast before I can run.' I'll just say, 'Well, I don't really give a damn. Go run.' I don't want to hear the excuses. You did it, so run. If you keep talking, it doubles. Then it triples.

"The one rule they all know is that you don't show up late here, because I'll run you into the ground for that. I've got too many other things to do to mess around with that B.S."

One time, a young player told Hansen that he'd talked with his father about it, and dad said he didn't need to run because what he'd done wasn't his fault.

"Oh yeah," Hansen told the kid. "Well, let's bring your (bleeping) dad out here and he can run with you."

Hansen is renowned for developing young catchers, putting them through physically demanding workouts but also gaining their respect along the way.

It's the catchers, in fact, who scoff at the mention of the Breakfast Club. They see it as a light workout compared with what Hansen puts them through.

"How hard can it be?" catcher Rob Johnson asked. "All he does is make them run."

Hansen has indeed become harsher by reputation than by anything he's actually done to a player.

"We started this years ago, and the stories have kept evolving," he said. "First it was just Roger sitting here with his cup of coffee. But you know how all the B.S. starts spreading and the stories get bigger and bigger? Now it's, 'Don't mess with Roger because he shoved a guy into a trash can one time.' It's the players who've created all the mystique behind it."

As the cloudless sky turned from black to orange, Hansen called out to the two Breakfast Club participants from his golf cart.

Having learned their lessons one stride at a time for much of the past hour, they trudged up the walkway toward the clubhouse.

"You're done," Hansen told the first player, who made brief eye contact before walking into the clubhouse. "I don't want to see you here again."

The second player, his head down, followed close behind.

"You're done," he told the player, who didn't look up. "And I'll see you back here tomorrow."

Read Kirby Arnold's blog on the Mariners at www.heraldnet.com
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