A young ballplayer must get past the initial shock in order to play in the Arizona League.
If the introduction to professional baseball doesn’t sap the confidence from a player, the summer heat — 110 to 115 degrees on many days — might. And even if that doesn’t, the sheer number of empty seats at the ballparks may put a kid in his place.
“One time we had a couple of sets of grandparents at a game. That was nice,” said Andy Bottin, a Stanwood resident who manages the Seattle Mariners’ rookie-level team in Peoria, Ariz. “Occasionally we’ll have a Little League team show up.”
Nothing stunned the Peoria Mariners, however, like the Glendale Dodgers did on opening night June 21. The Dodgers beat them 17-3, and Bottin remembers wondering just how long and how hot this summer might be.
“We were looking at each other like, ‘Oh boy, do we punch the panic button right now?’ No. We told them we cannot panic,” Bottin said. “All these kids, it was their first game. We had to stay at a very even keel. So we told them, ‘Everybody breathe. The sun is going to come up tomorrow. But it’s going to be hot.’”
His Mariners have since run away from their competition. They won the West Division first-half championship and went into Tuesday night’s game against the Surprise Royals with a 26-15 record and led the division by seven games with 14 remaining.
The key, obviously, has been talent.
First baseman Evan Sharpley and second baseman Kevin Mailloux were each batting .333, right-hander Chris Kessinger was 4-1 with a 2.16 earned-run average in 10 games, five of them starts, and right-hander Jeff Breedlove is 2-1, 1.46 with seven saves.
Bottin says a huge factor has been the players’ willingness to come together as friends regardless of the disparity in ages and backgrounds. The youngest player on the roster is 17, the oldest in their 30s when players drop in for rehab assignments.
“We are a family,” Bottin said. “It’s not Latinos, not blacks, not whites. It’s Mariners. We have college kids, high school kids and middle-of-the-road kids, and it’s been fun watching them come together.”
Bottin and his staff — pitching coach Gary Wheelock, one of the original Seattle Mariners, and coach Eddie Menchaca, a former Mariners minor leaguer — have created a program of development without intimidation.
“We’re allowing these kids to play and to make what they think are mistakes,” Bottin said. “There are mistakes, but that’s part of the growth here. We tell them, ‘You’re going to be OK, but you’re going to learn.’”
There’s so much more to baseball at this level than, well, baseball.
From spring training in March through the end of the season in early September, Bottin lives in the hotel where the players stay near Peoria Stadium. With many of these kids away from home for the first time, he deals with issues ranging from broken curfews to broken hearts.
“Andy does so many things for us,” said Pedro Grifol, the Mariners’ minor league director. “He runs that whole hotel, and there’s the discipline and everything down there.”
And if you think Bottin and his staff can’t do anything about the heat, they have.
For the first time, all Arizona League games are played at night this year, meaning players report for pregame workouts in mid-afternoon during the hottest part of the day. Unlike other teams that put their players through drills for two hours or more, the rookie-level Mariners work out no longer than 1½ hours.
“It’s the quality vs. quantity aspect,” Bottin said. “Other clubs were getting the kids out in the mornings and it was killing their kids. We found a happy medium here and we’re still able to develop players.”
Travel also is better this year because the Indians, Dodgers and White Sox have moved their teams into new complexes built near Peoria on the west side of the Phoenix metro area. The Reds will move to Arizona next season. It has allowed the league to divide into East and West divisions and put together a schedule that typically consists of four-game blocks with a day or two off.
“It makes it more like a baseball season,” Bottin said. “After a day off, when we come back for a four-game series, I try to teach the kids that’s how it’s going to be when they move up. You want to win series, get at least a split on the road, and get into the mindset that you should play one game at a time and the winning will take care of itself.”
So far, the victories have come in bunches.
“My hat’s off to these kids,” Bottin said. “They’ve really taken hold of that concept. We have our up-and-down days, but it’s not for a lack of hustle or trying.”
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