One Last Time
Hello Sports Fans and thank you for taking the time to check out my blog this week! This is the last week for the Arizona Fall League and unfortunately this will be my last blog as well. This blogging experience for me has been outstanding and I would like to thank all those who have checked in regularly. These past 7-8 weeks have been great for me and I’ve gained a lot by being able to share my experiences with you through all of my blogs. I’ve also learned a lot about myself on the field as a baseball player, I now know and have a little more insight into what it takes to make it to the “Big Leagues”.
I would like to thank my Desert Dog coaches and teammates for a great Fall League experience in which I will never forget. I look forward to crossing paths with each and every player and coach in the future somewhere down the line. I would also like to thank and congratulate our pitching coach Garvin “G” Alston, who was recently promoted within our organization and is now a coordinator, he has helped me not only through the fall league but has been a big part of my professional career thus far. As “G” always says “just leave me tickets baby”…ha-ha.
As for the past week, your Phoenix Desert Dogs clinched a berth into the championship game, which will be played this upcoming Saturday. There seems to be some pressure on our shoulders to win the AFL title, because the Desert Dogs have won the AFL 5 consecutive years. If it’s up to me we will keep that streak alive!
I can honestly say that being on this team is something I will never forget and I have made some life long friends. It’s not everyday that you are able to spend massive amounts of time with players from other organizations both on the field and off. The group of guys that made up the Phoenix Desert Dogs this year was something else. Whether it’s J.P Arencibia and Chris Nelson trying to figure out who the “team clown” is, or Shane Lindsay constantly looking for his lost toothbrush or the countless chants started in our locker room and dug out (mostly by Sean Doolittle), there was always something new each day to keep the mood around team light. I will always remember this group of guys and I looked forward to crossing paths again.
Finally, I would like to thank my readers and MLB for giving me the opportunity to write each week. I enjoyed sharing the in’s and out’s of the Phoenix Desert Dogs Arizona Fall League season with you all. I look forward to hopefully receiving the opportunity to write again in the near future and until then I want to leave you with a quote that really puts into perspective how honored we feel to be playing a kids game.
“When I was a small boy growing up in Kansas, a friend of mine and I went fishing and as we sat there in the warmth of a summer afternoon on a riverbank we talked about what we wanted to do when we grew up. I told him that I wanted to be a real major-league baseball player, a genuine professional like Honus Wagner. My friend said that he’d like to be President of the United States. Neither of us got our wish.”-Dwight D. Eisenhower
See you at the Ballpark,
Andrew
Athletics in the AFL 
H, Andrew (or is it now Drew?),
I enjoyed reading your blog today. I came down the the AFL in 2007 and interviewed the A’s pitchers that year (James Simmons, Jeff Gray and Brad Kilby) to get background info for my novel (“Contract Year,” now finished) about a fictional A’s pitcher set in the 2006 season. I caught up with them this year at the minor league camp at Spring Training.
I bet when you wrote this post, you never thought you’d be in Oakland now. Congratulations! We are looking for great things from you and are happy you are with the team. I’ll flag you down at a game. I sit in the second row just out from the dugout. Check out my A’s blog at: http://contractyear.mlblogs.com.
Bee
H, Andrew (or is it now Drew?),
I enjoyed reading your blog today. I came down the the AFL in 2007 and interviewed the A’s pitchers that year (James Simmons, Jeff Gray and Brad Kilby) to get background info for my novel (“Contract Year,” now finished) about a fictional A’s pitcher set in the 2006 season. I caught up with them this year at the minor league camp at Spring Training.
I bet when you wrote this post, you never thought you’d be in Oakland now. Congratulations! We are looking for great things from you and are happy you are with the team. I’ll flag you down at a game. I sit in the second row just out from the dugout. Check out my A’s blog at: http://contractyear.mlblogs.com.
Bee