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Phillies Dream Week:
See It, Hit It
Profile By Bob Andelman
(Originally published in the Tampa Bay Life, 1992)
We're sitting
on the perfectly manicured, bright green infield grass, facing
home plate and Philadelphia Phillies baseball stars of yesteryear.
Tony Taylor is giving batting tips and someone asks where the
Bull is. One of the vets jokes that he is probably eating. We
laugh even harder as the Bull former slugger Greg Luzinski emerges
from the clubhouse and gently charges onto the field, donut in
hand, donut in mouth.
"Hey, Bull! How about some hitting tips!" one of the
dreamers calls out.
Luzinski takes a bite, then pauses to think.
"See it," he says, "hit it."
We laugh like hell and applaud like crazy; for the Bull, for
his righteous advice and for the fast start to what will be the
best week in many of the campers' lives: Philadelphia Phillies
Dream Week '92 at Carpenter Field in Clearwater.
This spring marks the ninth consecutive year for Phillies Dream
Week. It is one of the most popular and successful programs of
its ilk, certainly one of the best-run. Up to 100 doctors, lawyers,
entrepreneurs and lifelong fans with an average of 42 pay $3,300
each to spend seven days in the presence of aging baseball stars,
play ball, pick up tips, over-use dormant muscles and chortle
over endless bawdy, mischievous stories and tall tales.
As for me, the prospect of playing baseball for a solid week
made me a nervous wreck. I was a horrible ballplayer as a kid.
Terrible. Notoriously rotten. Last chosen, easy out, move in
closer, if you've played the sandlots you know the type. Much
as I love the professional game, my own play is historically
charged with disaster.
In spite of this, I chose to take a positive approach to Dream
Week. I went to commercial batting cages a few times, jogged
a few times, lifted weights a few times. What the hell, maybe
I'll learn something.
MONDAY
This camp is about basics. Real basics. Because before you can
hit, pitch or catch, you have to know how to put your Phillies
uniform on properly. Dave Cash nicknamed "A.C." for
"Always Cool" is our instructor of dressing.
"If you can't play," he says, "at least you're
gonna look good."
After A.C. walks us through putting on sanitary socks, stringers,
garters, pants, undershirt and jersey, ex-Phillies manager Lee
Elia gently interrupts.
"A.C.?"
"Yeah?"
"Then you put this over the top, right?" asks Elia,
holding a jockstrap and protective cup in his hand. Cash blushes
and we all laugh.
Morning meetings are conducted by Larry Rojas, who explains that
our coaches will be looking for reasons to fine us during the
week, although he doesn't say what an infraction might be. It's
a secret.
There are two women participating in Dream Week. Elia brings
them forward. "Let's get it straight right now," he
says sternly. "We'll have none of that sexual harassment
here!"
When the camp breaks up into infielders, outfielders, pitchers
and catchers, I join the infielders. Larry Bowa leads us through
shortstop and second baseman drills.
"Spread your legs apart," he tells me as I field a
ground ball and toss it underhand to the second baseman. "Bend
at the knees AND the waist. Lean forward on your left leg to
throw, get strength off your right."
In the afternoon, we play ball. The pro coaches move from field
to field, assessing strengths and weaknesses. Our game goes poorly:
we lose 16-0. I reach base in my first at-bat when the pitcher
dings my left calf.
My team includes Harold Klahr, at 69 one of the oldest guys in
camp. Klahr needs a batting glove.
"I'm going to give you my glove," says Dave Cash. "But
if I do, I want some hits."
"Are there any hits left in it?" asks Klahr.
TUESDAY
The results of last night's "draft" are in. I've been
selected by Greg "Bull" Luzinski, Kent "Teke"
Tekulve and Robert "Maje" McDonnell. There's a lot
of legends in camp Bowa, Tony Taylor, Elia, Cookie Rojas and
Dallas Green, to name a few but playing under Bull and Teke wins
a certain amount of locker room envy.
Elia takes the floor to dish out the first fines of the week.
"The two young ladies get fined a buck a piece for not wearing
a cup yesterday," he says. While everyone laughs, Donna
Dendle, a registered nurse and softball player from Ft. Lauderdale,
doesn't miss a beat. "How do you know? she asks and the
laughter increases.
Next on the scofflaw list is a guy who was so furious about striking
out that he threw his bat into the batting cage screen and tossed
his helmet high into the air.
"Good job!" says Bowa, a noted hothead in his time.
"I'll pay his fine."
Another guy gets fined for bringing his beautiful blonde wife
to camp to watch him play. In her tight blue jeans, says Elia,
"she distracted the whole squad." Fine: $1. (A number
of us offered to pay for him, too.)
Finally, we meet Joel Porter, a 50-year-old ophthalmologist from
Cherry Hill, N.J. who has never played the game before but is
a lifelong fan. Soft and pudgy, out of place in the locker room,
Porter is the first recipient of Elia's notorious brown rope.
"Since you've been here, you've been bitching about everything
the food, the hotel, the uniforms ... " says Elia as Porter
stands by, bewildered.
Later, Porter asks me, "What's your read on that? What does
the brown rope mean?"
Today I'm going through drills with the outfielders because despite
my weak throwing arm, my reaction time is too slow for infield
action. Mel Roberts hits flies and ground balls to us; the goal
is to hit the cut-off man after catching or fielding the ball.
He calls this a "do or die" drill: "Let's not
die in the outfield," says Roberts. "Let's do it at
home plate."
Bad news: Luzinski's grandmother died last night in Chicago.
He flew up this morning for the funeral and won't be back until
Thursday. In the meantime, our team the '89ers is under the steerage
of former Phillies and Pirates sidearm relief ace Kent Tekulve,
a quiet, sardonic man who towers over most of us. His advice:
"We get one out at a time."
The '89ers jell very quickly as a unit. Nicknames are rampant:
John Harper becomes "Harpo" and "Harp." Jim
Laird is "Boog." Tony Cocchi is "Coach."
Kevin Orvis becomes "Orv." To my great relief, I am
just Bob.
Our first game, against Larry Bowa's Quakers, is tied 1-1 by
the bottom of the sixth. A change in pitchers doesn't help; instead
of extra innings, we lose 2-1.Both of my at-bats result in strikeouts.
I'm playing right field, but no plays come my way.
"You guys played a nice, solid game," says Teke. "Nothing
to be ashamed of."
WEDNESDAY
Today Elia gives the brown rope to two players. One of them is
my teammate, Dr. Alan Warrington, an M.D. and pitcher from Delaware.
Seems Alan and another guy got so mad at an umpire's call they
chased him off the field. Elia demands $1 each and then gives
the guys a hug. "I haven't had a good umpire in my life!"
says Elia.
Before the team meeting breaks up, Larry Bowa, Cookie Rojas and
Tony Taylor conduct a base running clinic.
"Try to eliminate as many steps as possible," says
Bowa. "In our sport, you don't have to be fast to be a great
base runner. Pete Rose wasn't fast. He just had the best intuition
I ever saw." Bowa says a base runner should learn to pay
strict attention to the body language of opposing players. In
some way, they're telegraphing their next move. "Every pitcher
has some sort of flaw," he says. "Instead of BS-ing
while you're on the bench, watch the pitcher. You might learn
something."
We're the visiting team for the morning game, playing against
Lee Elia's Red Barons. Our first batter, burly Keith Broadbelt,
is hit by a pitch and Elia doesn't like the call. "First
batter and you blew it, ump!" he bellows.
The 10 men on our team plus Teke and Maje learn first-hand to
show more respect for the women in camp when Donna Dendle comes
to the plate with two men on base. In right field, I hold my
ground, but Orv in left and Jimmy Gabel in center first move
back, then close to the infield. Dendle fouls off several pitches.
Then she makes solid contact, knocking a pitch way over Gabel's
head for a run-producing, game-winning double.
We lose the first game 5-4, and the second game ,5-3, to Dave
Cash and Rick Wise's Beavers. In the latter, we give up four
runs in the first inning and rally briefly in the bottom of the
sixth. The big question: When Bull returns tomorrow, who's going
to tell him that his team is 0 and 3?
While I'm not helping the '89ers, I'm not hurting us, either.
I'm oh-for-the-day again at bat, but flawless in the outfield,
easily catching two fly balls in the first game.
Teke whispers to me, "Why didn't you tell me you could play?"
THURSDAY
Elia actually gives out two ropes each morning, one brown, one
gold.
"Honorable mention for today's gold rope," says Elia,
"goes to Mr. Porter for getting a base hit. And we fine
Lewis LaMarca a dollar he was the pitcher!" Even Porter
laughs.
Luzinski is back. Bull's arrival perks us up despite our lousy
record. He immediately starts throwing barbs at the opposing
team. "Swing harder! Harder!" he teases the first batter,
who strikes out.
Today's first baseman is yesterday's catcher. Harpo, 50, is through
with catching after an examination by Dr. Rob Good, 44, an orthopedic
specialist and Villanova University sports physician masquerading
this week as a pitcher. "You catch again," Good told
Harpo, "and you'll blow your strings." We're just happy
to still have his bat, even happier when he agrees to let someone
pinch run each time he gets on base.
He's not the only one with problems.
"I went into the training room yesterday," says Boog.
"I don't know if it was timing or what, but there were six
guys from our team in there. And the bitch is, we're paying for
this pain."
We win the morning game against Dallas Green and Tony Taylor's
Pilots, to which Bull boasts to Teke, "Hey, I'm 1-0. YOU'RE
0-3."
Bull, 41, who now coaches college baseball, is in his fourth
year as a Dream Week coach. "We have a good time doing it,"
he says. "Guys want to experience what spring training is
about. Boog said it best  'I can't believe these guys
do it for 162 games.' There's a lot of aches and pains but you
don't see anybody bagging out. They're having a lot of fun."
Teke, 45, now a Phillies cable TV analyst, also works the Pittsburgh
Pirates Dream Weeks. He enjoys letting the dreamers in on a piece
of his game.
"You spend your whole life as a player being around baseball,
day-in, day-out," says Teke. "All the experiences you
get, at Dream Week you get a chance to give it back to people
to whom you were their heroes."
Our play improves further in the afternoon against Art Mahaffey
and Cookie Rojas' Guides thanks to back-to-back home runs by
Coach and Boog. In the same inning, Harpo hits a ball just as
far, but with his shattered legs he settles for a single. "That
was the longest single in Dream Week history," cracks Teke
as he slaps Harpo on the back. We win again, 10-3. Bull is 2-0.
FRIDAY
The '89ers are out of the Dream Week play-offs, but Thursday's
hitting explosion is the talk of the locker room. Not surprising
after a week of one-run games and even a no-hitter.
Elia starts the team meeting by fining Debbie Fisher a dollar.
"You know why we don't want women in the locker room?"
he bellows. "This girl said to one of the guys, 'Take this
camera into the shower and take a picture of these two guys!'"
My wife is here to watch our final game against George Culver
and Bake McBride's Mudhens. She's patiently listened to me complain
about being oh-for-the-week, but on the first pitch, I stroke
a single to left off Doc Good, the orthopedist. (Later, she says,
"What was the big deal? That looked easy.") But the
excitement ends quickly. Orv hits a grounder to short. I start
to run to second, then get confused by the shortstop and head
back to first. We're both out. My teammates are hysterical with
laughter.
"Hey, Bob, when you write about this, you'll edit out the
base running part, huh?" jokes Boog.
In the fourth inning, I'm at bat again. First pitch and I swing.
Lightning strikes. The ball barely makes contact but stays fair
and I run like the wind to first base for another single. From
across the field, Bull says, "Whatever happens, run towards
me this time!"
We're hitting well again and I get a third trip to the plate,
hitting the ball hard to short but unable to beat the throw to
first. My legs are shot and it's beginning to appear that I pulled
a muscle in my left thigh, perhaps in the groin. Groan.
Another win for the '89ers, 8-2, and we finish Dream Week with
a respectable 3-3 record, scoring 26 runs in the last three games.
Bull is quite happy.
"I put this team together!" he exclaims after the game.
"I came back yesterday and Teke said, 'I can't believe we
drafted these guys. They can't pitch, they can't catch, they
can't hit.' But this team CAN play!
Before Teke leaves the field, Donna Dendle, 40, asks a favor.
Her dream is to catch a major league pitcher. Would Teke oblige
her? Of course. He takes the mound, throws a few warm-ups as
a crowd gathers and tells Dendle he's ready. She squats into
position and the famed sidearmed relief ace is hurling the ball
at 65-70 mph to wherever Dendle positions her mitt.
"It was worth it," she says afterward. "Now I
can say I caught a major league pitcher."
The entire '89ers team including Bull, Teke, Maje and a few wives
meets for an off-the-record dinner at Charlie's Ristorante in
Clearwater. A river of beer and wine flow and so do great stories
and hours of laughter. It is the stuff from which fine memories
are made.
SATURDAY
After a week of games pitting one dreamer against the other,
today is the highlight for every one of these guys and the two
women who paid thousands to participate in Dream Week. All eight
teams gets to play three innings against a team of pros on the
field at Jack Russell Stadium, spring training home of the Phillies.
The dreamers are thrilled just to be here and the pros know it.
Last week, in the first Phillies camp, the pros didn't give up
a run in 24 innings. When we come up, they still haven't. Errors
are made by the dreamers and the pros know how to capitalize.
Former journeyman pitcher
Dickie Noles (lifetime record: 36 wins, 53 losses) throws against
our team. Our guys get a few hits, but like everyone else, no
one crosses home plate. I hit the second pitch hard at the second
baseman. He fumbles it but still beats my painful lope to first.
No matter. Like the rest of my teammates, I'll never forget the
memories of Dream Week, the most fun I've ever had standing up.
©2000, All rights reserved. No portion
may be reproduced without the express written permission of the
author.
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