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Grapefruit League Magic and the Legend of Collin Cowgill

While the calendar says it’s still Winter, every year, starting

right about now Spring Training games begin to fill the baseball fields of Florida with excitement.

Yesterday was no different. A sun-drenched Spectrum Field hosted its first game in this year’s Grapefruit league with “hometown” ​​Philiadephia Phillies ​taking on the Baltimore Orioles in Clearwater

An unseasonably warm Saturday afternoon saw the thermometer on the center field scoreboard peak at 85 degrees. While challenging to distinguish natives from spring breakers during the game, spring breakers can easily be identified a couple of hours later by their warm pink skin tones, failing to realize that even in February the southern sun is stronger than most Philadelphians or Baltimoreans can fathom.

If there is an epicenter for Grapefruit League baseball, it’s right here in Tampa Bay where the Phillies, Blue Jays, and Yankees all play within a 30-minute drive of each other. Drive an hour east on I-4, and you’ll find the Tigers in Lakeland, while the Astros and Braves just a bit further up the near Orlando. Head South on I-75 and in less than an hour you’ll hit the Pirates in Brandon and the Orioles in Sarasota. A bit further than that and you’ll hit the Rays in Port Charlotte and the Twins and Red Sox in Fort Myers. Ten of the fourteen teams that call Florida home for Spring Training are less than 2 hours from Clearwater.

The atmosphere is the same at every stadium. Over the past 15 years or so, Spring Training venues have been converted from glorified high school facilities to modern family friendly complexes with fields that often mirror the dimensions of their northern counterparts.

Spring Training baseball is different. The sooner you realize that the more enjoyable the experience is. Yes, there are scores and meaningless standings, but winning isn’t the number one priority for managers, and it shouldn’t be for fans either.

Fans spark up a great conversation with others around them, regardless of the logo either is wearing. Sometimes it’s about the baseball. Fans from either side an enjoy a great play regardless of how made it. Other conversations center on vacationers sharing experiences on local attractions and restaurants. Locals even join in, often to correct misinformation on the area given by Uber drivers.

Spring training is about enjoying baseball. All aspects of it. No one leaves a Spring Training game disppointed, ever.

Fans get unprecedented access to the players, with nearly everyone in camp making time to sign autographs to the legions of fans lining the front rows with arms outreached with pens and balls to sign. Many take to the dugouts and blindly hand over a ball not able to see who will grab it for 5 seconds and return it with a signature. Last year my then 8-year-old son leveraged this tactic, and the ball was returned with Phillies Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt’s John Hancock on it.

Oddly, there are different expectations for different players during Spring Training. The reality is, most spots on a 25 man regular season roster are accounted for well before any major league player steps onto a finely manicured practice field in mid-February. This leaves dozens of players in camp battling for just a couple of available roster spots.

For established players, Spring Training is an opportunity to get work in after a long offseason. They get in a few at-bats before the younger potential superstars finish out the game.

The Bryce Harpers, Mike Trouts, and Jose Altuves of Spring Training could potentially strike out 19 out of 20 times and their spots on the opening day lineup are still solidified in concrete.

Same is true for the recently signed hot prospect who knows he isn’t breaking Spring Training with the major league club. In just a few short days they will be reassigned to a minor league affiliate and look to progress through the farm system as fast as possible. Some will do it in a year; others will attempt it for a baseball lifetime.

Then there are guys like Collin Cowgill. His name may not ring a bell, even to savvy baseballs. He’s bounced the majors since 2011, spending most of his time on minor league teams. He did hit .250 spanning about 250 at-bats for the Angles a few years ago.

One hit every fourth at-bat can be just short of greatness. An alcohol-fueled Crash Davis spoke eloquently on the matter.

Know what the difference between hitting .250 and .300 is? It's 25 hits. 25 hits in 500 at-bats is 50 points, okay? There's 6 months in a season, that's about 25 weeks. That means if you get just one extra flare a week - just one - a gorp... you get a groundball, you get a groundball with eyes... you get a dying quail, just one more dying quail a week... and you're in Yankee Stadium.

One more hit a week and Cowgill is the Phillies starting centerfielder.

Hundreds of ballplayers just like Cowgill create an odd backbone for Major league teams. Unlike establish players that can hit 0 for April and still have job security, these players are shuttled to their major league club to replace injured players and are expected to produce results immediately. If they don’t, someone else is called up. That is pressure.

I'm not sure of the odds of Collin breaking camp with the Phillies. I hope he gets the chance, even as a mid-season call up.

You might be asking, why he’s getting this attention right now? On Saturday about 30 minutes before game time my eight and nine-year-old boys squeezed their way to the side of the Phillies dugout, reached over as far as they could and handed a ball to a player they couldn’t really see. They ran back to our seats with the smiles of a million dollar lottery winner. Collin Cowgill took 20 seconds and made two the happiest kids on the planet.

For that, thank you Collin. It may have not meant all that much to you at the time, but it did to them.

And that is the essence of Spring Training. Magic is created at any moment, or and off the field. It’s also the place where legends are born. Hopefully, one day, Collin Cowgill can become a legend to more than the two boys he made enormously happy on a warm late February Saturday afternoon.


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