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Health & Fitness

Fantasy Camp: Baseball in slow motion

Creaks, groans and groundouts -- Fantasy Camp comes to Eastlake

For the second year in a row I have the pleasure (and aches and pains) of taking part in the Lake County Captains Fantasy Camp.

If you are not familiar with this event, it involves twenty or so men in their thirties, forties, fifties, and even sixties, playing baseball for three days at beautiful Classic Park in Eastlake. It involves former Indians like Mike Hargrove, Len Barker, Joe Charboneau and Kevin Rhomberg. It also involves a few errors, lots of advice from the "pros," plenty of fun and Icy Hot.

The first day, Friday, seems like the hardest. Particularly if you have been relatively dormant for let's say... well, awhile.

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You show up at the visitors’ clubhouse, check-in, and find your locker. After the mandatory introductions, you hit the field for stretching. This is followed by the “clinics.”

The campers are divided into three groups and then rotate through fielding practice with Hargrove, pitching with Barker, and hitting instruction with Charboneau. You then take batting practice in groups of five or six while the rest of the campers station themselves around the field to shag the baseballs.

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At lunch you get to rub elbows with the pros. As an aside, if there is a more friendly, accommodating, and helpful bunch of guys than Hargrove, Barker, Charboneau, and Rhomberg, I’d need proof. They genuinely enjoy this event as much as the campers.

Also at lunch, the pros have their draft, so that when you return to the clubhouse you’ll know whose team you’re on, because your first game starts at noon.

Like Little League, the outcome of these games is not as important as simply being able to play in them. (Especially when you're on the losing end.) Like Little League, there is always instructing going on during the game. Like Little League we are expected to hustle. (We just do it slower.)

All in all, the first day is hard, but the second day will be harder because we’ll play two games. So off to bed I go, unless… how much Icy Hot would someone need to fill a bathtub?

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