Deeble's Diary - Day 1
jon_deeble
Arrived in Panama last night, had a brief meeting and uniform distribution, it was a good chance to catch up with the boys and how their season went this year, it was also good to meet some new young faces on the team. With 9 players making their debut, things where defiantly different, with no Ben Risinger and Luke Hughes around it was a lot quieter than in the past.
Up today for a good breakfast and walk around Panama City, it is quite a nice place downtown but quickly turns as you move out towards suburbia. We had a training session at 1pm today 1 hour from the hotel; it was every bit of 90 minutes. The ground was very shaky, we couldn’t take an outfield workout for the fear of broken ankles it was very rough. We take a great infield though with Huber at 1st base, Wearne and Harman at second Stefan Welch at 3rd and James Beresford at SS, behind the plate we had Matt Kennelly Alan De San Miguel and Joel Naughton, it was as good of an infield as I had seen in a long time, and everyone was upbeat and sharp.
Every pitcher bull penned and I can tell you we have some outstanding young arms, it was very impressive and will be one of the strengths of the team, our new pitcher Clayton tanner looked great, a ¾ slot from the left side with a good moving fastball, good change up and a real nice slider, he is going to really help us, Andy Russell looked really good also with his side arm slot as did Big Dushan Ruzic.
We took BP which was also impressive, young kids you see coming out of our Academy are now men, plenty of balls went into the houses, I can say everyone looked good and is in good shape ready to go, we also went through our team fundamentals, including 2st and 3rds and bunt defenses.
Long 90 minute trip home and ready to eat.
Tomorrow we have a early start 7.45am bus, we had planned and organised a game four weeks ago against the Netherlands, but the organising committee pulled us out of the game 2 days ago and put Panama in there so we had no game, Last night we got hooked up with Nicaragua, not ideal as we play them in our round but better than nothing, everyone will get to pitch an inning except for Ruzic who will start against Cuba, feeling really good about that game as Ruzic 3 hit them last game we played.
Great hotel and food has been good so far, we leave on the night of the 1st for a town called Chitre not sure if it will be like Panama City....?
Deebs
