First Baseball Party

Hey, in college athletics, your team becomes your fraternity. Obviously, if you get a bunch of guys together who have something in common, especially if they're young, they're going to party. So I got a chance last night to go to a baseball party for the first time, meet some of the guys, play some beer pong, whatever.

I was most surprised that everyone was very nice. Excited to meet me? No, but I didn't expect it; these guys have been a team, and I'm still an outsider. But everyone at least took the time to say hi, ask me my name, shake my hand. I talked with a few of them, and I'm learning a lot of names, but on the whole, the group was less aloof than I would have expected.

Had a fun conversation about drug testing. I found out that some of the players basically go nuts during the summer, and smoke a year's worth of weed in a few months so they can get it out of the way. Drug testing goes school-year-round, and some of it is planned, but some is not...and it's all random. At any time, an NCAA official could walk into the dugout, tap me on the shoulder, and ask me to please urinate in his cup while he watches. Weird. Back in D-III, we only got drug-tested if we made the playoffs, and it was only a few guys randomly selected from the team, so I've actually never been tested. I'm not too concerned, though.

It's very apparent that, like high school, there's a pretty wide ...er... academic capability gap between the players. Okay, I'll say it: some of these guys are DUMB. I wonder how exactly they keep their grades up to be able to compete, and I imagine there are some who really struggle with that. Some are higher academic achievers like myself, and some seem to be pretty capable guys. But there's a much bigger range than I'm used to.

Lastly, everyone is AWESOME at drinking games. I guess that's what comes from having a group of coordinated individuals. Go figure.