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January 12-17,
2008
Peoria Sports Complex
Peoria, AZ
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BALL! ALL DAY LONG. ALL WEEK LONG.
The Seattle Mariners Fantasy Camp is a once-in-a-life time dream for any baseball fan. Your schedule is baseball, baseball and more baseball, just like the pros. And just like the pros, there are people here to help you play better. Your team has one or two retired Mariners stars as coaches. There are professional trainers to help you work out the kinks and loosen up. There are professional equipment mangers to make sure everything is washed and ready to go in the morning. All you have to do is play the game. Which, by the way, is every day. |
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Play
side by side with your idols.
Ever wonder what it would be like to play for such baseball greats as Dave Henderson, Alvin Davis, Bill Caudill, Gary Wheelock, Dave Heaverlo, Jay Buhner, Rich Amaral, Bill Kruger, Chris Bosio, Bob Stinson and Spike Owen? You’ll find out. They, along with a few surprise guest pros, are our coaching staff (subject to chance). |
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| Talent
not required.
It’s not whether you win or lose that counts here. It’s that you love the game. In other words, your skill level doesn’t matter. The Mariners Fantasy Camp is a great week and a lifetime of memories for baseball lovers of all shapes, sizes and ages. You don’t need to be good. You just need to love the game and be over 30 years old! |
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Your
field of dreams.
You practice and play at the beautiful Peoria Sports Complex in Peoria, one of the best facilities that major league baseball has to offer. The fields are meticulously maintained daily by the same professional grounds crew that prepares them when the Seattle Mariners are here for spring training. In other words, its the real deal. |
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See
yourself in the sports section.
Making headlines is easy when there’s a professional video crew and photographer capturing your every play. Each night after dinner, they’ll present a highlight reel of that days action. Each morning there’s a newsletter featuring photos and stories from the prior day. If a pictures worth a thousand words, these memories are priceless. |
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Relax
and kick back with the pros.
Would you like to hear what its really like to play in front of sixty-thousand screaming fans? Just ask. Every evening you have a chance to talk to and get to know some of the best players in the game. Ask them questions, have them sign memorabilia or just hang out and listen to their stories. Guaranteed you’ll learn more about them than you did by reading the sports pages. |
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Take
on the pros.
Do you have what it takes to pitch against Dave Henderson? Or face a Bill Caudill fast ball? You’ll have that once-in-a-lifetime chance when the pros take on the Fantasy Camp guests at the end of the week at the beautiful Peoria Stadium. So take the field and see how well you come through in the clutch.
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Morning Session
Announcements and Day Four video presentation/highlights |
| Monday | Friday |
Morning Session
Lunch in the Mariners’ Clubhouse
Day One video presentation/highlights |
Morning Session
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| Tuesday | Saturday |
Morning Session
Announcements and Day Two video presentation/highlights |
Morning Session
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| Wednesday | Sunday |
Morning Session
Home Run Derby
Barbeque Dinner
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Breakfast and departure to the airport. |
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| Dave Henderson | Julio Cruz | Bill Caudill |
Ken Phelps |
Spike Owen |
Alvin Davis Bill Caudill Rick Rizzs Gary Wheelock Jay Buhner Rich Amaral Bob Stinson Roy Thomas Bill Krueger Dave Heaverlo Chris Bosio Julio Cruz Spike Owen and more |
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Your
Mariners Fantasy Camp 2007 includes:
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| The memory is as familiar as the
feel of a supple Rawlings glove. I recall a June morning at the age of
12 or 13, less than a week after school was out. I ran the few blocks to
the neighborhood ball field not much after 7 a.m., soon to be joined by
friends — eight, nine, maybe even ten of them.
But for the moment, I was alone in the outfield. I stretched out in the damp grass, and over and over again flipped a worn baseball up toward a pure blue sky. All the cares of school were done. All the anguish and insecurity of adolescence put aside. No aspect of the real world had any power to intrude across those foul lines.
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| Only one thought occupied
my mind.
Today, I was going to get to play baseball — all day. If we're very lucky, some things inside of us never grow up. It's 35 years later, a late January morning in Peoria, Arizona. I'm laying in the outfield on damp grass, wearing a crisp white Seattle Mariners uniform with my name stitched across the back of the jersey. In another six weeks, on this very spot, Ken Griffey Jr., Jay Buhner and the real Mariners will be making their mental and physical preparations for the coming baseball season. But as I stare up into an almost painfully blue sky, and listen to the distant clatter of cleats on concrete as others emerge from the clubhouse to join me, I am possessed by only one, happy thought. Today, I get to play baseball — all day. On one level, sure, the Mariners Fantasy camp is just a bunch of old guys — and women, too — pretending that they are big league baseball players. |
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| Held each year at the Mariners spring
training complex in Peoria, the event has all the trappings of a major
league training camp. You wear the same uniform, you are cared for meticulously
by the same training staff that tends the major leaguers during spring
training. You dress in the major league locker room.
The pretense becomes evident, though,
when the campers walk onto the field alongside the likes of David Henderson,
Julio Cruz, Bill “Cuffs” Caudill, Bob “Scrap Iron” Stinson or Lenny Randle.
Even though some of these retired stars graced the Kingdome carpet as long
as 15 years ago, the extraordinary skills that made them major leaguers
are still enough in evidence to make the difference between their abilities
and those of even the most advanced fantasy campers a veritable chasm.
On another level though, just walking onto that field together, wearing
the same uniform, creates a very real bond between the amateurs and the
major leaguers. The difference in abilities doesn't separate the parties
nearly as much as a shared love of the game pulls them all together.
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| If there is a single
universal requirement for enjoying the Mariners Fantasy Camp, that's it.
You don't have to be good at baseball. In fact, you can be downright dismal at it. But if you have a genuine passion for the game, you'll fit right in. Here's the premise. You get to leave the Northwest gloom at the end of January and enjoy a week of Arizona sunshine. There, you meet and really get to know many of the players who long-time Mariners fans could once only admire from a distance. And you get to put on a uniform and play baseball, two games a day for a week. Arriving on Sunday, the campers are taken to the Mariners spring training complex in Peoria where you find a locker with your name on it and a completely authentic Mariners uniform inside. Monday is a day of preparation as the camp's staff of retired Mariners put the campers through a series of drills to evaluate the talent, or relative lack of it. The point is to see that ability levels are distributed equally among the teams, each of which is coached by two of the former Mariners. The entire camp gathers Monday night to learn their team assignments and then Tuesday through Friday, it's two seven inning games a day. On Saturday, the final day of camp, each team plays a three inning game against a team comprised of the retired Mariners. |
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| My goal each day was not to let
a minute escape.
I wanted to be in the locker room the instant the clubhouse attendants opened the doors a little before 7 a.m. And I was determined to stay there after the day's games were finished, listening and talking baseball, until the same clubhouse guys kicked us out because they needed to go home. Then, each evening, I headed to the designated camp bar where Dave Henderson was inevitably holding court, and anyone who cares about baseball is welcome. Hendu regales the listeners with his adventures in the Major Leagues. The stories flow in an endless stream, as campers and the other camp pros contribute their own baseball experiences, or memories of various baseball personalities. Bring up a name of some past or present baseball hero, and Hendu or Cuffs or Scrap Iron have a story that makes that person more vividly human than most fans ever get to know. And it's not just a one-way exchange. The camp pros — guys who spent years in the major leagues — say the camp and the campers help baseball to come alive again for them as well. “What I get out of the fantasy camp
is a chance to relive my youth, and disregard my age,” says 44-year-old
Julio Cruz, the Mariners star second basemen for the first seven years
of the franchise's history.
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| “For that week,” says
Julio, “memories come back and I'm a kid again. The smell of the grass.
The smell of pine tar. The sound a helmet makes when it hits the ground.
I love the chance to lace up my spikes and spit into my glove again.”
If Julio represents the understated grace and elegance of major league ability in the camp, Hendu is the personification of major league swagger. Now a Mariners broadcaster, Hendu was the Mariners number one draft pick in the franchise's inaugural season of 1977. He made it to the major leagues in 1981 and was the Mariners center fielder until late in 1986 when he was traded to the Boston Red Sox. Henderson’s most prolific years were spent as the heart of the great Oakland A’s teams that dominated baseball a decade ago. Now, he is the heart of the fantasy camp. “My family is what's most important to me now,” he says, “but being a retired ballplayer, there's still a baseball place inside me that needs to be fulfilled. Going down to the field, seeing a bunch of ballplayers — even if it's you guys — getting back into the camaraderie... “Things like that never really leave your soul.” |
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| On the field, in the locker room,
or long into the wee hours at the bar, Hendu is lord of the camp, and he
has a barb for everyone.
The pecking order is parallel to a real baseball team,” he says. “I'm the veteran, and you guys are the rookies. And the veterans get to razz and harass the rookies.” And the fantasy campers revel in Hendu’s attention. “Before I came down to the first camp,” he says, “I thought that you guys would be terrible baseball players. But then when I got there... well... I found out that's pretty much what you guys are.” In his constant needling though, Henderson has the gift of making everyone feel comfortable and included. “The thing is, I really like the guys,” he says. “I like people who like baseball. We have something deeply in common.” To attend the fantasy camp, a person has to be at least 30 years old. The typical age, though, is probably closer to 45, with plenty of 50ish participants. Without question, though, the camp's most beloved citizen is Bert Boquet. Bert, who lives in Lincoln, Neb., attended the camp in both 1998 and 1999, and told me in a recent letter that, “God willing, I’ll be back again next year.”
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| Bert is 85 years old.
He is the only person at the camp who saw Babe Ruth play. At the age of 10, he accompanied his father to St. Louis where he watched the Browns and the Yankees. And after the game, he even got the Babe to sign a baseball for him. He has no idea what happened to the ball. Collectors are quick to point out to him that if he still had it, it would be worth something like $750,000. But you don't get the idea that Boquet worries much about things like that. And not a single person in the camp, professional or wannabe, can look at him without hoping that they, too, will still be playing baseball at 83. Yes, if we are very lucky, some things inside of us never grow up. |
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Anyone 30 years of age or older is eligible to participate in the Mariners Fantasy Camp 2007. Space is limited and priority will be given based upon postmark on registration form. Full payment can be made in full, or send a deposit of $800 (for either package) to reserve your spot. Balance must be received by October 30, 2007, Visa and MasterCard Accepted. |
