It's beautiful; it's a beautiful ballpark. It's probably a little early to say it feels like home, but the people make it home. |
It's not supposed to be personal. It's not about you. It's not about your opponent. It's about the game. It's about it being an honor to put the uniform on at this level. Don't bring it down from that. |
March 2, if I get an AB that's great, if I don't, that's OK too. |
My decision is going to be, am I able to play baseball, and I couldn't before. If I can't lift my arm and get a shirt down, I can't play baseball. |
My understanding is that I should have no trouble getting back for spring training. It's a six-month rehab, maybe, and I have a little extra time in there. Hopefully, I should have no trouble coming back from the first day on. |
No different than any other year. Played it the same as every year, no swings the first time out. |
Now would I have taken eight or 10 weeks? Sure, I would have. At the time, I'm ready to go, the doc says I'm ready to go, it's fine. |
Right now I'm turned loose and I'm hitting off the tee and playing golf, running, lifting, strength training, lifting as much as I want to lift. I'm not restricted right now. In my range of motion, I'm right at the very end of everything -- five degrees is what they're telling me. |
That would be fine. |
The thinking right now is I'd rather break camp healthy. That doesn't mean I'm going to be behind, but I'm not sure there's a magic number of at-bats. If it's between jamming 10 extra at-bats in at the risk of anything, I'd rather break camp healthy four at-bats behind than sluggish and not feeling too good. |
There are a lot of swings I haven't taken, but I get to start over and start fresh. If I have some soreness, and I could have some setbacks along the way, that's not unheard of. But I'm not afraid of that. |
There are some things I need to work on just to get a feel back. I haven't played baseball for a while. I need to get some timing ... get some feel back. That stuff is going to be done in the cage and out here with coaches BP. This is a big test for me. I made contact. A lot of good things happened today. |
There is a schedule that I'll see some games shortly - a nice amount of off days mixed in there. It seems reasonable and logical on paper. If it goes well, we'll see what else we can do. I'm eager to get to the field. |
There was a debate in the third where the bathroom was. We had a search party out for the bathroom; it was actually right in front of us. The door was closed. |
Things are starting to look a lot easier for Albert. |