Baseball In Paradise

by monksathletics

Hello everyone, this is my first blog actually on the island.  I left from Logan Airport in Boston at 6 am and flew down to Atlanta where I then flew directly to Honolulu.  When I Arrived in Honolulu it was 1:30 in the afternoon, meaning it was 7:30 at night back home…also meaning I was ready for bed by 6:30, but i toughed it out.  When I arrived I was picked up along with 2 other players from the airport by Mark, the manager of the league.  The 2 other players, one from Wesleyan and one from Indiana University are my roommates now.  We were driven to a hotel called The Pagoda where we will be staying until August.

So with the next 36 hours or so to do whatever we wanted we decided to go exploring, naturally that led us to the beach.  The only time I have ever seen water this blue is in a pool.  Around 3:30 we went to get lunch at a local hotspot called “Fatboys”,  Weirdly enough, the NBA playoffs were on…and it was completely light outside…definitely a different experience.  After lunch we watched the rest of the game back at the hotel and then went out to the beach.  Due to jet lag coming from the east coast, we called it a night at about 8:30. 

The good thing about going to bed that early is that we all woke up at about 7 the next morning and had the whole day to do whatever we wanted.  We went to Walmart early and bought bikes, knowing that there is 90 day return policy.  So our job is to not destroy the bikes, or else we’re going to be out quite a bit of money… We wanted to explore more so we biked out to Waikki Beach.  For miles all you could see was the bluest water I’ve ever seen and surfers.  Speaking of surfers in Waikiki, the team I’m playing on out here is actually called the Waikiki Surfers.  My roommate from Wesleyan is on the Surfers with me.  When we arrived back at the hotel a fourth roommate was waiting in the room.  He goes to Florida Tech, and happens to be from the same area where Jarrod Saltalamacchia grew up…some of you may know that Salty happens to be my favorite player. 

After we met up with him we decided to go back down to the beach the rest of the day.  We met up with some other baseball players from some California schools when we got to the beach and some players from Georgia.  College Baseball players are not exactly diffcult to recognize out here.  So basically we’ve spent alot of time exploring, biking, and hanging out so far.  We have a baseball practice today (Thursday) in a couple of hours and then our first games are tomorrow.  I’ll let you know next week about how the start of the season goes and my first full week here!

Thanks,

Joe Coyne