My toughest time while living abroad was undoubtedly my first time living abroad. My first season I was young, broke, going through a quarter-life crisis, and really didn’t know the ins-and-outs of the game yet. I swung at Barcelona with my eyes closed and luckily I made decent contact. What I hit was the opportunity to live across from a hostel. I was timid still at the time so I wasn’t necessarily eying to take the next base, rookie mistake. Occasionally though the Gods would reward me and I would come around to score. One of the times began with me sitting on my window sill (as I normally would), having a beer and looking out, when a group of around 10 people walked out of the hostel. They were a friendly bunch. When they looked up and saw me they initiated conversation and invited me to drink with them at Placa Del Sol, a place where (mostly) locals sit on the floor and drink what they brought themselves. I had zero reason to say no so off I went to join them.

The leader of the group went by the name of ’Toast’ (no idea why), a Hostel worker whose job was to take guests to mini local drinking tours. Toast was from some european country, and he was your stereotypical ‘I live and work and hostels in foreign countries’ type, which to clarify I have absolutely no problem with. He was a chill dude. While at the Placa we talked and expressed how cool it was to go out with them and be able to meet more people, and girls, and blah blah blah. Being an immediate teammate, he lets me know there’s a pitcher tipping pitching and I should step into the box and take a hack (That’s absolutely not what he said because he’s european and doesn’t know shit about baseball). He points towards one of the girls, Cobra, and lets me know that he heard she’s looking for ‘it’. Like a normal dude, I thought and responded something along the lines of, ‘yeah, cool, thanks dude, I’ll see what’s up.’ From there I can’t honestly say if Toast had anything to do with it or not, but who did I eventually find myself chatting to? Cobra.

Cobra was 26, born in Canada to Afghan parents, and to say the least a chill girl. She was traveling solo through Barcelona as part of a much longer trip around Spain. She explained how the trip was the first time she was really stepping out of her comfort zone, but she was determined. I admired that, as I was immediately able to relate. I then explained to her how I ended up living across the hostel. How I was there playing baseball and occasionally teaching English. How I had recently graduated, had absolutely no idea what to do with my life, hit a quarter-life crisis, then said ‘fuck it, I’m moving to Europe’ (something like that). She found that admirable. I explained how I was nervous about it, but it was a move I felt I strongly needed to make for my own personal development, which she felt related to the theme of her trip.

While at a bar she buys a round, then I buy a round. During one of these times she kissed me and said something like ‘I wasn’t sure if you were going to’. I tried explaining that I probably would have, but that I appreciated the straightforwardness (luckily for me that would continue). Eventually she waved her arm and we rounded third and she proposed we head home. The drinking tour was in the local neighborhood so my place/the hostel was only a few blocks away through the narrow streets of Gracia. We laughed as we walked out of the bar and off we went. During this walk Cobra explains how much of this is new to her. Explains that she doesn’t party much, works often, and definitely doesn’t sleep around. Lots of this was new to her, but it was part of her purpose. She had even gotten a small tattoo of Spain as a symbol of it. I thought it was cool that she was making a conscious effort to do things differently than she normally would. I was happy to be the target of her current motive. As we approached my place she told me a story about a recent night. She was about to give our boy Toast a blowjob, but he had some issues with his erection. We laughed (sorry Toast), and went into my bedroom as I did my best to assure her we were good to go in that department.

The next morning Cobra woke up early and went next door to the hostel to pack because she was off to her last city before heading back to Canada. She thanked me for being cool about the whole scenario, to which I thanked her. We exchanged numbers and instagrams and I wished her well as she continued on. Later I would check that instagram page (naturally) and find a link to a website and follow it. It was a blog she had started and it was called ‘Year of No Fear’. It was small with just a few posts, but the message was clear. Though I felt her vibes and found her explanations the previous night to be genuine, they made more sense to me now. Going home with me was just one aspect of a much larger purpose for her. She basically used me, but I respected that because I respected the idea of personal growth that motivated it.

My first season abroad was undoubtedly my toughest one. In reality my biggest motivation for going was not to pursue baseball, but to develop as a person by placing myself in a completely new environment. I too was actively trying to take different courses of action than I ‘normally’ would. A few of those actions have stuck and become part of my current personality (like actively enjoying the dance floor). Before leaving I was naturally nervous. I was fearful. But, like Cobra, I was committed to make a change. She might have pieced it together when I explained how I ended up in Barcelona, or maybe she didn’t, but I too was attempting to live a ‘year of no fear’. Part of that personal pact included saying yes, without hesitation, to every group of strangers that asked me to drink with them after catching me looking down on them with a beer in hand from my window sill.

My time in Austria contained a number of great experiences I loved, and a similar number of shitty situations that were terrible due to our ass of a club president. One of those things happened to be my living situation. This was a club I wanted to be a part of for the entire winter, and had to be pushy for them to just write up a contract to give me, even though they verbally expressed they intended to sign me. One piece of the contract they were not able to sort out was the living situation. They had expressly stated that finding an apartment for me and the other import to share would be no issue, but months passed and nothing came about. We came to agree that if they couldn’t find a place for me to live by March 1st, I was free to find another club. This agreement was trash though, because no one finds a club after March 1st.

Creeping in the back of every ballplayer’s mind: what is life going to be like without the game. For a lot of baseball players who see their careers coming to an end; maybe it is right after college, maybe it is after a couple years in the minors, or after 4 years of crazy overseas adventures. Life after baseball is a mystery and you probably won’t realize what it feels like until you are 4 months into a big boy job, furthering your education or whatever it may be. In reality, a lot of players do not know what they want out of life after they hang up their cleats. For me, I always made it a priority to AT LEAST think about it. I did not think one season overseas was going to turn into 4+ years of evolving the game, becoming a national team coach, and digging roots in 3 different countries (4 if you include the best holiday of the year- Finkstonball). I hope this is a platform for everyone to give their PERSPECTIVE on how they combat moving away from the game. Hopefully nobody really has to…

The Alligators regular season ended a couple weeks ago. We are in third place with a 19-9 record which is incredible given how much of a roller coaster the season has been. Every day there is new drama with the board, our centerfielder nearly broke his ankle striding out for first, our catcher dislocated his thumb twice, one pitcher thought his throwing hand could punch through a brick wall and another turned into Rick Ankiel in 2000 NLDS three weeks in a row.  It doesn’t feel like we should be in the top four, but here we are.

Swedish music festivals are a hidden treasure in Europe. I can’t consider myself much of a music festival goer myself but they’ve got it down pat. There was a music festival in a small rural town about 30 minutes away from where I was living, that was known for it’s free spirit.

2017, My first summer in Europe. I was playing in the Swiss league and we had been in a Federations Cup qualifier in Bratislava late June. Our team was cruising and we had made it to the finals against the hometown hosts Apollo Bratislava. In this game we finally ran out of steam and played our way out of it, losing something like 7-3. It was a disappointing loss, nobody played well, but it was hell of a run… but the great part about these international tournaments, in addition to, I guess what people call SATURDAY, we were going to hit the town that night before heading back to Switzerland early Sunday morning. Win or lose, we booze.

While living in Barcelona I went on a road trip with two other American ball players. In 7 days we went down and around the Iberian Peninsula, hitting 6 cities across 3 countries. Lots can be told about the trip, much of which would unravel into stories of their own. As you can imagine on a trip like this (lots of places, little time) the days are pretty action packed. However, it is maybe the least memorable day of the trip that led to one of the more memorable scenarios of my time in Spain. On day 4 we stopped in Cadiz, an old city in the southwest of Spain that feels like it’s made entirely of cobblestone. Also the city where I met Giulia.

My first experience playing overseas was in Barcelona. I was a young buck at the time. 22 years old, fresh out of college. I was never able to study abroad (baseball made that impossible) so this was also my first time living in another country. Though I was nervous, I found comfort in that I was going to be greeted by the club and its community, and they would help me throughout this ‘big’ transition. The club had set me up with a relatively inexpensive living situation. I would rent a room in an apartment walking distance to the baseball field. This apartment belonged to a mother of two young teenagers, one of which played for the club’s cadets (kids team). Another american player had previously lived there as well. Needless to say, the family was involved within the baseball community (you meet a lot of these, they’re everywhere).

I would be lying if I said that being able to tell a good story is not one of the biggest reasons why I have decided to do this.