Sports

Road only gets tougher for SCL's homeless Juice

• The Juice have pulled out of Bradenton, rescheduled all their remaining home games for the road and could face the same situation during the 2008 season.

Paul Dehner Jr.

ALBANY — Most baseball players enjoy sleeping in. Most baseball players survive on a routine. Most baseball players love hearing the cheers of the home crowd.

Members of the Bradenton Juice aren’t like most baseball players.

That was assured the second the Pittsburgh Pirates denied the South Coast League’s proposal to lease its spring training home, McKechnie Field, earlier this season, leaving Manatee Community College’s tiny Robert C. Wynn Field hosting the team’s four actual home games, the last of which was played June 2 against the Peanuts. For now, bound for relocation, the Juice have morphed into a barnstorming bunch traveling from city to city, hotel to hotel this season. The closest they will get to a home game this year is batting second in the opposing team’s park.

So, instead of lounging around on gameday and resting their bodies, they hear knocks from the maids beginning around 10 a.m. and checkout on getaway days is 11 a.m. with the game eight hours later.

“We’ll stay in the lobby or walk around,” said catcher Nick Corbeil, about how the team kills times on the final day of series. “Usually most places have a mall, some of the guys go walk around there.

“Sitting in the lobby is kind of the worst part because you are sitting in the lobby for about four hours waiting on a bus.”

The Juice have persevered, holding a 15-11 second half record heading into Thursday’s game.

But it hasn’t been easy.

“There are nights we will go get beat up a lot,” manager James Frisbie said. “I can tell a lot of it is just the fact we are dragging a little bit. As a manager, you have the competitive part of you that wants to win all the time, but you also have to be patient and realize we are not a normal team.”

Not in the least.

The players left Port Charlotte, Fla., after playing its second doubleheader in as many nights Thursday, arrived in Albany at 7 a.m., then slept until the maids came in to clean their rooms around noon. At that point, the waiting game for the bus to return and take them to the stadium begins.

And not only that.

“We’ve been fighting for a new bus for a long time,” Frisbie said. “Normal busses for the rest of the teams are 52 passengers. Ours are 46. I got to drive to haul stuff, there isn’t enough room. We are hoping to have a new bus by the end of this series.”

Hardly seems fair for the Juice. But the upbeat crew hasn’t treated it as the disaster it is and doesn’t seek pity.

“It could be worse,” said Frisbie, a pitching coach by trade in his first full managerial gig. “You could be building swimming pools every morning like I was in the offseason, or fighting in Iraq or something. There are a lot worse things. As far as baseball players go, we are all so weird we have our routines and it is hard to get a routine. Our routine is being on the road. You have to deal with it.”

It looks like they will likely have to deal with it again next season.

The SCL is looking for a relocation city, but 2009 seems like a more logical solution at this point.

If that turns out to be the case so be it, but don’t expect the Juice players like Corbeil to complain, he’s just happy to strap on a uniform every day. Even if it’s always in the road blue.

“It is pretty interesting,” he said. “It’s a grind. But it’s baseball.”

GOODWIN GROOVING

Now moved into the leadoff spot in the order, South Georgia’s Curtis Goodwin Sr., has been on a roll at the plate.

The 34-year-old former major leaguer is on a 10-game hit streak. But amazingly, his average has dropped over the streak from .367 to .353.

Goodwin has only had multiple hits in two of the 10 games. Consistency has been his best asset with the Peanuts; he has hit safely in 22 of the 25 games he’s started.

SANDSTROM IN, COWLES OUT

The Peanuts released relief pitcher Josh Cowles on Monday, making room for infielder Anthony Sandstrom.

Sandstrom began the season with the Charlotte County Redfish. There, he hit .231 with 27 games with 15 walks and 15 strikeouts.

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