CGB Interviews Former Golden Bear And Current Florida Marlin, John Baker

Just wanted to pass along more information about a current Florida Marlin, John Baker.  John Baker played at the college level at Cal, which was certainly interesting to us over at SBN's UC Berkeley site California Golden Blogs.  We reached out to him for an interview and he was generous with his time.  Part I has just gone up and we thought the FishStripes readership would be interested. 

 9.  I can appreciate that, although I was more of a student first and an athlete 85th.  That's neither here nor there.  Can you take us through the daily life for the baseball player?  When do you wake up?  How much time do you spend on the practice field?  What does a gameday look like?

Are you talking about  college baseball or professional baseball?

 Right now, just college baseball.  For a Cal baseball player.

 College baseball can be tough.  When I played, we only played Tuesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, so 4 games a week.  You have an offseason and an onseason, obviously.  When you get back from your winter break, you are back early, because you are practicing in January.  Our season started at the end of January or start of February, I want to say.  I think it starts a lot later now.  The season has changed to allow the East Coast to catch up.  We started pretty early, we were back early. 

A typical day during the season, if we had a game on a Tuesday or a Friday, was wake up at 8:30 and go to class.  Do the school thing first and make sure that you show your face in the class if they required attendance.  Then, head to the ballpark.  We didn't have lights at Cal, so all our games were at 1.  You got that first class in and then you headed over to the ballpark for the little pregame routine.  It was a talk about who was pitching against us, stuff about the other team.  Then, get in the cage, taking batting practice on the field, taking our ground balls, taking infield practice and then play the game.  It was like that every game we played with the exception of the weekend games, which are a little different, because you don't have class.

Part II should be up soon and includes discussion of professional baseball, including his thoughts on the Marlins.  Thank you very much and Go Bears and Go Marlins!