‘The Boys Are Back In Town’: Cardinals converge on Jupiter for Day 1 of spring training
Shortly after 8 a.m. local time, Cardinals starter Miles Mikolas eased into the parking lot at the team’s facility on Florida’s Atlantic coast with his windows down and his stereo up, filling the morning air with Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back In Town.”
Too on the nose? Perhaps. And yet with so many players set to arrive before quickly departing for the World Baseball Classic (Mikolas among them), a fair amount of exuberance. Celebrate, together, before splintering off apart again.
“It was exciting to get down here,” Cardinals President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak said. “2023 camp, to me, feels very normal. There’s certainly going to be some abnormal things going on, but I think it’s going to be exciting just to get it going.”
Things got going Monday in a hurry.
Before Mozeliak spoke, Adam Wainwright climbed the collection of mounds just behind the clubhouse patio to throw a bullpen to prospect catcher Iván Herrera. It wasn’t his first session of spring, but it was the first one in front of the gaggle of cameras that watched from the sidewalk, kicking off his last as an active player in the Major Leagues.
In his first, as a member of the Atlanta organization, he threw his first bullpen behind what he called the “big field” at their former complex under the watchful eye of pitching coach Leo Mazzone. John Smoltz, he said, stood by to watch, and he watched Greg Maddux play catch before climbing the bump.
‘I know everyone’s there’
Monday, it was just him and Herrera, surrounded by more than a dozen team staffers and with tens of thousands of dollars of camera and radar equipment capturing and analyzing every delivery. For Wainwright, even with two decades between, the experience was pretty much the same.
“I know everyone’s there,” he said. “I knew there was a mass of people here and there, but honestly, when I’m working, I don’t really feel like that’s there, you know what I mean?”
Across the complex, on a half field designed for infield work, the team’s projected starters were all accounted for several days before their required report date. Joe McEwing, named bench coach just a month ago after Matt Holliday’s very temporary hiring, was making his return appearance for spring with the Cardinals after having been traded 24 years ago.
His fungo work drew the ire of José Oquendo, the legendary coach who now serves as a special assistant. Some of the ground balls directed toward Paul DeJong and José Fermín at shortstop lacked what Oquendo deemed to be appropriate zip, and he was not shy about saying so.
“You’re a professional now,” he chirped at McEwing, who took the feedback in excellent humor. “Watch my Fred McGriff,” McEwing answered, ready to showcase the important baseball fundamentals that a player in the 80s or 90s could’ve learned from a famous set of videos of baseball drills.
Arenado, Goldschmidt
After the middle infielders departed, the corners got to work. Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt, two thirds of the finalists for National League MVP in 2022 (and Goldschmidt its winner), took their turns going through the routines of fielding grounders.
Arenado directed first base coach Stubby Clapp on the order in which he wanted to work on his locations – first to his forehand, then to his backhand, and then straight on. With each, he corrected his footwork and fired strikes across the diamond to Goldschmidt, gathering a small crowd of onlookers as they seamlessly danced through difficult work.
Goldschmidt, on his corner, asked Memphis manager Ben Johnson to stand at first base to receive flips, and the two launched into a conversation about when to toss overhand (almost never, by Goldschmidt’s reckoning; too easy to handcuff the pitcher covering) and how to properly follow through when flipping underhand.
He intentionally tossed a few bad balls to more clearly demonstrate the good ones, and then asked Arenado if he wanted to work on turning the double play from the shift at second base.
Reminded that the shift was newly outlawed and he’d have very few occasions to run that play moving forward, Arenado mused he’d perhaps work on that technique tomorrow.
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McEwing, standing at home plate, reminded Arenado he was scheduled for an off day tomorrow as the club takes care not to overload its most important players in the early going before their international commitments.
As Arenado kicked at the dirt and seemed to ponder the audacity of being asked to take a day to rest, Goldschmidt chimed in with a solution from first base.
“There’s plenty of high school fields around here,” he offered.
With camp not yet officially open, the team’s two best players were scheming ways to sneak away for some surreptitious extra work on a play that, by rule, should not occur in 2023, or indeed, ever again moving forward.
Just another day in Jupiter.
This story was originally published February 14, 2023 at 5:30 AM.
