On The Road with Coach Schlossnagle
8/3/2006 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
Aug. 3, 2006
FORT WORTH, Texas - TCU head baseball coach Jim Schlossnagle has spent the last month and a half as an assistant coach with the National Team. They are heading off to Havana, Cuba to take part in the FISU World Championships this upcoming weekend. Before his departure, Coach Schlossnagle took some time to share his thoughts on his experiences this summer."I am sitting in the Raleigh-Durham Airport with Team USA awaiting our flight to Ft. Lauderdale. This will be a long day of travel as we are heading to Havana. We have a flight through Atlanta to Ft. Lauderdale, then we catch a bus to Miami and finally a charter flight to Cuba.
Everyone is very excited...this is what we have been preparing for all summer. We have a tremendous group of young men. Obviously, very good players but even better people. It's easy to visualize many of these kids in the big leagues pretty quick, not just because of their ability, but because of their work ethic and selflessness.
The article in today's USA Today about Coach K at Duke putting together the USA Basketball team is very similiar with what we went through to put this team together. You HAVE to have good people in this environment to have success. The travel is pretty tough, lots of very late nights and early mornings moving on to the next city, a ton of autograph responsibilities and functions to attend. The bottom line is that this is great preparation for the players who will one day have even more demands on their time as major league players -- you can really see why MLB players enjoy their off days.
I don't want to understate the work ethic of these kids. One way I try to evaluate our players at TCU is trying to answer this question, "Does your work ethic meet or exceed your ability level?" With this Team USA group, it really does! Most of them spend every minute of every day looking to improve.
We are to going to arrive in Cuba tonight. Everyone has been calling me wondering about the unsettled situation down there but we have been assured that everything will be fine. Baseball is the one thing that the country is most proud of and we have been told that they won't want anything to take away from the World Tournament.
We play our first game of the tournament on Sunday versus Taiwan, a team that is very good but we have been fortunate to win seven of seven against them...all close games. The pitcher we will see on Sunday has already signed with the Cleveland Indians for a high bonus...he is very good.
We are going to play an exhibition game tomorrow versus Cuba and they are planning on over 30,000 people to be in attendance. Should be great fun and Jake Arrieta is scheduled to throw a few tune up innings out of the bullpen against them.
I hope all is well with everything in Ft. Worth. Although this has been one of the greatest experiences of my life, I'm looking forward to getting back to TCU, starting fall practice and rooting on the fall sports teams!!
Go Frogs!!!"
