Al's Big Red Machine Blog

Welcome to Al's Big Red Machine Blog and follow my journey as I fulfill a lifelong bucket list experience at age 60 to play baseball as a Cincinnati Reds player.


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What's In A Name? That Who We Call Concepcion

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Joining me at the Cincinnati Reds fantasy camp is Miami cardiologist Gilbert Concepcion, a lifelong New York Yankees fan. Given his revered last name in Reds baseball land, Concepcion, of Cuban heritage, spent most of his professional life fielding questions from his Miami patients wanting to know if he had any family tie to the great Big Red Machine shortstop Dave Concepcion, a native of Venezuela. He didn’t give much thought to the Concepcion name connection and was planning to wear his old high school number 10 at the Reds fantasy camp. That is until he was recently looking through some of his childhood photographs at his parent’s home and realized that he wore the number 13 on a Little League baseball team. That discovery also perked another special memory.  As a physician, he was asked by the Venezuelan national baseball team physician to step in as onsite physician for the Venezuelan national team during the inaugural World Baseball Classic in 2006 because the former was feelin
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Livin' the Dream at Reds Fantasy Camp

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Day 1 at the Reds Fantasy Camp was a blast and a wakeup call on how grueling the life of a professional ballplayer is. After getting to the complex before sunrise to have breakfast, attend a morning briefing meeting, we headed out to the fields to begin our "tryout" so the coaches could evaluate us before the draft during our lunch. More than 45 minutes of infield practice, three different live batting sessions on multiple fields, bullpen pitching tosses and fly balls off the machine was enough to send me to the training room for a massage gun session on the quads. We finally learned draft results and my team for the week was appropriately Goodyear, home of the Reds spring training facility. We faced a crafty veteran pitcher who threw knuckleballs, curveballs and sidearm fastballs. On my third at bat, I finally got a hold of one and lined a single down the left field line. It felt great! Especially since I had already turned a double play as the starting second basemen. Lots
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A Little Bit Reds Country

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We took a break from our practice ritual this weekend and I surprised my wife with Brad Paisley concert tickets at the IThink Amphitheater in West Palm Beach. Not only did we take in a great concert by Paisley, who is also a staunch American Patriot, but the crowd got an unexpected surprise when Paisley brought on stage one of the greatest Cincinnati Reds players to ever the play the game. Hall of Famer Johnny Bench graced the stage. It was the last thing I expected, but a great "value add" to an already terrific experience.
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