he's chasing dreams hitting seams.
she's chasing dreams talking sports.
The more the season went on the more I had to realize I’m 100 percent learning as I go and flying by the seats of my pants when it comes to doing things “right” in the WAG life. (If you do not know what a WAG is, stop right now and click here to find out and read some fun stories from spring training.) Along with the moving lessons, I thought sharing other WAG lessons I learned/realized would be fun — and of course keeping up with/adding new ones in the future. 1) Apartments are not ideal in the baseball life. …But I mean what else can you do? Unless your affiliated team has host families, you have to get an apartment, house or live in the hotel. (Host families are local families who take in players and their families during the season. Matt had host families throughout summer ball and in Rookie Ball and Low A. He had great experiences, and we would definitely stay with a host family if they were available.) I’m not sure we’ll ever get around staying in an apartment without host families, but I now know to ask the team if there are certain apartments they work with. The teams may be able to give apartments who understand the baseball life and won’t make you pay fess if have to break the lease if moved up or down and will allow month-to-month leases. Don’t base apartments off of photos online. Before leaving spring training, we already signed a lease for an apartment in Tulsa with three other roommates. We got to Tulsa, and two of our roommates did not want to stay at that apartment. Apartments always post the most glamorous photos and sometimes when you get there the apartments do not look like they do in the photos. We obviously wanted a place to move into right away, but now we know to just wait until we get to the place we’re going and shop for an apartment in person. (Unless can get name of apartments people have lived in before, and they recommend.) We were only allowed to break the lease because the dates were wrong. But we were stuck with the furniture the first apartment had already contracted out for three months. With another fee, the furniture company transferred the furniture from the first apartment to the new apartment. Which leads me to my next point… 2) Don’t rent furniture through a rental company. It’s expensive. And because of the switch we ended up with all this furniture we didn’t need/wouldn’t have picked out if went in on our own and picked out furniture we only absolutely needed. For our apartment in Arizona, we bought furniture off of Facebook market place, yard sales and ordered one of those mattresses they deliver to your door. We spent half of the money doing that than we did renting furniture for the season. And the best part is we’ll hopefully sell all of it and lose little to no money. (I know several couples that use big, nice air mattresses for the season. Matt has a hard time sleeping if his bed isn’t just right, so he doesn’t think an air mattress is an option otherwise we would use an air mattress. That’s the best option for a bed in my opinion.) 3) Roommates Roommates are fun and kind of a necessity to make rent and bills affordable on a minor league salary. But just be prepared for you to see your roommates true colors and for your roommates to see your true colors. Also with the baseball life moves are made all the time. Matt, G and I were the only stable people who lived in our Tulsa apartment from start to finish. We had five different roommates throughout the season because moves were constantly made. Baseball is great because you’ll always have someone coming up or down to fill the space of the roommate going up or down. But it’s also a struggle because have no idea how long those moves will last before they go back/come back. You just make it work. But let’s just say for the first time really ever we have our own place for a little bit, and we are loving it! 4) It’s OK not to go to every game. If my calculations are correct, I went to 128 out of the 150 games played during the Drillers 2017 season. Whether Matt was playing or not. And honestly, I loved every minute of it. I only missed the long, far away road trip, for my brother’s graduation, a death in the family and a couple of road games I couldn’t get away from work for. I didn’t realize how mentally baseball drained I was until fall league started. I’ve been to every game Matt has played in but have stayed home and focused on myself on the days when he isn’t playing. I’ll always be at every game he is playing in, but I’m learning it’s OK to not go if he isn’t playing. Doesn’t mean I’m not being supportive. Just means I’m taking time for me and that’s OK. 5) The eating schedule is out of control. If you eat before the game, you’re eating pretty early and feel like you just ate lunch, but if you don’t eat before the game, you’ll be starving during the game — and you don’t want ballpark food (well maybe just every once in a while). And you don’t want to eat after the game because you don’t need to eat at 11 p.m. So eat when you’re hungry and BRING LOTS OF SNACKS. (I’m a pro at sneaking snacks into the ballpark.) 6) Just always always always be myself. This could probably be another blog post in itself and maybe it will be sometime. I learned very quickly in baseball I’m going to constantly be thrown into situations where I’m around strangers. Strangers who may become friends, and strangers who may just become acquaintances. Not everyone is going to like certain things about me. I might get teased for going to all the games. I might get teased for getting to know those strangers. I might get teased for knowing a lot about this game and always wanting to learn more. I might get teased for thinking and making all of this about more than baseball. And that’s perfectly OK. Because all of those things are who I am. And honestly, I’ve never been as happy as I have been since I began traveling. So I’m not letting anyone kill my vibe just because I’m not exactly like him or her. (And you shouldn’t either.) I have too many friends and connections from this season to show for being exactly who I am. **end soap box** **deep breath, wipes brow** OK so these are only the main WAG lessons I could think of. I’m sure I’ll think of more and might have to do a part two.
OH AND don't get cable. You don't have time to watch TV. Stream sports on the computer then use HDMI cord to throw on the TV. Get Netflix and Hulu, and you have a cheaper and better setup than cable anyway. Also, Matt and I were in one place the whole season…can you imagine what my lessons would be if we were in four different places like one WAG I know from this season. Man, that’ll be a journey if it happens one day. If you’re a WAG reading, comment below with any lessons you’ve learned. We’re just having fun and learning as we go. Oh and keepin’ our faith in Jesus strong! That’s how we’re really having fun while learning. :)
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Matt & Jesica BeatyWelcome in to dreams and seams! A tell-all blog about our career dreams and path to reaching those dreams with some commentary about sports and life plus some videos too. "Strive for the impossible because it makes the possible seem effortless." -Matt Beaty Categories
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