Not a baseball was in sight Tuesday as Bangor High School pitchers and catchers began their second conditioning workout of the 2021 preseason in Red Barry Gymnasium.
The tools in use, including heavy balls and an agility ladder, will never be confused with the game’s more traditional equipment, but that didn’t matter to the 20 or so athletes working out for head coach Dave Morris and his staff.
Unlike last year — when the spring sports season was shut down in Maine due to the coronavirus pandemic just as it was about to begin — these sessions in advance of full-team sports practices next Monday are seen as a harbinger of what players hope is a return to baseball normalcy.
“It’s really an awesome feeling because you’re back with your teammates,” Bangor senior James Neel said. “Some of them I haven’t necessarily been as close with as I wanted to because we didn’t have a spring season last year and they did their own thing with fall and winter sports, but it’s good to be back in the gym with them and hopefully we’ll be outside together soon.
“Time has flown by,” he added. “It wasn’t a slow year at all.”
Sunny skies, warm temperatures and an early snow melt in eastern and central Maine support Neel’s hope for an early start to outdoor practices at Mansfield Stadium. But the immediate mission is building arm strength for pitchers and catchers, many of whom hadn’t played in a game or practiced in nearly 21 months.
Not only was the 2020 high school season wiped out but the American Legion and Junior Legion summer baseball programs also were canceled.
“Some kids haven’t played in over a year so we’re probably monitoring things a lot more closely than we would in normal years when we’d have been with them in the spring and summer,” Morris said. “Then there are some kids we don’t know, because we haven’t coached them yet.
“It’s a little more detail oriented with making sure who’s throwing, how they are throwing and how many pitches they’re throwing.”
The annual extra week of pitchers and catchers workouts in baseball and softball was created more than a decade ago by the Maine Principals’ Association to allow athletes to participate in a conditioning regimen designed to help reduce early season arm injuries.
Initially, those workouts were limited to a maximum of eight pitchers and two catchers. But in 2016 the MPA baseball committee removed those limits and now coaches may welcome all potential pitchers and catchers.
“It’s a little different than other sports,” Morris said. “Usually when you have kids come out you’re in a tryout phase but our tryouts don’t begin until next Monday. Right now we’re just trying to get pitchers acclimated to how they’re going to throw, their mechanics, and then obviously get them on a routine and more conditioned.”
In that sense, little has changed. Morris said it’s a chance to evaluate and to establish a routine for pitchers and catchers, who also build relationships while getting acclimated.
Not everything is the same during the lingering pandemic. Locker rooms are off limits and players are wearing face coverings and trying to maintain recommended physical distancing during workouts.
“Obviously with the circumstances of wearing masks and stuff it’s different,” Bangor senior Bradley McLaughlin said. “But it’s still baseball and I’m glad to be here right now.”
Bangor looks to rebound from a rare subpar season in 2019 when the Rams finished 4-12 after winning five consecutive Class A state championships from 2014 through 2018.
The roster will be vastly different after a large senior class graduated last spring without getting its chance to restore Bangor’s winning ways.
“I still remember that day in the classroom,” McLaughlin said of learning there would be no 2020 baseball season. “I was sitting next to one of my senior friends, Austin Conway, and he had seen the message that there was going to be no spring sports. He was just bummed out. I was bummed out, too, but for him with it being his senior year I couldn’t imagine what that must have felt like.
“I’m just happy to be having a baseball season because I wouldn’t have wanted to miss another one.”
