What other job requires you to work every day for seven months and then gives you a five month vacation? It's wild. The season is a grind, it wears on you, it beats you down, it's repetitive, it's monotonous, it appears endless- and then, well, it ends. And you go home. You have five months to do whatever you want. One hundred and fifty days to yourself. No baseball requirements. No bus rides. Nothing but an empty calendar. So what do you do?
The off-season is a time for bonus babies to relax on beaches for a while before eventually focusing all their time on baseball training and their Big League aspirations. It is also a time for lower draft picks to find a real job and use this reprieve from baseball as a chance to actually make some money so that they can afford to keep chasing their dream. I fall into the second category.
I'm working a desk job this off-season so that when the day comes that I get released- or whenever I retire after my Hall of Fame career- I will have more than my petite signing bonus in the bank and more than baseball statistics on my resumé.
