The challenges of playing baseball in Wisconsin: Brewers reliever J.P. Feyereisen is from River Falls, so he appreciates spring training in Arizona, and knows what high schoolers are going through to get ready for the spring season.
"I was actually just talking to my high school coach a couple of days ago," Brewers Pitcher J.P. Feyereisen says. "And we're lucky now in River Falls that they built a new turf field. So the snow has been melting. But I can remember getting ready for the spring games and doing practice in a parking lot because it was the only spot that was melted off and plowed. You can do pop flies in the parking lot but you can't do ground balls, because the baseballs get so scuffed up. So your first ground ball becomes, it's in the game and you don't really get to work on it. So right now we feel 60 degrees in Arizona is kind of nippy. Whereas at home, if it's 45, you're out in t-shirts and shorts and playing on blacktop and you're like, 'oh this is perfect. There's still snow mounds everywhere!'"
From his Whitefish Bay days in the '80s, Craig Counsell has a more old-school approach.
"Well, my grandma told me to like put on a pair of socks, and then put on like a bread wrapper. You know, like a loaf of bread, the plastic. And then another pair of socks. She said that works," Brewers Manager Craig Counsell says. "'Is that what you want?'"
