Free Agent

I've been thinking about it since last season, and today I finally made the decision. I'm taking advantage of my free agent status for baseball and moving to a new team.

Last night my coach sent out an email saying the state of the league, and wondering who was playing, up for practice, etc. I agonized a bit, but I knew that I needed to make a decision and so I sent him a note last night telling him I was looking to move on to another team.

Today he emailed back, we talked, left on good terms and then I called the league office and started the process of moving to a new team. It was a hard decision, and it's hard to leave the team that I started with 3 years ago after not playing baseball for 20. It's a great team, and a great bunch of guys, but it's not a good fit any longer.

Two years ago we got a couple new rookies and that was OK. I still got lots of playing time, moved from right field to first base for an inning or two every game, hit well and managed to get to 7th or 8th a few times and even got to play in our playoff game when 3  guys didn't get to bat.

However last year we got 3 new players (2 rookies, 1 free agent) and they all had more talent than I, or at least played better. So I was relegated to the end of the lineup more often than not, and about halfway through the year I lost any chance of playing first with 4 other players competing for the position.

That meant that I didn't enjoy the game as much. I had a lot of games where I played 4 innings in the field (or less) and then 2 or 3 at-bats. Not much fun, and I didn't realize it until early August when we played another team that was short players. I decided to go over and play with them so we could have a game and ended up with 7 innings at 2nd base and had a blast. It was just much more fun.

So I've been hemming and hawing, thinking about it, but decided it was time to move on. So we'll see what happens now.