Summer 2020 Recap — Scott Junck
Around 3:00 PM on Thursday, March 12th, I was headed back to the baseball facility for the second team meeting of the day. A few hours earlier, we were notified that the weekend series against Cal State Northridge was canceled. There were plenty of unknowns before this meeting and nobody really knew what was going to happen regarding the season afterward. However, as I pulled into the parking lot, one of the worst notifications I have ever gotten popped up on the screen of my phone; an ESPN headline that read “NCAA cancels remaining winter and spring championships.” Just like that, the season for the Iowa baseball team and also my first year as a manager for the program was done.
It was very hard to adjust to the new normal in the weeks following this announcement. Without baseball (or sports in general as essentially all high school, college, and professional sports were canceled) I had quite a bit of extra free time with nothing to fill it with. Back home in Ames, I got back into disc golfing by playing one or two rounds a day, re-read the Hunger Games series, and tried my best to keep a routine schedule with online, asynchronous classes. I kept this up for a few weeks but still felt like there was lots of extra time throughout my day that could be used for something productive.
After being around the manager program at Iowa for a year, it was astonishing to see and learn about some of the projects the data analyst team had completed or were working on. I wound up becoming very interested in the analytics side of baseball and had just begun to learn the basics of R with the help of several of the analysts. After disc golf had gotten a bit repetitive, I decided to work on my coding skills through DataCamp and LinkedIn Learning courses. I dedicated around an hour every day to this and ended up learning quite a bit. I still consider myself a newbie to coding and baseball analytics but thanks to the help of Anthony, Sam, Paul, and some online courses, I am confident in my abilities to create several meaningful charts, graphs, and reports following games or bullpens.
Not only did the Coronavirus alter my spring plans with the Iowa baseball team, but my summer plans were up in the air as well. Originally, I was going to be a game day operations and coaching intern with the Des Moines Peak Prospects, a collegiate summer league team competing in the MINK (Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas) League. There was a lot of uncertainty about the status of the league as the start date kept getting moved back and several teams decided they wouldn’t be playing. Finally, on May 27th, the league officially shut down for the summer, leading me to believe I would go a summer without baseball for the first time in my life. Luckily, that didn’t end up being true.
Several weeks later, head coach of the Prospects Eric Evans gave me a call letting me know they were going to be playing inter-squad games throughout the summer at Principal Park in Des Moines, home of the Iowa Cubs, and that a coaching position was available if I wanted it. I didn’t hesitate to answer and accepted the position right away. Due to many other summer leagues being shut down, Eric had gotten a group of 40–50 players originally from Iowa or from college programs in Iowa to agree to play (the venue might have helped a bit). Several University of Iowa players participated in these games so it was nice to see a few familiar faces on the first few days of games.
After a few weeks of working out logistics with the Iowa Cubs front office staff, we were finally ready to play some ball. Working for an MLB front office has always been a goal of mine so it was awesome to be involved in these meetings. I was able to learn quite a bit about what goes on behind the scenes of a professional sports program. Learning about scheduling, marketing, stadium operations, and the ever-present COVID-19 precautions was a great experience.
The final product: the College All-Star series at Principal Park consisted of about 30 games over a month and a half from late June to early August. Eric Evans had the best explanation of the whole experience, “the coolest pickup game of baseball ever” (with exception to The Sandlot of course). These games were open to the public and attracted anywhere from 400–900 fans every game and everything was operating like a normal AAA game at Principal Park. Concessions were open, walkup songs for the batters, scoreboard with lineups, video-board with replays, a PA announcer; the whole ball of wax. The quality of play was extremely high as well. Players from the University of Iowa participated, as well as players from Division I, II, III, and JUCO programs that showcased their skills. It was a pretty cool first coaching experience, to say the least.
Going into the first doubleheader I was a bit skeptical about how the players would receive a college freshman as one of their coaches. In about five minutes, those thoughts were completely out the window as all of the players fully accepted me as a coach, just as much as the older, more experienced coaches. Our philosophy as coaches for these games was to just allow the players to play some baseball in the summer. They were all college athletes and knew what they needed to get done, so there was not an abundance of instruction from any of the coaches. However, it was really cool and rewarding to see the appreciation from the players whenever I would offer suggestions tweaking their swing, making sure they were getting their timing down in the batter’s box, or attacking the strike zone.
Thanks to the Iowa Baseball manager program, Eric Evans and the Peak Prospects, and the Iowa Cubs front office, I was able to learn and grow my skill set tremendously in a summer that I thought would be free of baseball. I had a blast coaching some very great talent from around the state of Iowa and will always remember my first coaching experience…during a global pandemic. Everything I learned this summer has only increased my urge to continue to grow and work towards a career in the sporting industry.
