Veracruz

So this past week I have been to Veracruz, a harbour city on the east coast of Mexico. In Veracruz is also a baseball academy for young and talented prospects that would like to dedicate their lives to the sport and play at the professional level. I went to Veracruz with my host father and two friends of mine, who I know from my baseball team here in Tuxtla. As both my friends would like to enter the academy, and my host father has a lot of contacts in the professional baseball world, they were invited to come for a week at the academy to see if they could enter. And so it happened that I went with them to Veracruz.
We left on Monday in the afternoon and after a 6-hour trip, we arrived in the city of Veracruz. On Tuesday began the first day of practice. We woke up at 6am, had breakfast and left the hotel for the stadium.
So the guys at the academy have a very repetitive and focused life. They live in apartments next to the stadium and they practice baseball every day, except Sunday. Some come from very far away, some from Veracruz itself, but they all left their families and homes to play professional baseball. Most of them are between 15-17 years old, but there were also a lot of boys who were 13-14 years old. Next to the fact that they left their families, they also left school at a very young age. This has one very important consequence, which they are all very well aware off: they have to succeed in baseball, because if they don’t, they have literally nothing to fall back on. They know that if they manage to play professional baseball for teams in the LMB (Liga Mexicana de Beisbol), they will earn enough money to take care of themselves, but also of their families, which they left.
So we took part in the whole program and got to experience their lives for a week. The standard day for them (and us) looked like this:
- 8:30 am beginning of practice
- 8:30-12am baseball practice (includes warming up, fielding, batting and it is by far the most exhausting part because of the very high intensity)
- 12:30-1:45pm Fitness and gym (every day another part of the body, legs, chest, arms etc)
- 2-3pm Running and sprints (which is also very tiring)
- 5-7pm Extra training

And from the moment they enter the academy, they do this every day of the year. Now, I have had some very tiring and tough baseball practices in Holland, but this is just another level. I have never been so exhausted and sore during a week. And it was not just the practice, because the weather is very hot in Veracruz, more than in Tuxtla. This made it a little bit harder too. Even though it was very hard, I enjoyed it a lot, which is obviously the most important. I can also say that we were not inferior in comparison with they others, the only difference is that they were 3 years younger than we were haha! And even though a lot of them are very young, they throw incredibly hard and are physically very developed for their age.

As we stayed in a hotel, when the practice had finished we headed back to the hotel to shower, eat and change us. After this, we either stayed at the pool, or went to explore the city a bit (I included some photos of course).

In Veracruz we also met a fishermen, with whom we exchanged some words. He is a very nice man and he is a real fisherman. Dressed in a shirt and shorts every day he goes swimming into the sea with only his diving mask and a harpoon. He catches lots of species of fish, octopus, calamari, and sells them to the local restaurants. And then in the evening he finishes with one more round of fishing for him and his family, and grills it on his improvised barbecue.

I really had a great time in Veracruz and I enjoyed my week a lot. Right now I have to catch up all the homework I missed that week, even though I got sick yesterday. I actually thought I had chikungunya because I had a lot of fever, but I didn’t have sore muscles, and after 36 hours of staying in bed, my fever is gone ☺.

Hasta luego!