Heading home

Well, Yankees Fantasy Camp is over. The players and their families are heading up to their rooms after the final few minutes of hanging out together at the hotel bar following the closing banquet.

Like “regular” camps, we leave with new friendships, some souvenirs, and promises to keep in touch. I will go into more detail in the days to come, but just wanted to make a couple of quick points:

• My team, the Bombers, finished in second place. The early conceptions my teammates and coaches had at the beginning about our prospects were pleasantly surprisingly turned on their heads by the end of the session.
• The Kosher experience was outstanding. Ira Jaskoll and Julie Kremer truly did a great job coordinating everything from the food, to the game against the Yankee Legends played Friday afternoon instead of Saturday, to the arrangement for services and “kashering” the hotel.
• Kudos to Richard Kellner, one of our number, who received the first Catfish Hunter award. Bryan Hoch, who is down here covering the camp as the beat writer/camper for Yankees.com, wrote 

“Upon returning to our lockers this morning, there was a ballot for the Catfish Hunter Award, which is presented to the camper who best represents the spirit of the camp. I have no idea who everyone else voted for, but I scribbled in Richard Kellner’s name and it was an easy call.

“In the early innings of Game 1 on Tuesday, Kellner — playing shortstop for the Clippers — ranged back on a popup at the Himes Avenue complex and got under it before losing it in the blinding sun. The ball hit him directly on the nose and the result wasn’t pretty, requiring eight stitches to close up. Sure enough, when we took the field on Tuesday, he was back with us. That’s a gamer.”

Rich Kellner, a lawyer from the Los Angeles area, is down here with his brother, Steve, a pediatrician from Cedarhurts, NY. I first met Hoch more than a decade ago in the press box at Shea Stadium when he was a precocious 19-year-old with a Mets website. It was fun comparing notes, as it were, with him about our takes on the experience.

• As always, chatting with Ron Blomberg was a hoot. He dropped by the Shabbat dinner last night, though he declined to eat with us. Not a big fan of Jewish food, he said.

Anyway, it’s getting a little late here and I still have to pack. Look for photos, audio interviews, and more here on the blog and in the pages of the New Jersey Jewish News.

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Kaplan’s Korner on Jews and Sports © 2009 New Jersey Jewish News

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