Studying Up For Game 3

It's been quiet around here as of late, and with good reason, but rest assured I'm all studied up for today's exam. Below, an excerpt from a wonderful piece courtesy of Dylan Hernandez that you might want to familiarize yourself with. Talk about tough...

[Kuroda] said that when he was in high school, his baseball team held a one-month training camp in the summer. The team practiced from sunup to sundown. The players slept at the school.

Because drinking water was considered a sign of weakness, doing so was not allowed by the coach. Practices were so brutal that players resorted to drinking directly out of a dirty river that ran behind the baseball field.

If that weren't bad enough, Kuroda received an added punishment for pitching poorly. He and another pitcher were told to run nonstop for four days in a row. They were expected to continue running throughout the night.

Kuroda said teammates used to sneak food and water to them and that he and the other pitcher would keep running, but would also be waiting for the light in the coach's office to go off. Then they would run behind a fence, where they would sleep for a few hours, and then be up and running again by the time their coach woke up.

After three days, Kuroda said that the other boy's mother became concerned about their health and showed up one night and took her son and Kuroda back to her house.

The boy's mother called Kuroda's mother to tell them what had happened.

Kuroda said his mother told her: "Please take my son back to the field."