The Boys Of Summer: Raley Experiences Life In Alaska

Sophomore infielder Russell Raley took some time out of his fall individual workouts to answer some questions regarding his summer experiences on and off the field while playing for the Anchorage Glacier Pilots in Anchorage, Ak.

What were your first impressions of Alaska?

I was amazed by all the mountains that they have. When we first flew in all you saw was the ocean and then you see mountains. We also saw glaciers on the way there. I was just amazed by all that.

Was that the furthest away from home that you had been?

Yes. I haven't been out of the continental United States either.

What was the biggest difference between life in Alaska and life in Texas and Oklahoma?

It just seemed to me that things were done at a lot slower pace up there than down here.

The days seemed really long because it stayed light outside all night and all day. The first week I was there I didn't sleep a whole lot because of it so I didn't really like it. But then playing games in the sun all the time, I thought was great. Also, the weather was also in the 60's and 70's which is ideal baseball weather, so I ended up really enjoying it.

Was it a big adjustment for you being away from home and playing baseball somewhere else?

Not really. It didn't bother me too much. I really liked getting to know all the new guys that were up there from other schools.

We had a pitcher from Cal State Fullerton and a couple of pitchers from UCLA. My roommate was a pitcher from Tulane. We also had some guys from Loyola Marymount and Oregon State.

Did you learn a lot about where your teammates were from by meeting other college players from the different parts of the country?

It just seems like they play a different kind of baseball. A lot of those guys were from the Pac-10 and in just talking to them I thought it was pretty interesting to hear the way they talked about teams like Stanford and the rest of those teams. It was fun just getting to know them and their style of baseball.

Do you still keep in touch with any of your teammates from the summer?

I still keep in touch with my roommate and a pitcher from Wichita State that I became pretty close to.

What was the best part about your experience there?

Outside of baseball, just being outdoors was ideal for me. I'm a big outdoors person, so I really enjoyed all that. We went hiking and fishing and I had a good time with that.

The fishing was pretty neat. The host family I lived with, the father taught us how to fly-fish. We learned the basics of how to do it, but we weren't pros by any means. He was catching some, but all the players had a tough time with it.

What was it like living with a host family?

At first it was real different, but as we got to know them and they got to know us, it went a lot smoother. My roommate and I had our own car, so it wasn't like we had to depend on them a for whole lot other than meals.

The team provides you with a car for the summer, so fortunately we had some wheels. It wasn't anything to brag about, but it was pretty neat. We had a 1988 four-wheel drive GMC Jimmy that definitely was the Rolls Royce of the team right there!

What was the competition like on the field?

The baseball was great competition. It was a lot of the best players, I think, in college baseball. Every game was good and every team was tough.

My team finished in third place. We had a bad week towards the end of the season. We would have made the NBC World Series, but we lost seven of our last eight games on a road trip, so that hurt us pretty bad. We went from first place to fifth to third in a week and a half.

What was it like playing in a wood bat league?

It was the first time I had every played with a wood bat. It was a learning experience to say the least, but hopefully I've learned from it and I'll have a better year this season because of it.

What did you guys do during your time away from the field?

We played 28 games in 26-straight days, so we didn't have a whole lot of time off. We worked in the mornings, went home and ate lunch and then we'd go work out at the gym and then we went back to the ballpark at about 4 in the afternoon and then we'd have games at 7 p.m. every night.

Where did you guys work?

We just worked on the field and did ballpark maintenance and that's how we got a little spending money. We would clean up the stands and stuff like that.

It wasn't too fun at first. Just getting up at 8 in the morning and we weren't morning guys, but we had a good time with it.

What was your specific job?

I usually had to change the toilet paper rolls in the bathrooms. One week the infielders would do that and the next week we'd switch out and clean up all the trash in the stands.

What was the worst job you had to do?

The worst job was definitely the first one I had to start off with which was cleaning the bathrooms.

Do you think this is something you would like to continue participating in next summer?

Whatever Coach Cochell thinks is the best place for me to go, that's where I'll go. I would definitely like to go back I had a good time.