John (L) and Mike (R) living the dream at the Nationals’ West Palm Beach complex.
My brother John (d_c_guy) and I just attended the Washington Nationals inaugural Fantasy Camp held from 18-23 January at the Nationals Spring Training complex in West Palm Beach also known as the CACTI Park of the Palm Beaches. This article tries to capture that experience and hopefully encourage others to attend future camps. I apologize for the length of this article, but there is a LOT to talk about!
Introduction. For those not familiar with baseball Fantasy Camps, they are a rare opportunity to bring together former players, team staff and fans for almost a full week of baseball. The “Fantasy” part of the camp is simple: fans who attend get to experience a glimpse of major league life. Campers (the attendees) operate out of the team clubhouse
Pic 2. Panoramic shot of the Nationals West Palm Beach clubhouse
Each camper has an assigned locker and issued uniforms—and the former Nats players are mixed in with the campers. Our lockers were right next to Michael Morse’s locker with Preston Wilson just a few feet away. Very conducive to casual conversations! I can confirm Mikey Mo is a great guy to talk with—both when serious and being the goofball we Nats fans have long suspected.
Pic 3. Assigned lockers: Michael Morse, Mike Condray and d_c_guy. Former players wore dark blue shirts while campers got white Nats “home” and a plain blue “road” shirt.
The “Fantasy” experience of major league life includes other aspects like training staff, facilities and meals (more on these later). Campers can hang with players at the ballfield, in the clubhouse, over dinners or around the complex. There is also a glimpse of what players mean when they call the regular season “The Grind”: campers play seven 7-inning games in the four active days of the camp.
Getting Started. Campers were asked to report in by the afternoon of Sunday 18 January. Main items for this day were handling admin details, a voluntary work-out at the complex (shorts and t-shirts) and an official welcome dinner on the concourse of the West Palm Beach stadium (where the Nats and Astros play Spring Training games).
As noted, the coaches were almost all former Nationals players: Ryan Zimmerman, Brian Schneider, Michael Morse, Preston Wilson, Chris Heisey, Kevin Frandsen, Sean Burnett, Drew Storen, Tyler Clippard, Brian Dozier and Yan Gomes. The twelfth coach was Doug Flynn, a former Expo (also Red, Met, Ranger and Tiger) who has been doing fantasy camps since 1987(!). He was brought in to provide Fantasy Camp experience for this first Nats camp and was efficient, friendly and funny.
The weather was mostly good. It was brisk (mid-40s) Monday morning (it snowed that morning in the Florida panhandle!) but was back in the mid-60s by afternoon. The rest of the week was quite pleasant except for some spotty drizzle on Thursday morning (not enough to cancel the morning game that day). Much warmer than the DC area!
There were 64 campers, with an average age of 60 and a median age of 64 (John and I were right at the median!). Playing skill levels varied wildly between weekend ballplayers (40-65+ year olds still playing recreational baseball or softball) through folks who hadn’t played in 10+ years to at least one player who had never actually played the game at all. The youngest camper was 33 while the oldest was 81.
One oddity in this first Nationals Fantasy Camp was some of the campers were Mets fans. This was due to a combination of factors: the regular Mets 2026 Fantasy Camp is on hold due to construction at the Met complex and the Nationals wanted more campers to field six teams. Nationals management had hired Doug Dickey (who has been running the Mets camps for years) to bring an experienced Fantasy Camp manager in to run their first Nationals camp. Doug had connections with Mets fans and some were willing to pay the Nats to get a camp in (shades of road fans at Nats Park…). While almost all of the Mets fans who attended were fun to hang out and talk/play baseball with, I would love to see more Nats fans signing up for future camps.
Forming the teams. There were no pre-arranged teams coming in (i.e., you can’t take a group of 10-12 players to a camp with the intention of dominating your way to a Fantasy Camp Championship). Each camper could request one player they wanted to be on a team with, which worked fine (there were several father-son and brother-brother sets of campers). A friend of ours who played on our recreational league team requested teaming with John and she (Jo Ann) was put on our team. That added to the fun for all of us.
Skills tests. Campers were divided into four groups and put into a short set of drills: infield, outfield, batting and pitching. With 64 campers to test in four areas in three hours these were necessarily short. A bunt and seven swings in batting practice, SS/2B infield fielding/throwing drills, 3-4 fly balls shot from a pitching machine set at high angle and (for those who said they were willing to pitch) a short warmup off the mound. All of these were done as the former Nat coaches looked on, took notes and provided some personal tips/coaching to campers.
Who’s on first? Campers had listed on their forms what positions they wanted to play. For example, I listed OF and 3B as my preferred positions. After the tests while the campers were grabbing lunch the coaches got together and put together the six teams (10-11 players each). They did their best to balance the talent levels and position preferences (every team needing folks to cover all positions etc) before randomly assigning coaches. The teams:
- The Unit (Morse/Wilson)
- Balls in Coming down (Frandsen/Burnett)
- Lawnchair Legends (Zimmerman/Schneider)
- Field of Dreams (Clippard/Storen)
- YoustaCoulds (Heisey/Flynn)
- Mon-Stars (Dozier/Gomes)
Camper Support. One of many Nats Fantasy Camp highlights was how the entire support staff went the extra mile to give campers a taste of MLB support. The clubhouse staff were constantly cleaning and returning uniforms etc., directly to your locker. Pants and shirts/jerseys had your name on them, making it easy to match up with the right camper. For socks and other items that did not have printed names each camper was given a small, latched loop (called a laundry loop) with their name on it. Run your loop through whatever you want washed, socks in the clip and drop it off in the basket. Within hours they were back in your locker, ready to go again!
The trainers went out to the fields every day to help with minor scrapes etc. that came up. Off the field they were fantastic at (to use Doug Flynn’s words) “getting you back on the field and keeping you there.” An impressive range of kit was provided, from basics like ice bags right up to what looked like some sort of lower body space suit (a compression thing—I didn’t use it, but other campers did).
I came into camp with some pain in my right knee, but after prodding me a bit the trainers did a simple kinetic tape job that had my knee feeling better when I left the camp than when I arrived. I also found that alternating and repeating immersing my legs in a (very) hot tub then a (very) cold tub helped me deal with calf and thigh soreness as the games piled up. Our friend Jo threw 102 pitch seven-inning complete game—but to her astonishment after the trainers did their thing her arm was okay the next day. The trainers kept getting it done even as lines grew longer and longer with the, um, experienced and seasoned players racking up more aches and pains. Awesome work!
Even something as basic as food service was of amazing quality served by friendly and cheerful staff. Put it this way—the hotel campers (and players) were staying in had pretty good food the times we ate there before and after camp. But the food served by the Nats catering staff at West Palm Beach was better. As much as you wanted (including ice cream sandwiches). I was surprised and somewhat relieved when I weighed in back home two pounds less than I started—lots of running, I guess. One could easily gain weight if not careful. It was not mandatory, but most campers got together to tip all of the staff—clubbies, trainers and food service. They more than earned it!
One additional surprise was Mark Lerner dropping in to see how the Fantasy Camp was going. He was not directly involved in the camp itself, but showed up on a couple of the days we were playing to watch the campers and see how it was going. Although I didn’t talk to him myself, other campers reported he was very personable, happy to chat with any campers that stopped by his cart.
The Games. After lunch Monday it was “meet your team and coaches, hit the field at 1:30 PM for practice and then GAME ON—the first of seven games started at 2:30 PM. There were a set of special rules for Fantasy Camp baseball
– Games were seven innings. But no time limit on the games (my recreational league uses High School and other fields with three-hour time limits on the games—not here!).
– Campers do all the pitching. No camper can pitch more than seven innings per day.
We had one rubber-armed guy who could (and did) throw his full set of seven innings per day. Throwing almost 28 innings in four days is a lot! But that still left around 21 innings to be covered by other folks. John had signed up as a pitcher and threw around seven innings. Most teams had non-pitchers (folks who had not come to camp volunteering as pitchers) take innings for them. I pitched 1 2/3 innings and did not embarrass myself; our friend Jo Ann had signed up as C and utility infielder but tossed a 102-pitch complete game win (the Nationals have a scorer at each Fantasy Camp game keeping stats). Two other campers on our team pitched in (literally) taking an inning each.
If a Fantasy Camp team runs out of available pitchers, the coaches could (and did) come in to pitch. If a team gets more than one inning out of its coaches it forfeits the game (counts as a loss when determining seeding), but you still play out the game. And you get to bat against former Nats!
Pic 6. Me taking my cuts against Chris Heisey
– Special Rules: Quite a few, all intended to help keep things fun and move games along.
- No stealing. Campers could take leads to the edge of the cut outs and only take off at contact unless it was “3 and 2, two outs and you could be forced out at second/third/home.
- No picking runners off or throwing over.
- No wild pitches or passed balls. Or more accurately (there WERE such pitches of course), runners were not allowed to advance on wild pitches or passed balls. A screen was set up behind the umpire to block most wild pitches.
- If a ball reaches the outfield grass, the batter cannot be thrown out at first (this did not prevent outfielders from forcing out a runner coming from first base going to second).
- If a ball got past the defense in foul ground (i.e., overthrew first base etc) it remains live unless/until it hits the fence. Once the ball hits the fence the ball is dead and all runners are granted an extra base.
- BIG strike zone. Did I mention the campers did almost all the pitching? I appreciated the generous strike zone when I was on the mound (in the batters box less so). The big strike zone makes a lot of sense here though—who comes to Fantasy Camp for a Walk-A-Thon? Be ready to swing!
Side trip: Nationals Development Camp. Yes, we campers were quite surprised the week before Fantasy Camp when the Nats announced they were holding their Development “Mini-Camp” at the West Palm Beach facility during the same week we were going to be there (“Are we going to have lockers next to Eli Willits?”).
For what I trust are obvious reasons, the two camps were quite separate. But we could not help seeing some of the minor leaguers doing their warmups, drills and rehab as we were walking back and forth to our own games (have to wonder what the youngsters thought of the VERY OLD-looking players sharing the camp with them…). Minor leaguers were in the cages, on the pitching rubbers (the same ones we had used for our “skill tests” just a couple of days before). Groups tossing medicine balls against a wall (working obliques?) and tossing them over their heads and back. One camper reported he saw Keibert Ruiz working out. All kinds of stuff.
One example of a game skill drill is shown below. A pitching machine of sorts was set up to fire the ball low on the astroturf warmup field next to the clubhouse. Infielders constantly rotated through a drill of gloving the ball and in a single movement doing a quick transfer to their throwing hand while setting their feet to throw to their left (towards first base, of course). They didn’t release the ball—just glove and transfer/set over and over to program their muscle memories.
Pic 7. And so it begins…building a “development monster”!
Off the field. As much fun as it was to play baseball—this article is long enough without telling the Legend of Mary Beth (“M! B! Hammer!”), Michael Morse running around the bases yelling and waving his jacket over a camper on his team who had just hit an honest-to-goodness over-the-fence home run, and the mix of all the hilariously bad and surprisingly impressive quality baseball—I want to make sure I give due coverage to Fantasy Camp’s off the field experiences. Simply put, it’s FUN. You are hanging out with some of your favorite baseball heroes and interacting with them in small groups or one-on-one for days.
Dinner with your team/coaches (Monday). The opening dinner on Sunday night is still a bit distant. Nobody really knows each other yet. But the first night after the teams are formed each team goes out to dinner at a local restaurant to get to know each other and their coaches.
Pic 8. Drew Storen and Tyler Clippard with some of the “Field of Dreams” team on Monday night (yes, it was the College Football championship game night). Mike is the one in the Nats hat.
Talking over dinner gave me a chance to tell Clippard how I helped him pitch in 2011. Long story short, all my friends kept telling me how great Clip was. My answer: “Every time I watch him — a ball is leaving the yard.” The logical fan answer? If I was watching on TV and Clippard came in, my friends made me turn off the TV. If I was at Nats Park, I had to walk up onto the concourse. You gotta do what you gotta do. And hey—it seemed to work. If it’s stupid but it works…
Clip’s was highly amused—then his eyes got wide. “Hey, I remember that year. I had a great ERA but gave up like 11 solo home runs. That was on YOU! It was YOUR FAULT! If you hadn’t been watching me all those times I would have had like a ZERO ERA that year!” I admitted with a straight face that it was all on me—then we laughed together. Pretty cool!
Bull Session (Tuesday night). No recordings allowed! Campers and players grabbed a fantastic BBQ dinner provided by the excellent catering staff, then retired to the MLB Clubhouse.
Bull session rules were simple: Campers could ask ANYTHING, and players would be as frank/honest as they can about it. They do this based on trust—that the campers aren’t recording their answers and (as Doug Flynn put it: “We won’t be seeing this posted up on YouTube”).
So no, I won’t violate that rule. And the players gave long, detailed and sometimes personal answers to questions from the innocuous (“Who were the players you idolized when you were growing up?”) to the, um, more controversial. When I asked, “Who were your most and least favorite managers, and why?” Doug Flynn immediately repeated the “No Recordings” rule. After that we got to hear what different players REALLY thought (good and bad) about their managers.
Similarly, when asked “Were the Astros way out of line with the trash can sign stealing, or was everyone doing it too and they were just the ones that got caught” we got the full monty. Including a couple of players relaying how sign stealing on the field (i.e., within the game) was done. One player demonstrated how, when they were a runner on second and figured out what the catcher’s signs meant, exactly how they relayed the information to their teammate batting. Suffice it to say it was fascinating.
Pic 9. The clubhouse shortly before the “Bull session” got underway
Kangaroo Court (Wednesday Night). Exactly what you think it is, only funnier! After five games of action plus hanging around, many many offenses had been carefully documented (pictures were required as evidence before the Court) and brought up to be judged.
Kangaroo Court is in session! Judges Doug Flynn and Ryan Zimmerman presiding.
Small fines (generally $20 or so) were handed out for various offenses. No one was immune—Zimmerman had to rule against himself and pay a fine when a picture of him wearing the wrong baseball belt in uniform was brought forward to the bench. All fines were donated to the Nats charity. Great fun!
Just hanging out. In the clubhouse, on the fields, at the hotel bar, wherever. You were rubbing shoulders and able to freely talk with players about pretty much anything baseball related.
For example, in the clubhouse I recognized a Satchel Paige shirt Preston Wilson was wearing, leading to a conversation about Negro League players of all types (not just the Cool Pappa Bells, Josh Gibsons and Satchel Paiges of the leagues). D_c_guy asked Zim and Burnett “Who were your goofiest teammates, and why were they Gio and Morse?” They laughed, and Zim said “those are good ones” but also offered Mark DeRosa, which surprised us.
— Closing dinner (Thursday night). Sharing memories one more time. D_c_guy and I were proud of our rec league teammate Jo Ann winning Field of Dreams team MVP for her 4-3 complete game win, strong defense at C, 3B and SS as well as several timely hits. She won universal approval from the coaches as a true ballplayer.
Pic 10. Our Field of Dreams team M! V! P!
But mostly the closing dinner let us laugh and share memories one more time with the improbable group of folks who shared this wild week of baseball together. Sure, we didn’t win much—but we led the camp in having fun!
Pic 11. Field of Dreams (call and response: “FIELD of DREAMS!” “WHISKEY! WHISKEY! WHISKEY!”): left to right Drew, Mary Beth, Mark, Marty, Tommy, Clip, Cuz, Gil (kneeling), Mike, Dave, John and Jo Ann. (Not pictured Hal)
I can tell stories about everyone on this team. The Legend (Mary Beth). Retired chopper pilot Mark hammering the ball despite pulled leg muscles. Marty moving wherever the team needed him, Tommy the rubber armed wonder pitcher and Cuz the Gold Glove (seriously, he vacuumed up almost everything at 2B). Gil the “Mr. Met” wonder pup (“pup” at 33, and yes, his day job is inside the Mr. Met costume). Playing alongside my brother John and recreation league teammate Jo Ann in Nats gear. Dave Bremmer gutting it out and getting it done. Hal catching, playing outfield and doing his own pitching cameo. Hearing how Drew and Clip decided to start their “Field of Dreams” whiskey (distilled using corn from THAT field in Iowa). We’ll never forget this wild and crazy ride!
Summary. Going to a baseball Fantasy Camp is something campers will almost certainly remember the rest of their lives. It doesn’t matter at all whether you starred or just played—the camaraderie with each other and the players shone through. Yes, there were a couple of aggressive players (thankfully not on the Field of Dreams team)—but the vast majority of campers and players accepted each other as kindred spirits sharing a love for baseball.
Lots more little things, too. Getting to hit on near-pristine fields (almost no bad hops in the infield), hitting against or catching a major leaguer (when I was getting ready to pitch, my warmup catcher was Clip and Drew caught me on the field as our team catcher finished putting on his gear). I could keep going—but this is way too long already.
Prepping for a Nats Camp. If you are planning on attending Nats Fantasy Camp next year or in the future remember you don’t have to be an awesome player (I certainly wasn’t!). That said, it would be useful to prepare yourself with some basic running (at whatever speed), tossing and catching a ball and taking some swings in a batting cage. That’s mainly to reduce the chance of injuring yourself by dropping something completely new on your body.
Let the Nationals know where you like to play most—but be ready to play wherever you are needed (I am an outfielder by trade who occasionally plays 3B in our rec league because I can make the throw across the diamond most times…but during this week I also did cameos at SS and P). Come with the expectation of having fun, meeting new folks who share your love of baseball and getting to know former Nationals players in a way you simply can’t get elsewhere. Let’s Go Nats! Field of Dreams! Whiskey! Whiskey! Whiskey!
