Different sports but a shared desire
When you get a chance to sit down tonight to watch Jackie Tyrrell swap his hurl for a baseball bat in ‘The Toughest Trade’ on TV3 you’ll probably be thinking he got the best deal of all the four participants.
The Kilkenny man upped and left Ireland earlier this month and threw his lot in with baseball side the Miami Marlins for five days to see what life is like as a pro as part of an AIB initiative.
Aaron Kernan exchanged life as a club player with Crossmaglen to play with Sunderland while former Tottenham midfielder David Bentley made the move from life as an ex pro to play in Armagh.
Tyrrell’s journey across the Atlantic was mirrored by Brian Schneider. The former major league baseball star swapped 28 degree heat for a session of intense hurling training in the mud at James Stephens. Tyrrell admits there was quite a culture shock for him to what was laid on for pro baseballers compared to the life of an amateur hurler.
“Completely different dynamics compared with GAA as regards training, preparation and performance. There are links and parallels but their training goes on for three or four hours. They have to play at seven in the evening and they’re in the facilities at 12 in the day. They have a hairdressers in their stadium.”
The only hairdryer Tyrrell has probably been used to is from Kilkenny boss Brian Cody. The 32-year-old embarked on the project just hours after Kilkenny were beaten by Dublin in the National hurling league earlier this month. What was the reaction of the players and management to his American adventure.
“Jealousy and envy. Everyone was asking a lot of questions — a lot of it I didn’t know myself but they were supportive and were anxious to see how I got on in the documentary. They were probably looking at it to see whether a GAA player could survive in that environment.
“I’m hugely focused and I know exactly how to look after myself so I think Brian knows me at this stage and there was no problem. I got to use their facilities and I trained over there so it wasn’t as if I was missing a month’s training or a match.”
In basic terms you would imagine that baseball and hurling would have at least some genetic link. Both sports involve incredible hand eye co-ordination, while bursts of speed are also a key consideration, as well as a cool head. Tyrrell feels that beyond the surface, the sports are worlds apart.
Hurling is very much from the hips and a movement of the wrist. For baseball Tyrell found his whole body as well as head had to be in the right alignment. And that’s even before you get to try to strike the ball,
‘The dynamics are totally different, it’s very much about mechanics. your footwork, your hip alignment, your shoulders, anything from having your chin down there to up there. It can really change it. It took a while and when you’re striking a ball in hurling, you lean forward and put all your momentum in it; in baseball you have to lean back and it’s like chopping wood.
“It took a while to adjust to that. In hurling you just get a ball and hit it, this is all pre-mechanised. Before they throw the ball, you have to have everything set.”
He thinks the American’s might be a little bit softer than what he would be used to day-to-day in Nowlan Park too. Tyrrell has put his body and various body parts on the line numerous times for both club and country. American sportspeople are often known for insuring their most valuable body parts. Not so much in hurling it seems.
“They catch the ball with the glove, and at one stage I was pucking with a guy only 20 yards away into his hand but the coach came over and told him to stop pucking because he feared he would break a finger or something like that.
“I showed them my fingers. Over there I was trying to catch the ball with the glove and I just couldn’t do it, the ball kept popping out. You have to catch it up high in the glove rather than in the palm of your hand. So I took off the glove and they thought I was crazy.
“They were saying ‘you won’t catch it, you won’t catch it’ but it was just like catching a hurling ball. You’ll see it in the documentary, they are saying ‘this Irish guy is f**king crazy’ and that kind of thing. I suppose it just shows GAA players put their bodies on the line whereas they are a lot more padded, they are wearing gloves and things like that.”
As part of Aaron Kernan’s sojourn with Sunderland his physical testing measured up well to his professional counterparts. The Armagh man feels that the gap between the endurance and effort of inter-county players is equal to that of their Premier League counterparts.
Tyrrell however had a much different experience with his professional teammates in Florida. The multiple All-Star felt that not everyone was giving exactly 100% in the sessions outlined by the coaches
“There is no physicality in it at all. When you do actually hit the ball, you have to remember ‘Jeez, I have to run to the base’ because normally you are going after the ball.We did a conditioning day one day and at we would do more at a club session. It was six 100 metre shuttles, 16 seconds with a 20 second break in it.
“Even in the warm-up they’d stand around chatting. They’d be jogging out, there was a strength and conditioning coach there ‘right guys, jog out.’ It might only be 20 yards, some of them would be walking, some of them jogging. It’s just something completely different because in GAA you would have a guy barking at you. You would have 50 press-ups to do if you gave that kind of an attitude so it’s completely different.
“They do a spring season, so there are 60 of them on the panel. That’s going to be cut down to 25, so they are fighting for their livelihoods really here and there was no bite in a lot of them really. I don’t know, I found it all, coming from a GAA background, you’d be looking at it wondering what are these lads at?”
A popular refrain among GAA fans is how easily the skills of Gaelic football or hurling can transfer to other sports.
The crowds proclaiming Robbie Henshaw’s try against England to be a direct result of his GAA background are sure to be interested in seeing if a hurler could use his skills at something like many Gaelic footballers have done with the AFL. Tyrrell feels that a hurler who would transfer to baseball would pick up the skills quickly.
“I did eventually. I actually took to it pretty quickly. After the first day, I was really struggling. By the end of it, I’d progressed nicely on it. Definitely hurlers would take to it. If they went over there and you gave them a month of intensive training.
“You could do it, there’s no doubt about it. The way guys in our game hit the ball so well. My hand-eye co-ordination was as good as theirs, it was just the technicalities and the mechanics that I struggled with. No doubt if any good GAA hurler was born in Miami, I’m sure he’d be playing within the minor leagues and major leagues as well.”
Tyrrell can see how hurlers would adapt to the game but then raises the issue of why would they bother. Despite the lifestyle and the lure of that hairdresser at the stadium, the 32-year old would have no desire to swap his current life.
“I know this might sound crazy but why would you leave to play baseball if you’re an elite hurler? I actually wouldn’t. I know you might think I’m crazy in that but the buzz you get out of hurling compared to baseball is chalk and cheese.
“Over there you’re standing around for three hours. Their stadium holds 37,000 but they’re struggling to get 20,000. They play a lot more games. Really it doesn’t capture the imagination the way GAA does here. I’m sure if lads went over there and were brought up in baseball, they’d have no problem making it.”
Despite swapping sunshine for the howling wind of Salthill, Tyrrell is glad to be back to life as an amateur-with its all its glamour of hurling in mid March.
“The pitch probably wasn’t in the best of nick alright but it’s good when you see the other side, to come back to your bread and butter and what you love, your real, real passion and that. It was great yeah. There’s no place like home.”
The Toughest Trade is on TV3 on Thursday at 10pm
