There are different ways to find out who is working the hardest in Mets camp.
The coaches and manager can fill you in, you can watch the workouts yourself, but with games starting now, it’s impossible to be in two places at once because players stay behind to practice at the facility.
Or you can follow Where’s Kernan? into the laundry room in Port St. Lucie early in the morning to see which Met is really working hard.
The laundry room never lies.
This is how it works. In an earlier blog I detailed how much laundry there is in a spring training camp, but I didn’t get into the nitty-gritty of the laundry room.
You weren’t ready for it then, now you are.
Player’s clothes are put on a loop so nothing is lost when clothes are washed. The loop used to be a mesh bag, but progress has produced the loop that has the little plastic click.
Each player has the loop hanging from his locker. The loop is thrown into the wash or if the players do not loop their own clothes, remember, these are major league players, everything is done for them.
Across the way in the minor league clubhouse, players loop their own clothes. Not the case in the major league clubhouse. But I digress. So Where’s Kernan walks into the laundry room and Dave the Hard Worker is busy sorting laundry, looping it.
If players don’t loop, each players number is written somewhere on every piece of clothing. That way Jose Reyes workout shorts can’t wind up in the locker of Ramon Castro. That wouldn’t look right.
So in the morning there is a loop of workout clothes.
Each day the most clothes on the loop belong to pitcher Alay Soler, who is working out with his fellow Cuban, Orlando Hernandez. Soler was out of shape last year and El Duque is teaching him the right way this year.
Soler is working so hard, he has the most laundry. His loop was filled with clothes. And it’s paying off. Physically, Soler looks good. “I’m working hard,” he says.
“All I know,’’ Willie Randolph says of Soler, “is that when I work out early in the morning, he’s right there with me lifting weights, he’s on the treadmill, he’s getting it done.’’
Remember, the laundry room never lies.
Whose loop is the second biggest? No surprise, El Duque.