(This story originally appeared in the Spring 2017 edition of Yankees Magazine)
When I visited Arizona in January of 2017, my plan was to come back with two stories. One on Tim Raines, who was up for election to the Hall of Fame, and I was pretty confident that he would get it. The other would be spending some time at Jacoby Ellsbury’s camp for Navajo youth (more on that in an upcoming post), then visiting the reservation in western Arizona where his family has deep roots.
The day we landed, though, Ellsbury’s agent called with a surprise offer. After telling us that our time with Jacoby would be extremely limited, the center fielder agreed to let us come out to watch him work out the next day at his offseason training facility.
EXOS, where Ellsbury and a host of professional athletes work, is an absolute factory of fitness and nutrition. Every single thing that happens there is carefully crafted to be perfect for each individual player. It’s really a sight to see. While we were there, there were a bunch of players from other sports, including players preparing for the NFL Combine. But Ellsbury’s group also had a handful of notable MLB players, such as Evan Longoria, Miguel Montero and others.
Because I was already writing an Ellsbury story, I wanted to make sure that I got some other players involved, so I decided to check out the spectrum of how different players — with different salaries and therefore different spending abilities — handle their offseasons. We met up with Rob Refsnyder for a workout of his (conveniently, he’s also in Arizona), then met with Chase Headley in New York later that month. I think the story does a good job of showing how different each player is, but how hard they all work. There really is no offseason anymore. That was definitely clear through the whole process of reporting this one.
I hope you’ll enjoy.