Greetings everyone, my name is Todd Doolittle currently playing for the Mesa Solar Sox here in the Arizona Fall League. Let me start off by telling you a few things about myself and how I got here. I just finished up my fourth professional season of minor league baseball for the Florida Marlins. I’m from Meridian,MS where I was born and raised. I attended West Lauderdale High School where I lettered in baseball and soccer for 4 years winning 3 State Championships in Baseball and 1 in Soccer. I then proceeded to play at Meridian Community College for 2 years leading our team to the Juco World Series in Grand Junction Colorado in 2003. I continued my career playing under one of the best head baseball coaches in college baseball, Ron Polk, at Mississippi State University for 2 years going on to win the SEC Championship in 2005. Going undrafted in 2005 the Marlins gave me an opportunity to futher my career and I signed. Well here I am, playing in the AFL with so many big prospects and all-star players.

         Moving on we have been here for about a little over a week now and me being from Mississippi, I do like Arizona. Everyday has just been beautiful. We practiced for the first few days we were here, running drills and going over every play in the book. So I can say it hasn’t exactly been laid back for us. I have made many new friends already and I’m sure to learn a little bit about each individual player as the season continues. One of the first things we had to do when we got here is stand up in front of everyone and say our name, where we were from, what position we played, and where we finished up our 2008 season. For me standing up in front ot people and speaking gets me a little nervous, but getting that out of the way helped to get to know the guys on the team.

          We have played 3 games so far and so far we have won 1 and lost 2. Watching this team play I know we are much better than that and with time hopefully we can prove it. Today was the first time for all the Marlins to throw and we all did well. I know I was a little nervous being it was my first AFL apperance, lots of scouts in the stands and I had not thown since mid September when we were playing for the Southern League Championship that we ended up losing to the Mississippi Braves in game 5 of the series. Getting my first outing out of the way and not giving up any runs, I would say I’m happy with it.

          Closing out all I can say is “WoW”, I mean I’ve had alot of great coaches, but Ryan Sandberg, Hall of Famer as my coach. If that’s not exciting then I don’t know what is. I know I grew up watching him play nad now I have the opportunity to play under him. Hopefully one day that can be me in his shoes. Well that’s all I have for now, so I’ll be back next week to tell you how week 2 goes.