A year ago, in the Legends game, Dent wanted to know how I made it all the way to second base.

In his sixth year of participating in Fantasy Baseball Camps, Roy Berger shares his experience playing with the New York Yankees. Although most fantasy baseball camps take place in the spring, the Yankees are the only team that holds a camp twice a year. 

“I absolutely want you to go. Absolutely,” my Dad said late Sunday night as he and I were the only two sitting in the abandoned Fort Lauderdale, Florida hospital waiting room. A few hundred feet away, Mom was undergoing emergency surgery for a four-part broken hip suffered in a fall a day earlier.

What was to be a fun football weekend with my dad turned into anything but, just days before my parents were supposed to celebrate their 65th wedding anniversary. Mom, 84, has Alzheimeir’s, which, along with ALS, has to be the cruelest of cruel diseases. There is no treatment, no cure, and no hope for an upside. The patient loses ground almost daily, right in front of your eyes.

My father, 85, is a saint, catering to Mom’s every whim while certainly the challenge just got steeper. She surely will never walk unaided again. He stresses over every detail, trying to make her life not only easier, but better. An incredible infrastructure of friends and family gives my parents the daily confidence that they can call on anyone for anything.

So, knowing Yankees Fall Fantasy Camp started tonight, Dad just about threw me into the car for the four-hour drive to Tampa. He said he will have all the support he needs and I should go and have a great week.

So, as mentally and physically unprepared as I’ve been for any of my seven camps, I arrived at the George M. Steinbrenner complex tonight for the opening festivities trying to rationalize how, at 62, I can handle four days of doubleheaders and over 70 innings of baseball when my body feels stiff and my mind is elsewhere.

Bucky Dent makes it perfectly clear what he expects my performance to be this week.

But like the book says—it is the most wonderful week of the year, and 73 of us are hours away from donning the pinstripes and living the dream as has-been’s and never-were’s.

At the opening banquet, we renewed acquaintances and met the ex-Yankees that will be coaching this week: Al Downing, Oscar Gamble, Homer Bush, Jeff Nelson, Fritz Peterson, Shane Spencer, Tanyon Sturtze, Roy White, Mickey Rivers, Gil Patterson, and Charlie Hayes.

Then there’s playoff hero Bucky Dent and slugger Marcus Thames, who must have rankled someone in the camp administrative suite as they drew me for the week. Personally, I’m pretty excited about my assignment with these two—they’re as personable as they come!

Those of us who have done this before know what’s ahead, and the first night is always the shortest one at the bar, with an early day one wake-up call for pictures.

For the 30 or so rookies in camp, what they don’t realize is physically, tonight is the best they’ll feel all week.

Our team, the Bombers, learned that we open tomorrow morning against the six-time defending champs—the Bambinos—that come back to camp with their roster intact. That might be reason enough to stay out all night.

By Roy Berger for PeterGreenberg.com