A different kind of breakfast club

Frequent Appleton visitor Roger Hansen is the focus of this Everett Herald article. It's about somewhere that Mariner minor leaguers don't want to be.

Roger Hansen's "Breakfast Club" commences at 6 a.m. every day at the Seattle Mariners' training complex. If you're 15 minutes early, then you're 15 minutes late. And that doesn't mean breakfast will be cold.

Contrary to what some ill-informed young ballplayer might believe, this isn't an opportunity to dine with Hansen, the Mariners' hard-nosed minor league catching coordinator from Stanwood.

The Breakfast Club is the early morning punishment they must serve ffor any number of transgressions. Show up late to the clubhouse, don't run hard to first base, break the dress code, do something wrong at the hotel, etc., and you're assigned to an hour with Hansen before the sun rises over Peoria.

Ex-Rattler Ryan Feierabend has some rules not to break and his experience with the club.

"We had to wear collared shirts and sandals weren't allowed in the clubhouse, and there were guys who broke those rules," Feierabend said. "Mine was because I didn't lift one day. The following morning, I had to run eight laps at 6 o'clock while Roger watched. Never again after that."

How does it work?

Hansen usually is in the golf cart by 5:30, and the players assigned to that day's Breakfast Club will show up shortly after.

"I'll ask them what they did wrong and they'll tell me," he said. "I'll say, 'OK, we're not going to play that B.S. any more.' I'll talk to them a little bit about it and let them know how many days they have to be here, and then I'll start running them. I never tell them how much they're going to run. I just tell them, 'Stretch and start running, and I'll let you know when to stop.'"

Hansen rarely takes his eyes off the field, even when the players run out of sight in the darkness.

"They all think that I don't know how many laps they run, but I do," he said. "The key is that you never tell them how many they're running. You sit there and make them think 'That (bleeping bleep) is sitting up there drinking coffee. How does he know how many laps I'm running?'"

The rules are: You run until you can't run. If you can't run, you walk. If you can't walk, you crawl."

You should go and read the whole thing. But, here is the end of one day's club.

As the cloudless sky turned from black to orange, Hansen called out to the two Breakfast Club participants from his golf cart.

Having learned their lessons one stride at a time for much of the past hour, they trudged up the walkway toward the clubhouse."You're done," Hansen told the first player, who made brief eye contact before walking into the clubhouse. "I don't want to see you here again."

The second player, his head down, followed close behind.

"You're done," he told the player, who didn't look up. "And I'll see you back here tomorrow."