ST. PETERSBURG, FL – There are numerous apps out there where you can play chess with someone – a real person, not AI – on your phone. And games can be fast-paced and intense, or can evolve over long stretches of time.
That’s the beauty of it.
And before games, Milwaukee Brewers first baseman Jake Bauers’ way of locking in, and blocking out the distractions, is with the help of one of these apps.
“I'm probably going to be sitting in the hot tub playing chess until about 30 minutes before the game,” Bauers said. “Throw my uniform on, go out there, and see what happens.”
That means in the afternoon hours of Monday, Oct. 26, someone else in the world, maybe from Newport Beach, California, maybe from New York City, was playing chess with the MVP of the NL Championship Series – and had no idea their opponent was getting ready for Game 3 of the World Series.
“Yeah, I've got a random username,” Bauers said. “I don't know who I'm playing; they surely don't know who they're playing.
“It's not like I'm any good! It's not something special. I make my fair share of mistakes. It's just keep my mind occupied, kill time, all that for sure.”
Bauers is having a full-circle moment anyway. He made his major-league debut here in June 2018, when he was called up by the Rays. Bauers made a nice defensive grab for an out in his first game and then he got a nice single for his first hit in that first series.
The road ahead for Bauers became tough, though, after that first year in Tampa Bay, which went 90-72.
He would end up playing for five teams before he landed with the Brewers in 2024. Then, in Milwaukee with a changing role, he contemplated retiring.
Instead, Bauers has constantly evolved as a person and that evolution helped him as a player.
“I used to put so much pressure on myself that it became almost unbearable,” Bauers said. “I used to want it so bad that I was just forcing it away from myself in a sense.”
But in his career, and in his three years in Milwaukee, he changed. He worked on his own personal narrative.
“I'm here to experience whatever comes at me,” he said, “and I'm going to make the most of it − good, bad, pretty, ugly, just irrelevant. I'm here to experience it all.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: If it’s 2 hours before Brewers game time, you could be playing chess with Jake Bauers
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