With much fanfare earlier this month, infielder Paul Janish joined the Orioles directly from the birth of his third child, a healthy baby girl, in Houston. This past week, with the Orioles in Houston to play the Astros, always hung in his mind as one he looked forward to — the rare opportunity to spend some time with his growing family in the midst of a pretty hectic stretch in the veteran infielder's life.
How fortunate do you feel to have had the opportunity to come home three weeks after and spend a little family time given how quickly everything played out when you were summoned?
I would say it's extremely coincidental, and very fortunate. But the way it worked out was really very ideal because of the new baby. My family stayed here in town. Typically, during the season, they would come with me. I haven't gotten to see my older kids either, so it was very fortunate. I got to stay at home, sleep in my own bed and help out a little bit around the house with everything going on there. It's worked out pretty much as well as it could.
On Wednesday, you had one of your boys here for batting practice, too. How was that experience?
I had my oldest one in here. I brought him in. He likes to come in here and see the clubhouse, and he likes to go out to watch everyone take BP and all that. He gets a kick out of that. So he's old enough where he's kind of got the baseball bug, if you will. He gets pretty fired up about that stuff, so it was fun to have him do that. He was pretty juiced up about it. He probably won't stop talking about that for a while. He's 4 1/2. He'll be five in October. Like I said, he's old enough now to where he kind of gets a pretty good idea of what's going on and how everything works and that stuff. Like I said, he's got the bug so to speak. He was pretty juiced up.
Now that you've been on the roster for a few weeks, you're having to adjust to a new role. How difficult is that transition from being an everyday contributor in the minors to a bench player in the majors?
For me, it's something that I've had to do more than once in my career. At this point, being a little bit of an older guy relative to the industry, I wouldn't say it's ever easy or a seamless transition. But having a psychological idea of what to expect and what's going on, and the fact that it's going to be the way it's going to be, I think that helps out handling the situation in terms of trying to relax as much as you can, and not think, essentially. That's really all you can do. Worrying about everything is not really going to help the situation. So I think psychologically, understanding what to expect, I think is pretty important.
Does knowing a trip like this is looming make the adjustment any easier this time around?
You just isolate them, really. It really is what it is. I find that the best thing that works for me is to not expect or anticipate anything in particular, and just adjust to what's going on. For me personally, that's always been what I've tried to do.