Ibanez: Hurricane Wilma 'awesome'

10/31/2005
Raul Ibanez spent much of Monday returning phone calls that had gone unanswered for more than a week.
"Sorry it took so long to get back to you," the Mariners outfielder/designated hitter said, "but this is the first day we've had phone service since the hurricane."
Ibanez, calling from a cell phone while driving through the neighborhood ravaged by Hurricane Wilma the previous weekend, described the damage done to the area near his home in Miramar, Fla.
"The neighborhood is trashed," he said. "I'm driving down a street and there about a dozen trees -- big trees -- that had to be cut in half. A lot of old trees are uprooted and there are concrete power poles that are 30- to 40-feet high broken in half."
Electricity returned to the area Saturday and schools reopen Tuesday.
Ibanez, a Florida resident most of his life, said he never has seen anything like this.
"It's incredible. I remember Hurricane David in 1977, but I was just a kid," he said. "That was a bad storm. This one was much worse."
Ibanez said he, his pregnant wife, Teryvette, and their two children remained in their house during the hurricane "and hoped the shutters did what they are designed to do -- withstand winds up to 150 miles per hour."
The house received some structural damage and two cars "got beat up pretty good," but everyone made it through the hurricane unscathed.
Wilma definitely made her presence felt.
"You know it's coming, and all you can do it sit there and bear it," Ibanez said. "We started feeling the wind gusts about 12 hours before the storm. The actual pounding started about 5:30 in the morning and lasted until about 1 or 2 in the afternoon.
"The eye of the storm passed right over us, and it was really surreal," he added. "All of a sudden it gets real calm for awhile, and you start getting pounded by the wind again and feel the house shake. It was a pretty awesome thing to be a part of, actually."
Having one house damaged is bad enough. Ibanez suffered a double-whammy.
"We had just bought another place and were in the process of putting this one up for sale," he said. "Both houses got hit, but the second one, in Miami, is a lot better off. A tree fell in the pool, but that has been cleaned up. We'll be moved in by Thanksgiving."
Some three months later, the third Ibanez child will be born.
"It's a girl, but we haven't picked a name yet," he said. "It won't be Wilma."
As for the phone call he was returning, Ibanez gave his full support to the hiring of batting coach Jeff Pentland, his hitting coach in Kansas City in 2002 when he batted .294, hit 24 home runs and drove in a career-best 103 runs.
Ibanez was one of the Mariners' top hitters last season, batting .280 with 20 home runs and 89 RBIs.
"I am fired up about that," he said. "Jeff is a good hitting coach. He's a highly intelligent man and thinks outside the box, which I like, suggesting a lot of stuff that might seem unorthodox but works."
"He's big on situational hitting and has some excellent ideas on how to execute. He doesn't just tell you to do it, but he tells you how to do it. He's awesome and his two best qualities are his work ethic and honesty."

Source: http://seattle.mariners.mlb.com/