"I'm having a great time. It feels like I'm having as much fun as I possibly could," Biddle said recently as he sat in a Carpenter Complex locker room. "I hear that it's a struggle and a real grind, but to me it's just, 'Hey, I play baseball for a living.' That's phenomenal. That's the way I look at it."
As the lanky lefthander begins the journey he hopes will lead to Citizens Bank Park, he is on his own for really the first time. And he is gobbling it all up as fast as he consumes the clubhouse food and the breakfasts at Lenny's, where, thanks to an agreement between the famed Clearwater restaurant and the Phillies, he and his teammates can eat all the eggs, home fries, and Danish they want for $5.
"The Phillies feed us so much. It's like all-you-can-eat every single day, which is incredible," said Biddle, who, in his royal-blue shorts, red T-shirt, and knee-high red socks resembled a member of the French national soccer team. "I wake up each day about 6. At 6:30 or so, I eat. I get to the weight room about 7:10 and lift. Then at 8 I eat another breakfast because I'm really hungry."
Biddle's dietary fervor actually pleases the Phillies, who have asked him to add some weight to his 220-pound frame. He eats and lifts and practices and plays with his teammates, most of them former college players or Latin Americans. Some of them arrive at the complex on bikes. And in the evening, when there is no game and the sun is setting over the Gulf of Mexico, they walk back together to their La Quinta Inn home.
It hasn't entirely been a summer-camp experience for Biddle as he takes his first tiny, professional steps. For the first time, in his four brief rookie-league starts, the teenager from Mount Airy is learning what it's like to struggle.
