Saturday, August 16

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Hours before first pitch, as players drift in and out of the home clubhouse at Dodger Stadium, there are almost always a few people putting pen to paper, solving a crossword or sudoku, one of baseball's classic pregame pastimes. 

Such was the case one day earlier this summer, when a handful of Dodgers sat around a table poring over a puzzle. But they were a little livelier than one might expect from a group of people solving a crossword together. 

That's because it wasn't just any crossword. It wasn't one of the clubhouse staples from USA Today or the Los Angeles Times. This one was created by none other than Jack Dreyer, one of a small group of Dodgers players and personnel who do the crossword every day. 

"I just mentioned that I had done one before, and some of the guys were pretty responsive about wanting to try it," Dreyer said. "And so I brought it in, and they loved it."

There was some light ribbing -- a grammatical mistake here and there, a clue that was a little misleading -- but it was all feedback that Dreyer appreciated. More than anything, his teammates came away impressed.

So much so that they asked for another crossword, which Dreyer shared with MLB.com (the answers can be found below):

And the requests have kept coming. 

Part of MLB's Players' Weekend is about putting a spotlight on players' interests and passions off the field. Dreyer, in his own words, is "a bit of a nerd," and he hasn't been shy about bringing his hobbies into the clubhouse. Back in spring, it was Rubik's Cubes. Now it's crosswords. 

On the mound, Dreyer has become one of the Dodgers' most reliable relievers. Off it, the rookie left-hander stands out for his bright mind and easy self-assuredness. 

"Like in the public-school system, where people can either be held down by the lowest denominator or they can excel," said fellow reliever Blake Treinen, who often solves crosswords with Dreyer. "I think he broke out and excelled. He's a top-tier brain."

"Rookies or first-time guys with our team are usually shy," said clubbie/bat boy Javier Herrera, another crossword enthusiast. "But I guess he just was himself, and that's what separates him from other newcomers."

Dreyer created his first crossword puzzle four years ago, not long after he signed with the Dodgers as an undrafted free agent. It was August 2021, when restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic were relaxed but not gone altogether. Before Dreyer could report to the organization, he had to quarantine and test negative for the virus. 

One of the ways Dreyer passed the time was solving crossword puzzles. That sparked an idea.

"I was like, 'I'm here in this hotel by myself all day. I need to kill some time,'" he said. "'I'm gonna try to make one.'"

Dreyer was curious about what went into making crosswords, so he looked into the criteria used by the New York Times, including that all grids must have rotational symmetry and that all answers must be at least three letters long. He learned to build his grid around a theme, starting with the longer words and fitting the rest of the puzzle into place around them. 

All told, the first puzzle took Dreyer about six hours of focused work. 

It was a faster process to construct the second puzzle that he shared. Dreyer spent the duration of the team's flight from Milwaukee to San Francisco in July -- around four hours -- locked in on his iPad, his tool of choice to put together crosswords. This one, too, got plenty of praise from those who solved it.

"For sure more challenging than USA Today," Herrera said. "Again, I'm not an expert in crosswords, but it took me about 30 minutes to finish it, which is good for me, I guess. Pretty fast for me. But yeah, I would say the difficulty is pretty up there."

During Spring Training, before Dreyer had officially made his first big league roster, he expressed some surprise that Rubik's Cubes had become a means of bonding with some of his new teammates. The same has been true with crosswords.

For Dreyer, that speaks a lot to the people with whom he shares a clubhouse. 

"Typically, you wouldn't get such a positive response from something like crossword puzzles or Rubik's Cubes, but the guys on this team are very responsive to it, and they love it," Dreyer said. "So it's fun being able to bring new things and kind of bounce it off of them and see what they like and don't like."

To those around him, the dynamic speaks a lot to Dreyer and the assurance he seems to carry both on and off the field. 

"From a mental standpoint, he knows how to conquer the battles inside the ears, whereas most people take some years to figure it out," Treinen said. "So for him, I think that's why he's been able to maintain success. When he's out on the mound, he doesn't pay attention to the emotions of the situation. He pays attention to the data."

The Dodgers once led the NL West by nine games. In less than six weeks, they've fallen one game behind the rival Padres, who they'll play six times in the next 10 days, starting Friday night at Dodger Stadium. 

In recent history, the Padres have been the ones making up ground in the division. This series, at least, the roles will be reversed, with the Dodgers needing to win at least two of the three games to end the weekend with a share of first place in the NL West. 

On a related note, Major League Baseball released this year's postseason schedule earlier this week.

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