Jobs in MLB, the pros and cons (a bit off topic I guess)

[nolanfan34]

Some good answers in this thread.

One of my best friends works in the front office of an MLB team. He started as an intern for the minor league affiliate in college, turned that into a full time job, and has worked his way up from there. If you don't mind the trade off of low pay for a while, you can certainly persevere your way into a good job.

He's now in management and has access to the baseball guys like someone mentioned earlier in the thread, even though he's on the ticketing/operations side right now. Down the road, is there a possibility that he could make the jump to the player personnel side? Perhaps. He's still pretty young.

The other tough part is that people just don't leave those jobs. That has made it challenging for him to move up. But at the end of the day his commute still involves going to the stadium each day, and that's pretty damn cool.

My advice would be to jump on it now before you establish a career elsewhere. My buddy's team had a job open up in media relations, which is pretty much what I've always wanted to do. I was qualified for it. But with a mortgage and career where it is right now, I just couldn't do a 25k-30k salary. If only the job had come along a bit earlier.

So, if you get the chance to do something, even if it's just part-time during the season, go for it, get your foot in the door.

[MicroBob]

[ QUOTE ]
Wow, thanks for all the replies. I happen to live right around the corner from the AA Mets team, maybe I should start going to some games and trying to get familiar with some of the people who work there that way. Even if it's near-impossible I can certainly try, I network very well at least so I have a shot.

[/ QUOTE ]


Scott Brown is still the GM of the team in Binghamton I'm pretty sure.
Not great friends or anything but I know him. He's a good guy.

During baseball season they are incredibly busy.
But if you want to try to talk with him during a road-trip or something there's chance he would give you some pointers (note - I'm not 100% certain Scott Brown is still there).

You could just try to meet some of the interns or something and ask how they got started in it.
They would mention the baseball winter-meetings of course.


I spent one summer doing radio for the team in Elmira, NY.
They have one of the summer-college wood-bat leagues in that ballpark now and teams like that need staffing too.

[MicroBob]

[ QUOTE ]
Some people get jobs in the Northwoods and other similar leagues at the baseball winter meetings too I believe.

Getting a gig there can totally open doors for you.

The low-paying stuff you would be doing there would be pretty identical to what you would do in the regular minor-leagues.


More importantly, it's a resume builder.
You show up the next year applying for internships having actually already done it.

Lots of intern-applicants have 1 or 2 years of experience already and are clearly ahead of your everyday-college-kid or grad who MAYBE spent a little time in his school's sports-administration office.


One guy I know who is a GM in the Florida State League started as an intern with us in Vero Beach, then got a job GM'ing in one of the summer-college leagues (think it was in NC, but it might have been the Northwoods League), and then was able to land a job as a GM back in the 'regular' minors.


If this guy also knows people in the minors and his recommendation carries weight for the future then it's definitely an awesome opportunity for you.
I'm guessing some of his former GM's there went on to get bigger gigs with bigger teams.
He recommends you after your awesome performance with him all summer and introduces you to some guy with the Durham Bulls or Buffalo Bison who used to work for him...and you're off and running.


It's May though. This is pretty last minute to try to get something going for this summer. If you're going to try to do this for this season you probably should act quickly.

[/ QUOTE ]


Ha ha ha.

This was my 25,000th post and I didn't even realize it.

[kyleb]

Bob,

I'm definitely going to go to that Minor League job fair - I've looked into it quite a bit, but I'm certainly a few years away from being able to actually bring a realistic resume.

[MicroBob]

How many years do you need?

Lots of 21 or 22 year-olds are at those things.

I guess what you're getting into is more something I'm not as familiar with.
The job-fair is mostly minor-league jobs selling tickets and stuff. It gets you in the door though.
you can continue to build your resume on the stuff while there if you should be fortunate enough to land something.

If you've done ANYTHING in sports and have a good personality and are interested in working for peanuts you will have a shot at impressing some people just with who you are and land a coveted gig in Ogden, UT or Peoria, IL or Visalia, CA.

In the very least, going to the job-fair if only to get turned-down by 5 different teams will still give you an idea of what it's like.

I really suck at networking because sometimes I get too damn nervous when I meet new people.
And even I did okay at these things (I like to think it's because I actually have some talent).

When I was half-looking around to see what was open in Nashville in 2003 and in New Orleans in 2004 I was so much older than the job-fair people it was ridiculous.

Heh, my first baseball winter meetings was Louisville in 1992. I'm old.

I interviewed for a position in Charleston, WV at 3am or something (his other interviewees were running super-long. radio people like to talk).


BTW - I was pushing really hard for that AA gig in Binghamton in 2003 with Scott Brown. But there was already a pretty well-known announcer who he was friends with who was interested in it. Once he decided he wanted it they didn't even need to bother interviewing anyone else.
I might have actually had a shot at it otherwise though.


If I ever got really going on this poker thing and actually stopped losing money (in other words, had a really good year or two and didn't really care about taking some gig that pays $2k/mth or less) I might try to get back into radio part-time.

It's just too much fun. And I'm a better announcer I think than I am a poker-player.
Didn't really miss it too badly once I left though which kind of surprised me since I got pretty used to traveling and practicaly living at the ballpark.

So don't be surprised if I make it to the meetings either this December or next and start shopping around with all the little kiddies again.

There are some teams in the Florida State League who don't do radio at all and I could just go down there and set up internet-webcasts of the games myself and see if I could sell any advertising for them.
I've already thought out a lot of ways to pull off something like this and looked up people I know to make sure they're still in the same place.

Perhaps I'll be broadcasting the Tampa Yankees vs. Sarasota Reds at this time next year or the year following.

[Boris]

Kyle - I understand your wanting to get the JD/MBA if you want to be an agent. But, IMO, if you want to go the route of being and great talent evaluator and building a a contending team within a budget constraint, you are better off with an advanced Econ or Stats degree. The MBA type stuff you can basically teach yourself. Not true for the analytical stuff unless you are exceptionally gifted.

[MicroBob]

Guy that I used to work for who evaluates talent and works for the Reds used to be an intern and later a GM in minor-league baseball.

He got his masters in sports-administration from Ohio University (the one in Athens, OH...not Ohio State....O.U. has an outstanding program).

He went from selling $2 tickets and making sure there was enough mustard for the hot-dogs to doing talent evaluation at the big-league level.
So it's kind of possible that route too.

But he had other advantages such as having played minor-league ball up to the AA level (a pitch hit him in the eye ending his career) so he knew some people. He's also an awesome networker.


For Kyleb - if you want to learn more about how this stuff works you could conceiveably try going to an affiliated minor-league game early and try meeting some of the scouts or something and asking about it.

Lots of the Asst-GM's or directors of scouting etc started off just as regular old scouts.

[camerondiggs]

Friend of mine used to work for the Phillies in the sales and marketting departments (supposedly was a way to move up quickly with the club) Said it was the most mundane and boring job he ever had. To top it off they made him pay for parking at the Vet when they required him to work during home games. Some cool stories but overall a lousy experience

[kyleb]

[ QUOTE ]
Kyle - I understand your wanting to get the JD/MBA if you want to be an agent. But, IMO, if you want to go the route of being and great talent evaluator and building a a contending team within a budget constraint, you are better off with an advanced Econ or Stats degree. The MBA type stuff you can basically teach yourself. Not true for the analytical stuff unless you are exceptionally gifted.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, I should have clarified - I might be interested in becoming a player agent as well, which is the reason I would go MBA/JD.

If I was thinking about taking over a front office on the managerial side, I would almost certainly look at an MS-Econ degree, since there's basically no way I could learn that on my own (I'm not exceptionally gifted).

[kyleb]

Bob,

I should probably go to a few AquaSox games up here in Seattle. We're lucky to have two minor league affiliates (AA and AAA - Everett/Tacoma) within 30 minutes of the downtown area.