Pastime Identity

At the end of April, 2011, I was personally fired by Alex Anthopoulos.

I was in Lansing, Michigan, some 650 miles and 10 hours of driving away from family and friends back east, working as a video coordinator for the Lansing Lugnuts, the Toronto Blue Jays’ A-ball affiliate. One day, as the team prepared to board their bus for Indiana or West Michigan or some other far-off place to start their next road trip, then-manager Mike Redmond approached me, his face stern.

“You’ve got a call at the front office,” he said, coolly, his gaze fixed. Part of me had hoped this was going to be avoided. A few days earlier, I’d spoken with my area supervisor about some writing I’d done — self-published and on the side — about my experience thus far with the Lugnuts. Within a couple of the posts, I’d offered opinions on players I’d seen on the Lugnuts, often in praise but sometimes with concern. My supervisor suggested it was probably not a great idea to be doing that, and that I should remove the posts and, to be safe, probably the entire blog.

Nervously, I did just that, immediately. I hadn’t explicitly cleared that writing with anyone, but I eventually reassured myself after a few minutes that nobody would really care, in the end. I was just some low-level guy who gave some off-hand observations about players; I hadn’t spoken about who the club had wanted me to pay special attention to on other clubs or any other inside process. They’d probably understand that I was just excited about the job and eager to share my experience, so I figured the reprimand from my supervisor was probably the end of that episode.

A couple days passed, and I relaxed a bit more. I went about my job, this time keeping each part of the experience to myself. And then Redmond approached me.

I warily walked from the home clubhouse, up through the skeleton of Cooley Law School Stadium to the front office, where a call was on hold in the Lugnuts’ GM’s office. I was ushered in, the door shuttered indifferently behind me as I was left alone to take the call. I don’t think I need to tell you how perfectly calm and awesome I was feeling.

The then-Blue Jays General Manager was on the other end of the line, along with one of his top assistants, whom he announced was listening in on speaker. I don’t remember everything he said, nor do I remember how long the whole thing took, but because of my writing, I was being let go. I tried to plead my case, but there was no leniency. I was cut, right then and right there. Immediately severed.

My legs felt as though they had lost about half of their consistency, at once going gelatin and feeling as though they were disappearing from beneath me. How could I have been so preposterously dense, naive and careless? I was in a world that had no tolerance for things like that, where every shred of information is closely guarded and each slice of leverage exceedingly valuable when millions of dollars are ultimately at stake. Pure motives didn’t have a place here, and I was being dealt with accordingly.

I floated back down to the clubhouse. I shook the hands of hitting coach John Tamargo and pitching coach Vince Horsman, trying to hold it together amid the rushing flood of regret and guilt for feeling as though I let down an entire staff; an entire team. I packed up my locker, went back to my first-floor apartment just a stone’s throw from the stadium, packed up what little I’d brought west with me and headed for home, a full 10 hours ahead to think about what I’d done and what, if anything, could be left for me after this.

I was only 24, but I felt like this was it. I figured I’d never have a job in baseball again. This was tantamount to exposing trade secrets, even if it was incidental in the face of my enthusiasm; what club would overlook this? An unpaid internship in 2009 with an Independent League team, reinforced with working gruelingly long days for the minimum wage as a seasonal temp with Baseball Info Solutions in 2010, had been done to build toward something like this. I’d gone to the Winter Meetings in Orlando later in ‘10, armed with some experience and a mindset of working for a baseball club. I was going to be a lifer, damn it. Now, all of that foundation had gone from cement to sand in an instant, and all that was left was to wonder if I should try going back to my previous jobs at a cocoa powder processing plant or an automotive parts warehouse to try and build a career that way.

I spent a good chunk of that car ride back east feeling sorry for myself. Nothing punishes my psyche more than feeling as though I’ve been a letdown or disappointment, and I was returning home ignominiously. I avoided returning to the refinery and warehouse by working with my father, a home renovator, on one of his projects while I tried to find other work. It was in early June, through a fortunate set of circumstance and connection, that I landed an interview for an internship with MLB Properties, the official publishing arm of Major League Baseball, to do some writing and editing on league-sanctioned publications. I didn’t feel as though I deserved the opportunity based on karma, but I swallowed that impostor I felt swelling up within me out of sheer necessity; this was The Chance to get my train back on its tracks. That it happened so soon was nothing short of a small miracle, and I was willing to force down my sheepishness over April’s follies in order to make this work.

I started at the Commissioner’s Office on June 20, a day I’ll always remember as the day everything turned around. I felt important during my time there. Slowly, surely, I felt like I belonged. I had bylines in programs that were sold in stadiums during the League Championship Series and World Series in 2011. I spent time in clubhouses, talking with Major League players. My first pro interview was with Robinson Cano. I split time between Newark, NJ, and Staten Island, sleeping either on a fold-out bed in the middle of the dining room in my aunt’s home or in the childhood room of my then-girlfriend, commuting by New Jersey Transit trains or MTA buses and living out of a suitcase, all in the pursuit of rebuilding the life in baseball I thought I’d ruined.

I was able to extend my stay in the Commissioner’s Office by a couple weeks beyond what was originally planned, but that was all. In early November, my position was eliminated/wrapped up/concluded/whatever term you’d use for the expiration of an internship; it was the third straight year of finding myself unemployed by the late autumn months, the aligned circumstances of these seasonal jobs providing a feeling that was becoming my new normal: The days’ shortening and the sky’s approaching darkness accelerated in time with my own evaporating hopes for finding something more consistent, something to make me feel more settled within the baseball world.

I almost gave the pursuit up again in early 2012, nearly accepting a position at a Staples branch in Scranton, PA, to try and save a dead relationship, a four-year endeavor crushed under the weight of my inability to truly make something of myself. I returned home to my parents’ in southern New Jersey, adrift and rudderless, but at least in the company of my closest friends. I thought about the processing plant and the warehouse again.

By this point, it’d be fair to assume my run of good fortune had dried up. I’d had the privilege of being paid to watch and/or write about baseball over the better part of the three years leading up to February 2012. I should be grateful to have had that much time. And I was.

Then February 11th rolled up, and I got an email from someone I worked alongside at BIS back in 2010. We were two of the five seasonal workers who had proven our worth ahead of the pack and had been asked to work an additional two weeks, into the playoffs, copy editing pages of the Bill James Handbook for the following season. Ironically enough, I had recently been in touch with BIS about a potential return for the 2012 season, but this email was something else altogether.

One of my supervisors said he is looking for recommendations of guys to fill a role at MLBAM, so I wanted to see what your story was. I know you were at the Park Avenue office this past season but what are you up to now?

In case you’re interested, the position is called Streaming Media Assistant…

He went on to summarize the role, but had already sold me. I was asked to come in for an interview on the 14th, received an offer on the 17th and had my first shift on March 5th.

For three full seasons and 34 months, I worked as a 40-hour-per-week part-timer, trying to claw my way up the ranks in a baseball department that had steadily growing company as the portfolio of partners with BAM expanded. I was eventually promoted as a means to fill a void at the end of 2014, and I felt like I had accomplished what I had initially set out to do, even if I felt I was being rewarded for time served over merit. At the same time, I’d begun to want more, to accomplish more. My ambition had grown, and I wanted to see myself through to a new level and truly make good on this years-long pursuit of being a lifer.

My position grew exponentially more technical over the last two years; I knew a fair bit about computers from being around my father growing up (he started in tech before moving to houses), but grasped very little about programming and code and the deeper proprietary functions of BAM’s operations, but I taught myself what I could. I always kept up as best I could and, when I felt steady enough, looked to learn and do more.

Today, though, that journey comes to a voluntary end. I am leaving BAM for a job in healthcare tech, a field removed entirely from sports and entertainment, a field within which I am excited to grow and learn anew.

For a long time, I thought baseball was who I was. I thought working for baseball was the only way I could ever be fulfilled. If that ever was true, it is certainly not true now. It’s what I’ve done for the greater portion of the last seven years, but it is not who I am or what I will be. No one thing has to define me — or anyone, really — even if you’ve spent nearly one-quarter of your life to-date in pursuit of that one thing. Truthfully, leaving this part doesn’t mean the death of everything related to baseball within me; in fact, I can even imagine this move helping to revitalize my baseball writing, a part of me that predates this entire story.

I’m thankful for what I had and what I was able to do and see. For the people I met. For those who helped me along the way. The company won’t skip a beat without me, but it’ll hold a special place in my mind all the same. For a change, a chapter is ending on my own terms, and while baseball will not comprise my entire identity after all, it will always be a key component, just the same.

I’m outta here.