My First Job

My family moved to Schaumburg in the summer of 1998. It went well from what I can tell; I got used to school and made friends pretty quickly. Our first winter, being a new resident of the town, I asked my dad a question.

“Why are teams always from Chicago? Why doesn’t Schaumburg get one?”

(I obviously didn’t understand the concept of big cities).

“Well, Buddy, next baseball season there WILL be a team here. I heard they want to call them the Flyers”.

Sure enough, the Schaumburg Flyers organization began in May of 1999. By then I had forgot about the question I had asked my dad the previous winter, and completely forgot about the team until we went to our first game on August 27, 2000. Many more games followed, and I can remember very small distinct details; the pinstriped uniforms, the way the animation board looked, a few of my favorite players names, and the Alexian Field marquee.

For the next few years, the team just existed. Of course I went to a few games, but I wasn’t a big fan or obsessed. A family friend had a job at the stadium and gave my dad and I tickets from time to time, which is how we got into most of the games we went to. He was just three years older than me, so when I got to be 13, I wrote an email to management to inquire about the same position. I was told to come in for a meeting before the season started. When I got there, I was pleasantly surprised I had already got the job.

I was a Bat Boy.

Yea, it’s not the most flattering picture, but it was one of the only ones I had.

I thought it was the coolest job in the world. Did anyone else in 7^th grade get a paycheck? No! Did anyone get PAID to watch a professional baseball game? NO! Even thought it was a decent amount of hard work for a kid, most of the time I really enjoyed it.

The Bat Boy headquarters was the laundry room in the Flyers clubhouse. That’s where we kept the coolers, our uniforms, towels, cups, or anything else we needed. Our boss was the clubhouse manager, and directed us if he needed any help getting the players what they needed.

A typical day would have me get to the park 2 hours before the game started. I would fill water coolers and put them in the dugouts, along with towels, some Double Bubble, and sunflower seeds. Most days, I got finished in 45 minutes. I think the best part of my job was getting to hang out in the dugout for that next hour. I grabbed a cup of Gatorade (that I mixed from the powder myself), a bag of seeds, and took a seat on the dugout bench. Most times, players would pass by and say Hello while in from BP, and critique my Gatorade before heading down the tunnel.

During the game, who would have guessed, I grabbed bats and brought them back to the respective dugout. When I was working the home side, I also had the responsibility of getting game balls to the home plate umpire. He would signal to me how many he needed, and I would run out to him after the next out. (Please, don’t ever ask minor league Bat Boys for balls. It’s the cardinal sin to give one away. The team needs to watch their budget. A dozen balls costs close to $80). A lot of the umps were nice, and liked a little conversation as well. Visiting players liked to chat me up when I was on their side, too. They wanted to know how my summer was, how I like the job, and told me how their road trip was going.

By my last year as a Bat Boy, I felt like I knew everything about the team. I got to walk around underneath the stands, hang out with players, and got to experience baseball in a way that many others don’t. When I say I want to “become closer with the game” through this blog, I’m really looking for that feeling again; knowing I have a connection that very few have.

Anyway, I held the job for 4 years. There were some good moments (making it the Northern League Championship series in 2004) and some not so great ones ( like being the guinea pig for MSN’s “FanClub manager” in 2006, which I think ultimately led to the demise of the on field product).  Once I was finally 16, I was able to take an usher/fan relations job. The pay was great, but it wasn’t that much fun. Most of my days were spent on the right field lawn section. The last weekend of the season, I ran the speed pitch inflatable, complete with functioning radar gun. That was the best part of the job for the whole summer.

For some bogus reason about wanting older people (nothing short of a 65 year old retiree would do) to work the fan relations jobs, I wasn’t offered a position in 2009. That was the end of my relationship with the Flyers, after  5 seasons.

Fast forward to my 8 AM biology class in the Spring of 2011. I was checking my email before class started and saw my dad had sent me an article, titled “Flyers Evicted, May forfeit franchise”. It turns out there were lots taxes that the owner wasn’t paying, most notably close to $1 million for rent on the stadium, I was in shock. I knew the owner was cheap and a bad businessman, but I never knew it was THIS bad. I laughed at first, because he really did deserve it. But then I started thinking about what could really happen. The team had been in Schaumburg almost as long as I was. Baseball operations were officially shut down on March 6^th, after a plan for someone to purchase the team wasn’t cleared by the Village or the court. The Flyers were gone forever.

I was a little heartbroken, to be honest. Some say it was just a crappy minor league team, but it meant more to me. I spent many hours as an employee and fan there. The team represented Schaumburg, and was always there, playing their games even if nobody came out and watched.  Unknowingly, I attended my final Flyers game on June 22, 2010.

To Be Continued….