Play Ball! Baseball’s opening day for small business entrepreneurs
I love baseball. You only have to glance at the photo on this blog to figure that out. That’s me in my Detroit Dodgers uniform, the amateur men’s hardball team that won the national championship for our age group & skill level in 2003 (I even have a championship ring!).
There’s no way I could let baseball’s opening day pass without highlighting all of the entrepreneurs that surround America’s Pastime.
Let’s start with the players themselves. These guys are solo entrepreneurs, marketing themselves everyday on the field. We tend to mostly think about the major league ballplayers but there are four times as many professional baseball players who are not in the majors and making it happen every day to try to keep their business (themselves) going & growing.
Even the owners are almost all extraordinarily successful entrepreneurs who have chosen to take some of the capital earned through their entrepreneurial success and invest in a ball team.
Vendors of food & beverage & parking in & around the stadiums are often small businesses. Restaurants & bars that cater to the fans before & after games are mostly small businesses. Many of the companies that provide athletic wear for fans & youngster ball teams are owned by entrepreneurs.
And these days, independent podcasts and websites are started by solo entrepreneurs, often part-time as a hobby that also brings in supplemental income.
The men’s baseball league that I play in, MSBL – Men’s Senior Baseball League, is itself a small business started by an entrepreneur on Long Island who was tired of playing softball. Now it’s a multi-national league with local franchises in towns all over the country & western hemisphere.
I’ve only touched on a few of the people who are chasing the American dream of entrepreneurship by using America’s Pastime as an avenue for that Start It Up! motivation. So even though it may seem that baseball is “big business” these days, it’s cool to remember that nothing can stop the passion and enthusiasm of the American entrepreneur.
Play Ball !!
April 3rd, 2006 at 4:18 pm
If you haven’t been to a big league or minor league game… Go! These people get marketing.
It’s more than a game… it’s a show.
I live near a minor league park and try to catch a game every once and a while. Each inning they have something different: a crazy game for fans, dancing mascots, t-shirt shooting bazookas, kereoke (sp?) contests, etc.
They don’t just throw out one pitch… they let all the kids with a birthday toss one and then let all the kids run the bases, at least once.
And, ya know Joel…
I’d love to play senior baseball, but I’m afraid I’d test positive for geritol.
Steeeeeee-rike!
Matt S.
April 3rd, 2006 at 4:31 pm
Oh yay…great post Joel!!
I hope we keep this post going all season long! Yankees fan here, but I try to get to a ML game in various cities I visit around the country. Cleveland is great!
Joel/Matt…the fans themselves are entrepreneurs marketing their own obsessiveness.
It was a fan who recenlty purchased an outdoor ad across the street from AT&T ballpark which says "Trade Bonds!"…
Bonds has to see that everyday he walks into the park.
April 3rd, 2006 at 7:50 pm
Kim - are you sure that that Giants fan isn’t just a bond trader trying to jumpstart the sagging bond markets??!! (:
Joel - after reading your post, it struck me that, in my childhood, Opening Day provided the perfect symbol of the entrepreneurial spirit. Growing up in Milwaukee, the eagerly awaited Opening Day meant the coming of spring and the end of the long winter — of course Opening Day was "snowed out" a couple of times. More importantly, it meant that anything was possible — this could be the year that we clawed our way out of the second division and fielded a contender.
Matt - I agree with you about the minors. To me, that’s where the real fun and spirit of baseball has been hiding for the last many years. Of course my Brewers went through 13 straight sub-.500 seasons which may have clouded my judgment.
April 4th, 2006 at 5:35 am
Michael–
I’m a Pittsburgh Pirates fan. I feel your pain.
Matt
April 4th, 2006 at 12:25 pm
Good one Michael!
I have to say, that while I am a big Yankee’s fan (no boos please).
Baseball is such a great metephor for the spirit of running a small business.
When I am at the statium, beyond the sheer joy of watching the players and the game itself, I feel a sense of exhilaration by just about everything around me…signage, vendors, smells…everything. It was at a baseball game that I came up with solarpowered soda machine invention….lol
Oddly, this is the same set of feelings I experience each day when I wake up to start working on The Pet Set.