I don't ever do this.... but since I'm in Vegas for the first weekend of the NFL season it seemed like an opportune moment to share.

People frequently ask me, 'Ray, how did you get where you are today?' My response is usually something like - I'm the Oracle. Truthfully though, it was a long and winding path to get where I'm at today. There were hour upon hour, week upon week, or work. Long hours, little pay, and determination. Part of the journey included a daliance with professional baseball. What follows is something I wrote back in 2005. I haven't changed the wording at all, so it's a little rough realize I wrote it a ways ago before I got really good at this stuff, or something like that. 

Hope you enjoy.

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How to Get a Job in Major League Baseball
by
Ray Flowers
 
If you’re used to reading my work, this will be a noticeable departure in that it will not deal in any way with any sort of statistical analysis. What this article will deal with is my plight to find work at the major league level. I mean come one, after we realize that we have an impossible time trying to hit a 90 MPH fastball that is backed up by a 80 MPH change-up, we turn our thoughts to the only reasonable way for us to be directly involved with the game; we try to get a job in the front office. While I haven’t been able to secure my dream job just yet (GM of the Giants), it won’t stop me from continuing to try.
 
 
EDUCATION
 
I went to college, and after 16, I mean six years, I finally graduated with my BA. I was ready to take on the world, but before I did that I decided to do something I would have never thought possible for me, I re-upped for more school. I decided to get my MA, and when I received that degree two years later, I knew that the world would soon bow at the feet of my shinny diploma…boy was I wrong. Sure I could have gotten a fair amount of jobs with my educational background, but I had my eyes on the prize of a professional baseball job. So I went about trying to make that dream a reality.
 
 
STRIKE ONE
 
So where do you start? On the Internet of course (isn’t that were the world goes?) so I went to the Giants and A’s official team websites because I live in the Bay Area. Of course they had little in the way of anything remotely interesting to me with jobs I wouldn’t want, security guard, to jobs I wasn’t qualified for (techno-whiz to run the stadium scoreboards). So I kept waiting for something that would better utilize my skills as well as something that would offer me the advantage of moving up the corporate ladder to the front office.
 
As the weeks passed, nothing materialized, so I decided to apply for any position that was available within each organization (such as Luxury Box attendant). Apparently having multiple college degrees weren’t good enough as I received the polite ‘we have found someone more qualified to fill the position but thank you for your interest.’ I guess years of customer service coupled with two college degrees didn’t qualify me…should I go back to school to get my Ph.D.?
 
I then thought I would start at the bottom, heck I wasn’t against busting my hump to get where I wanted, so I tried to apply for internships. Problem with that is that almost all of those positions were staffed by college students an it proved to be next to impossible to find any position that I “qualified” for since I had already graduated.  And then one night as I was preparing to drown my sorrows in a bottle of Jack, I checked my SABR mail and found something that caused me to put the bottle down and refocus.
 
 
STRIKE TWO
 
SABR, the Society for American Baseball Research (www.sabr.org), is a group of something like 7,000 baseball enthusiasts/historians/statisticians who attempt to look at the game of baseball in a very analytical way. One of the tools used by members to communicate with one another is a nightly email that is sent to all who have registered. Upon reading that list one night my hopes were buoyed when I read of a job opening with MLB. Turns out the Giants an A’s were looking for a kind of roving scorekeeper to help fill in the dates where their main scorekeepers weren’t available. Sure the pay was poor, but it was a doorway into the game I had always loved so I leapt in with unbridled enthusiasm.
 
After applying I was sent a “test” which consisted of 30 questions dealing with how to score a baseball game. I decided to get right on it and sent it back within 2 hours (I wanted whoever was going to read it to know that I had done the work myself and not spent hours researching answers on the Net). In fact, the gentleman who I ended up speaking with was really impressed in that I only missed one question but he was even more impressed with the speed with which I returned the test. I had finally made some headway.
 
After an initial email interview I was left to wait. About a week later I was contacted to set up a 30-minute interview with the gentleman who was in charge of hiring new scorekeepers. This was no watch TV and let us know what you think job by the way, this position was the official MLB scorekeeper who’s statistical information would have been sent to STATS, INC an used for such things as MLB yearbooks and encyclopedias. I was pumped. The phone interview went very well with the right mix of professional knowledge, an enthusiastic expression of my love of the game and sprinkled in some light-hearted humor. I felt very confident with the process. At the end of the interview I was told that I was one of four finalists for the position (out of 3,000 applicants). I was going to have to sleep with my rabbits foot until I heard the results.
 
A week later I received an email informing me that I wasn’t chosen because I ‘didn’t have experience’ as a scorekeeper. The gentleman from MLB also mentioned how he knew this was a bit of a conundrum since I couldn’t get the experience unless someone gave me the chance to gain that experience, but in the end they went with another guy who had done some work for MLB before. He offered one piece of advice to me however, had I ever thought about trying my luck with minor league baseball?
 
 
STRIKE THREE
 
So I went searching for positions within the minor league baseball community. I actually just started emailing my resume to all the teams in California whether or not they actually had any openings. And then there was silence…until about 3 weeks later when I was contacted by a team in California who had an opening as seasons ticket manager. So I shaved, actually put on a tie that wasn’t a clip on and prepared for my interview. To my slight surprise, everything went extremely well and I got the job.
 
You know the idea that you have in your head of working with a minor league team that has a dilapidated park with no amenities? Well, those places still exist let me tell you. My office was basically a concrete bunker with only the ticket window to offer light. Oh, and there was also the added benefit of being able to get a fresh glass of water any time it rained…cause the roof leaked on directly on my desk! All in all though the people were very friendly and I felt like this was good chance for me to make a name for myself. But then reality set in.
 
First off the pay was pretty pathetic, but I could eat government cheese if I had to, I mean this was my dream right? The biggest problem was actually the amount of time that was necessary for the position. Baseball plays almost everyday, so the front office personnel were asked to work 6 days a week. If that wasn’t daunting enough, the hours were, well, let’s say they were about as long as someone’s legs would be after being stretched on the rack during the Crusades in Europe. If you counted drive time, a “slow” week was about 68 hours, an a long one was an utterly back-breaking 88 hours! I had just bought a new home, one that was conveniently about as far as possible from where I needed to go, so moving again wasn’t an option. Bottom line, I had to leave my position there because the responsibilities in my life just wouldn’t let me work 80 hours a week. 65-70 would have been doable but 80 was just crippling. So I was forced to go and find my bottle of Jack once again.
 
 
STRIKE FOUR???
 
So I sit here at my computer screen banging out yet another article on the game that I love almost as much as life. For now I bide my time writing, watching and waiting for my call-up to the “Show”. I’ll get there one day, in a capacity to be determined at some future time. So if you know anyone in the Giants or A’s organizations put a good word in for me and let them know that I don’t mind low pay, hell I don’t even mind working underground, just give me a job and let me show you what I can do…that’s all I ask.