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 !!
