Houston, We are the Champions my friend
Not on My Career BINGO Card
There are some career experiences you can plan for. You work hard. You maybe get a bonus. You get promoted. You take on bigger projects. You meet interesting people. Maybe you get to travel somewhere cool. And then there are the things that make you look at your career and think:
Is this real life?
For me, attending Game 3 of the 2022 World Series was already firmly in that category.
Getting a World Series Championship ring? Yeah. Definitely didn't see that coming.
Let me explain….I work as the Marketing Director for the Fayetteville Woodpeckers, the Single-A Minor League Baseball affiliate of the Houston Astros.
The interesting thing about the Astros organization is that, unlike many MLB teams, they own their Minor League affiliates. So while my day-to-day work is entirely focused on the Woodpeckers in Fayetteville, North Carolina; technically, I work for the Houston Astros organization.
Which has led to some pretty cool moments.
But nothing quite like this.
When the Astros made it to the 2022 World Series, as a part of the organization, we were given the opportunity to go to Philadelphia for Game 3.
THE WORLD SERIES.
After 162 games in a season, I've spent my fair share of nights in ballparks. I have been watching more baseball than I ever thought I would in my life; and that’s saying something since growing up I can recall every summer watching my brother play all the way to the Little League and bonding with my dad catching a Braves or Yankees game before bed.
But the World Series?
Walking into that stadium knowing I wasn't just there as a baseball fan, but as someone who worked within one of the organizations playing on the biggest stage in baseball was surreal. There are thousands of people behind a professional sports organization whose names will never appear on a roster.
People selling tickets. People creating content. People maintaining fields. People building partnerships. People running community programs. And people, like me, marketing Single-A baseball games in Fayetteville, North Carolina. All of those jobs are very far away from throwing a pitch in the World Series. But they're still part of the organization. So I went to Philadelphia, bringing my mom (sorry dad, I wish you had been feeling well enough to go too!) We watched Game 3 (and, for the record, we lost….badly….that night. Five home runs. Zero runs for us.) We flew all the way to Philadelphia to watch the Astros get shut out 7–0. You're welcome, Phillies fans.
Thankfully, that was not how the story ended. A few days later, we gathered in our players’ locker room to watch the Astros win Game 6 and officially become the 2022 World Series Champions!
And honestly, I thought that was the end of my little brush with World Series history. Very cool experience. Great career memory. Back to work in the off season, which means prepare for the upcoming season, except...apparently when your organization wins the World Series, there are rings involved.
And apparently...I GET ONE?!
I'm sorry. What?!
Yeah. The shock was really for me and my entire family as well. I genuinely assumed championship rings were for the players, coaches and people much, much closer to Major League Baseball than my little marketing office in Fayetteville.
Then someone asked for my ring size. Hold on…you mean a real one?! Not only was I receiving a Houston Astros 2022 World Series Championship ring, it was being made specifically for me. My name. My ring size. The whole shabang, diamonds, emeralds and all!
Y'all….I have a World Series Championship ring.
There is something hilariously surreal about that sentence. I have never hit a home run. I didn't throw a pitch. I didn't make a game-saving catch. I was more than 1,000 miles away marketing Minor League Baseball in Fayetteville while the guys on the field did the actual baseball-ing. But I was part of the organization. And I think that's what makes the ring mean more to me than simply being a ridiculously cool piece of jewelry.
Sports make the people on the field visible.
That's the point. But working in sports taught me just how many people it takes behind the scenes to create what fans eventually experience. I got to be one of those people. I got to contribute my little piece all the way from Fayetteville; a city that was actually where I was raised and grew up in. Now I get to carry a very shiny piece of that history with me. When I decided to build a career in marketing, there were a lot of things I imagined it might lead to. And I can tell you…a World Series Championship ring with my name on it was absolutely not on the BINGO card.
But I'll take it.
