In honor of husband having a work a quarter of the season in ONE month, I am going to share our baseball journey. AND yes, you read that right. In JULY, the Peoria Chiefs play a quarter of their season at HOME. I will probably not see my husband much in July. With my early morning shift at my full time job, and he works 8am – about an hour an half after the game. I’m already asleep when he gets home.
We actually met while working for the Iowa Energy (now Iowa Wolves) which is a NBA D-League team (now G-League). He was working in sales, and I was a sales intern. It was a pretty fun job, but at the time no one wanted to come to a game. The affiliate was the Phoenix Suns, remind you we were both in Des Moines, Iowa. There are not a lot of Sun fans in Iowa. Or basketball fans to be honest unless it’s college.
Oklahoma City Redhawks (now Dodgers)
When he worked with the OKC Redhawks, the team was just purchased by Mandalay Baseball. They owned 5 other baseball teams. I honestly don’t remember because that was like 10 years ago, and I think now they only own the Dodgers. OKC was a lot of fun because practically the whole staff was new. We still keep in touch with a few of them, and some are still there. When he got there, they had just became an Astros affiliate after being a Rangers affiliate forever. People were not happy at all because the Astros were bad. No one in OKC liked them.
Arizona State Athletics
Then we moved to Tempe, Arizona. There are a lot of mixed feelings when I think about our time in Arizona. When we first moved there, we were both working in sports. I was working for the Phoenix Coyotes as a group sales executive. I haven’t really talked about it but it wasn’t a good environment. It’s hard to explain exactly what went wrong but it was two sided. After this job, I stopped working in sports. I don’t want to sound dramatic but it really was that traumatizing for me to just walk away. Gary worked almost all sports at ASU. I think he enjoyed it, but I know he really missed baseball.
Arizona is also a place I can’t wait to go back to because I don’t think we explored it to it’s full potential. There are a few places that I still want to go to like the Grand Canyon and Sedona. Since leaving Arizona, we started to enjoy hiking so I think we need to go back and hike.
West Virginia Power
To be completely HONEST with this one, I was really excited to move here at first. It was a place I had never been and also never thought I would live. So I was excited to see what WV had to offer, and Gary got a job as the Director of Tickets. We were here for about 3 years. I got a job fairly quickly which was great. I thought I was making friends but that went south really quick. Being in WV and explaining why we just moved to WV THEN explaining what my husband does had a lot of people thinking that weren’t going to be there long. I can’t blame them to a certain degree. (After we had left WV, I did get an Facebook message from a few the girls saying they could and should have done more. It was nice to receive that message.)
West Virginia was tough because we were different. They didn’t like different. Here I bounced around from job to job for various reasons. It was tough to get a job because people were scared to hire me. They didn’t want to train me then me leave for the next time. The thing I don’t get though is they would hire coal miners wives when the miners were on strike or laid off for an amount of time. Then when they went back to work, the wives quit. I don’t get what’s the difference.
When we tell people the places we have been, everyone asks what was it like it WV? We tell I don’t know. We were never in town. If the team wasn’t home, we were out of state. That was the great thing about Charleston. It’s close to so many things. We saw some many baseball teams. I think this is where we set our record for most games in a day. (4. Mind you we didn’t stay for the whole game)
**Disclaimer: I am missing a team between WV and Everett but we were only there for a season. Plus, I don’t have anything say so I won’t say anything at all.
Everett Aquasox
Everett was the short season A team for the Seattle Marines. Now they are low A for the Mariners. Our time in Washington was a lot of fun. We got to explore a lot here. It’s probably the most we explored of one place. I think it’s also the place where we had a good community of friends.
California
This is where we lived the longest out of any of the places, but I think it’s only by a few months. I loved California for the most part minus how expensive everything is. Also I feel like I should add we lived here during the beginning of COVID. Our first 18 months was COMPLETELY different to our last 18 months. I will also say we should have taken a long week or weekend break after the second season. If we didn’t that I don’t know if we would have moved to Modesto.
Modesto Nuts
I honestly don’t know where to start. I almost feel like I should skip them one like the other team. If we didn’t move here or him working with the team I don’t know if we would have met some of the most of amazing people I know. The one thing that I LOVE about the Nuts ballpark is that it’s just a ballpark. There isn’t anything else to do there except watch baseball. I LOVE that as a baseball fan. Downside is that there is no shade either.
Stockton Ports
This one will always hurt my heart for my husband. Stockton was suppose to hold the All-Star Game the year COVID happened. Then at the end of the season, there was a new CBA which eliminated the ASG. I knew that was something he always wanted to host and be part of. I didn’t go to a lot of games in Stockton because we lived 30 minutes south in Modesto. My favorite things about this ballpark is you can walk all the way around. One thing I wanted to do but never got to do was kayak outside the right field wall. Create Stockton’s version of McCovie Cove. (Not that anyone could hit a ball that far, but I still think it would have been fun.)
Peoria Chiefs
This is the team he is with currently. We love being in Peoria and back in the midwest. I have an amazing job that I love so much. I still don’t go to a lot of games because I work a lot of weekends. Plus I don’t want to pay for parking. We have only been here 10 months, but we are both so much happier. We even bought a house which is something I wasn’t expecting so soon, but glad we did.
Future
My future would be living in an RV and traveling more. Gary says we are going to do that when we retire. I want to do it NOW. The plans now are to enjoy Peoria as much as we can and love our house. Explore more of Illinois and make the most of this experience.
When we move to each city we try to make the best of it. We try to think being big picture, and that we needed to learn something from this experience. With being in so many different places, we have gotten to experience and travel. Each team we try to do as much traveling because we go with the mindset when are we going to be back.
Some places have been more enjoyable than others, but that’s part of the journey and life.
