Before You Read
First and foremost, I set out to write this blog to give me something productive to do in the offseason. I studied journalism in school and I started “Cold Coffee” to allow me an outlet to continue some of the writing and storytelling I used to do much more of. The life of a minor league front office member is unique and I hope whoever stumbles across this blog may find some interest in what I have to say.
Why "Cold Coffee"?
There’s an idiom in American sports that refers to a minor leaguer spending a short time at the major league level; e.g., he spent a cup of coffee with the Pirates before finishing the season with the Triple-A club. The idea behind the term is that the player was only with the big league club long enough to have a cup of coffee before being sent back down to the minors. As a front office employee for the Triple-A Indianapolis Indians, the phrase has percolated throughout my time there.
When I was a kid, much like many kids, my dream was to be a professional athlete. Catching long-thrown imaginary touchdowns in the backyard or hitting moonshot home runs off a tee over the road in front of my house growing up were all precursors to my sure career as a football or baseball player. As I got older, I wised up and discovered the odds. Disappointingly, I was not the 1 in 659 to make it as a pro baseball player nor was I the 1 in 4,233 to make the NFL draft. However, even though I wasn’t fortunate enough to extend my athletic career past high school, as a sports photographer and designer, I’m lucky to work alongside those who have.
This blog is a tribute to my younger self whose “cup of coffee” is still waiting for him in The Bigs. Like any pro athlete, I’ve worked hard at my craft and continue to do so to become the best professional I can be. I hope that I may be able to lend a hand to those following in similar footsteps. I hope you find me not in a way that is irredeemably selfish or conceded, but simply as a guy trying to better himself and perhaps offer a nougat of helpful information along the way. I may or may not lend any actionable advice in my subsequent articles, but know this: at the end of the day, I’m writing for me.
