When I tell people that I’m the assistant general manager of the Billings Mustangs, the first thing out of their mouths is, “That’s a cool job.”
The second thing they say is always the same question: “What exactly do you do?”
That’s tough to answer.
I really don’t know what I do until I arrive at Cobb Field each day. Take the final game of our opening homestand as an example. It’s June 25 and we just have to get through one 4:05 p.m. Sunday game with the Helena Brewers before the team leaves for a seven-game road trip to Missoula and Great Falls, Mont.
It’s about an hour before game time and I’m walking through the stands of Cobb Field with a used – albeit clean – pair of underwear in my hand. I have to find someone who can run out to Rimrock Mall (our local shopping center of choice) before it closes to find three new pair of the exactly same kind of underwear for an unnamed member of the team.
The underwear has been dubbed crucial for the road trip. With everyone trying to get ready for the game, no one on the Mustangs staff can go. So Clayton, the head of the Mustangs Fan Club, has agreed to make the unusual trip. I deliver him the underwear and send him to the mall. He makes it back to Cobb Field in about the third inning, new underwear in hand.
Problem solved.
So my job includes such things as getting underwear, supervising a game day staff of about 20 people, lining up national anthem singers, selling ads, stuffing current rosters in programs, on-field promotions like the Tee Box Chipping Contest, housing players, hanging fence signs, making sure the American flag flies properly in center field and a bunch of other things that I don’t even know about yet.
If that sounds tough, remember I’m the assistant general manager. My boss, Gary Roller, is the general manager and has to make all the tough decisions. He’s the boss. I’m more like the cruise director.
The close of our first homestand marked the end of fifteen straight long days that we were at the ballpark. Players arrived in Billings on June 16. Our preseason “Meet the Mustangs” banquet was the next day. The next two days the players spent most of their time on the field.
I basically have to be there before the players start coming in around noon because they always need something. I juggle problems with cell phone coverage and housing eight Spanish speaking players in lily-white Montana while trying to get ready for Opening Day on June 20, which comes whether you are ready or not. It’s a sixteen-hour day that starts at 8 a.m. and ends at midnight. But we won, 12-2, over the Great Falls White Sox and draw 3,083 fans, so it was a good day.
The Cincinnati Reds, our parent club, have done their best to take care of us, sending seven of their top 10 picks to the Magic City. Included is Drew Stubbs – a center fielder from the University of Texas who was selected eighth overall in the first round of the First-Year Player Draft of 2006. Stubbs hit .342 with 12 home runs, 58 RBI and 26 stolen bases with Texas this year.
While things look good on the field, my concerns are everything but.
I’ve already spent countless hours and bartered Mustangs tickets just to get working cell phones for pitching coach Doug Bair – a former major League reliever with two World Series rings (1981 St. Louis Cardinals, 1984 Detroit Tigers) – and third-baseman Jason Louwsma. Both came to Billings with “nationwide” cell plans that apparently didn’t include Montana as part of the nation.
The other main challenge is trying to find Spanish-speaking families to host our contingent of Latin players. Luckily, they all got housed. Basically, everyone in Billings who speaks fluent Spanish currently has a Mustang as a guest for the summer. All the while, I’m covered in sweat trying to make sure everyone is ready for our on-field promotions.
In the Pioneer League, our promotions are very understated. We try to, “Respect the Game,” as the Reds print on the backs of the workout wear they provide all of their minor league players. Our goal is to not do anything that disrupts the on-field action.
In other towns with minor league baseball, they all but put a five-year-old in the batter’s box while the visiting pitcher throws his warm-up pitches before an inning, but we have a conservative crowd and our manager is Rick Burleson. He was an All-Star shortstop for the Boston Red Sox in the 1970s, a very serious man who is “all about the game.” I would rather sandpaper a bobcat’s butt in a phone booth than interfere with Burleson’s rules on how baseball is supposed to be played.
To kickoff the home season, we only do two things on the field. There is the Bob Smith Lincoln Mercury Target Pitch Promotion and the Tee Box Chipping Contest.
The Bob Smith Target Pitch Promotion is ridiculously impossible. In the top of the fifth inning, I drive a contestant onto the field in a Bob Smith vehicle, usually a $45,000 2006 Lincoln Mark LT truck. The contestant must throw three consecutive pitches from the mound through a 12-inch hole in a board located at home plate. If they do that, they get $10,000 dollars. Last year, Mustangs reliever Robbie Wachman told me, “Greg Maddox couldn’t do that.” No one has ever won the money. Last year, two guys made it into the target once. They got a piece of Mustangs apparel. Suffice to say, it’s quite a big drop off from 10K to a $14 T-shirt.
If you are curious about how it works, we pay a promotional company based on how many attempts we make each season. The company insures the promotion, so it’s on the hook for the $10,000 if someone were to ever actually win.
This year, we added the Tee Box Chipping Contest. The Tee Box is a local golf store that sponsors the promotion and you get $5,000 if you can chip a golf ball from a mat placed on home plate 75 yards into a hula hoop in center field. The Tee Box Chipping Contest got off to a great start. My first two contestants both hit the ball about 75 yards. Golfer #1 pulled it about 25 feet to the left of the hula hoop while Golfer #2 just missed it some 10 feet to the right.
The second night didn’t go so well.
I had the public address announcer call two people to the office. The first guy showed up in what looked like pajama pants. The second guy wasn’t even there. His wife showed up and said she signed up herself and her husband. Since he was AWOL, I said she could do it. Then we went through the brutal process of talking a random stranger into attempting something she had signed up to do without knowing what to do in the first place.
“I don’t golf,” she said.
“Then why did you sign up?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Can you hit a golf ball 75 yards?” I said, frustrated.
“I don’t know,” she replied.
Anyway, she goes out there and hits the ball exactly 60 feet onto the pitcher’s mound, six inches short of the pitching rubber.
Pajama pants has a similar effort. He hits the golf ball foul, coming to rest just in front of the Mustangs’ dugout on the first-base line. Thankfully, the boys from the Tee Box were not on hand to see the promotion I sold them in the off-season.
Ultimately, we got through the first homestand. Once the Mustangs leave for seven road games, they’re in the hands of our clubhouse manager George Kimmet. As the “clubby,” we send him on the road with the team, which means we have time to catch up on everything else in our lives.
The Mustangs go 4-3 on the road and return to Billings on July 3 for a three-game homestand with the Missoula Osprey.
We got off to a bad start
At about 3 p.m. on July 3, Burleson pokes his head into the office just before batting practice. He’s in full uniform, fungo bat in hand, and asks me, “Why are we flying the American flag upside down?”
I look at the flag and mutter the name, “Gump,” the kid who hung the flag that day.
Gump is a former batboy we have hired to help out with getting the clubhouse and field ready for games. Kimmet dubbed him “Gump.” The teenager has yet to realize he has a Cobb Field nickname.
He soon found out.
Burleson spins and sees the flag-raising offender walking toward the office and belts out, “Gump!”
Gump doesn’t know he’s “Gump,” but he listens up.
“Gumpy, the bleeping flag is all bleeped up ” Burleson said. “The bleeping blue part is supposed to be on top.”
Gump rushed to the outfield and fixed the flag. It has to be perfect because the ZOOperstars! are coming to Billings on July 3. The ZOOperstars! are inflatable baseball characters that perform on-field antics and walk through the stands working the crowd. Their on-field stuff is scripted, but the fans love it. 
The big finale comes when Harry Canary walks up and down the bleachers spraying people with silly string.
Seems easy enough, but we have to provide at least two ushers to keep people from striking Harry Canary with mini-bats, beers and other things as he makes his way through the crowd. The kids who do it I can understand, the adults who swing at him are lost on me.
It’s just one of many tasks I’ll perform this season.
The next day is the Fourth of July game, which means two cans of peas gets you into the game for free. Downtown Exchange Club of Billings Food Drive Night is a longstanding tradition and two non-perishable food items lets you walk through the Cobb Field gates, gratis.
We drew a sellout crowd of 3,817 on Independence Day. Due to a national promotion, I had to instruct my ushers to throw Hershey’s Kissables – packets of candy-coated chocolate – at our largest gathering of this young season. The all-across-the-USA promotion meant we had to find two kids to lip sync the Kissables jingle while our ushers threw samples of the candy into the crowd.
It went well, with one exception.
This year, I hired one usher who will be unnamed but used to be a Division I NCAA javelin thrower. She didn’t want people to think she threw like a girl, so with each throw she hurled ten packets of Kissables at about 80 mph into the crowd. The packets in her upper hand flew deep into the crowd. The packets in her lower hand flew about ten feet into the faces of unsuspecting fans.
Apparently, people don’t love free chocolate kisses delivered like a fastball delivered from Mustangs closer Terrell Young. 
As I write this, the Mustangs are 12-6 with a 2.5 game league lead over the Great Falls White Sox in the Northern Division of the Pioneer League. We start a seven-game homestand this Monday, so I have more unknown projects to take care of.
You won’t be hearing from me for a while.
See you at Cobb Field,
Matt Bender
Assistant General Manager
Billings Mustangs Professional Baseball
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(All photos courtesy of Paul Hartman.)
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