When Pat Sauer – I refuse to call him by his New York nom de plume of Patrick – went looking for a baseball writer for his new website, the choice was clear. 
He was offering no money and knows one guy in professional baseball who has a writing background.
I’m that guy.
Pat and I are so close that he once vomited in his hand and threw it on my shoes after “finding” some money on the bar and ordering a dozen shots during a 1992 New Year’s Eve party in Billings, Mont. Pat and I attended Billings Central Catholic High School together and have remained friends even after he jacked up my shoes and left me in Montana for the lights of the big city. But I remain in Pat’s hometown, currently serving as the assistant general manager of the Billings Mustangs Professional Baseball Club, the advanced rookie affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds.
They’ve been playing professional baseball in Billings on the hallowed grounds of Cobb Field since 1948. There are numerous big leaguers -- 15 currently -- who got their start in the “Magic City.” There are legends like Dick “Dr. Strangeglove” Stuart, who hit 31 homers for the 1952 Mustangs to lead the Pioneer League and went on to hit 228 homers in the Show, but earned his nickname for his skillet-like hands – 169 errors while playing first base in 10 Major League seasons. Others who wore a Billings Mustangs jersey were 1999 Hall of Fame inductee George Brett (1971), Paul O’Neill (1981, coincidentally, his grandfather Art played baseball in Billings in 1909 for $75 a month), Rob Dibble (1983), Trevor Hoffman (1989), Aaron Boone (1994) and current Reds Adam Dunn and Austin Kearns (both 1998), just to name a few. 
So, even at the rookie level, there are brushes with baseball greatness. I would like to believe that my past career path was prologue to competing with Tommy Lasorda for a cab, drinking beer with former Reds all-star Chris Sabo and eating hot dogs with current Milwaukee Brewers masher Prince Fielder.
I’d like to believe that, but as recently as three years ago, one of my jobs was bedazzling cowboy outfits. The route to my assistant general manager position has been less than traditional. In 1993, I graduated with a journalism degree from the University of Oregon and got a job as a reporter for The Montana Standard in Butte, Mont., and then moved back home to cover courts and cops for The Billings Gazette.
Five years into my newspaper career, I got tired of the late nights and little pay, left The Gazette and embarked on a career in the fast-paced world of wholesale flooring distribution. I went from twice having guns pointed at me while covering the infamous 1996 “Freeman Standoff” in Jordan, Mont. to handling complaints from hayseeds wondering why their laminate flooring wasn’t bulletproof. To maintain my sanity (and because I already frequented Cobb Field), I took a second job as the official scorer of the Mustangs in 2002. As luck would have it, the season ended and the flooring distributorship was sold.
At the age of 32, I was unemployed.
I spent the winter questioning my existence while performing several menial jobs to pay the bills. I spent my days running an embroidery machine at a friend’s small clothing company and maintaining law-and-order as a 150-pound bouncer at Buck’s Bar by night. At Dally O Western Wear, I made $7 an hour watching a machine as it stitched a variety of designs on cowboy clothing – including a incredibly intricate design a trucker commissioned of his semi on the back of his black puffy vest. At Buck’s Bar, I somehow never got punched by any of the displaced rural fellas who move from all over Eastern Montana to the “big city” and feel right at home beating the puss out of each other. I took a couple of shots breaking up girlfights, but mostly people just bled on me.
I was living the dream.
In Spring 2003, I was all set to sell my house and leave Billings behind when I was hired as a part-time editorial producer for MLB.com. It was technically a job in professional baseball and one I could do from home, so I decided to put off moving and see where this took me. I went to New York City and slept on a semi-inflatable mattress on the floor of Pat and Kimmy’s tiny Manhattan apartment during three weeks of MLB.com training. I spent that summer sweating my ass off in my basement -- frequently until 4 a.m. -- editing copy from beat writers covering games around the country. My claim to fame while working for MLB.com was not catching a misspelling in an Associated Press caption and pasting it under a photo of then Minnesota Twins outfielder Bobby Kielty. I identified him as “Booby Kielty.” The page was printed out and posted on his locker the next day.
I was informed that “Booby” was not amused.
I continued to score Mustangs’ games that summer for $30 a game and whatever I wanted from the Cobb Field Grill while editing for MLB.com. I realized that working in baseball would be a good way to make a living. I wasn’t exactly sure how I would go about it, but it seemed like the career for me. Unfortunately, the 2003 season ended and I was facing unemployment yet again. That’s when one of the local television stations, KTVQ, approached me about covering courts and cops for a second time. I came out of reporter retirement and made a complete ass out of myself on local television for a little more than a year. Upon my TV hiring, my former mates at The Billings Gazette started a pool, wagering on the first time I would cuss on live television. For the record, I never technically cussed on air. On one occasion I screwed up the last sentence of my script and mouthed the word my mother says “we” don’t say in our family, but my microphone had already been cut. Lip-synching doesn’t count, and since no one technically heard the blue language, The Gazette pool went unclaimed. During the 2004 Pioneer League season, I would stammer through a story, trying not to drop live F-bombs on the 5:30 p.m. news, race home to take off my makeup, change and speed back to Cobb Field to score the 7:05 p.m. Mustangs game.
The dream continued.
Sticking with the Mustangs finally paid off in February 2005, when the assistant general manager’s job opened up. I’ll be honest; I felt lucky to get one of only two full-time professional baseball jobs in Billings, Montana. The job itself is not all that glamorous, but at least I am no longer making two-hour drives for 30 seconds of television airtime or taking punches from the Jack Daniels-soaked teenage women of Wolf Point.
Unfortunately, I don’t spend my off-season making trades with the Idaho Falls Chukars –- the Reds handle all our player moves. I spend most of the winter months chasing down program ads, lining up sponsors for things like “B.J. Ryan Bobblehead Night” and trying to stay warm and dry. The clubhouses and offices in the underbelly of Cobb Field are dark, wet and musty. Sixty years of baseball have worn out the joint and our ancient stadium leaks water, frequently onto my head. On the brink of condemnation, the Billings City Council may put it to the registered voters to decide if we replace the ballpark with a modern facility. We need it. The city shuts off the water during the cold Montana winter to ensure the pipes don’t burst, so we don’t even have a working bathroom for about five months. It's very unpleasant.
It’s an odd ballpark, Cobb Field. It shares a public park in downtown Billings block with an equally old -- and very public -- swimming pool behind the grandstand on the third-base line. Cobb Field’s understructure is completely made of rotting wood. Rusty folding chairs serve as the “box seats” and the bleachers are metal. Plywood patches cover dozens of holes in the grandstand decking where fans have poked holes in soft spots. Vagrants discard empty cans of malt liquor and other unmentionables in an abandoned ticket booth.
Still, I’m happy to call Cobb Field my office. This marks my fifth year of getting paid to go to the ballpark and in that time, I’ve seen some remarkable things.
In 2002, Prince Fielder was in his first year of pro ball with the Ogden Raptors and he crushed (in my estimation) a 500-foot home run into the intersection of city streets a hundred feet behind the centerfield wall. The following day’s game got rained out, so we talked and ate free giveaway hot dogs that had already been cooked. 
Fielder may have been the seventh pick overall of the 2002 draft and son of slugger Cecil, but he seemed to be a down-to-earth guy. I remember his shot at Cobb every time I see the bombs he’s currently hitting for the Milwaukee Brewers on Baseball Tonight.
In 2004, Chris Sabo served as the Mustangs hitting coach. I’ve been a Reds fan since I was a kid, long before I started working for the Mustangs. It was a strange feeling to take a box score to the 1988 NL Rookie of the Year, a guy I rooted for in the Reds 1990 World Series upset of the Oakland A’s. I’m not starstruck, but I was a fan first. You run into all kinds of guys you used to see in the Show, but I’ve learned the rules of baseball.
You are no longer a fan.
Never ask for an autograph.
Speak only when spoken to.
You work in the "minor" leagues.
To wit, my boss and I were waiting for a cab to take us to the airport from the MLB Winter Meetings in Dallas last December when Dodger great Tommy Lasorda walked up and asked, “You guys got the next cab?” I politely mumbled, “Yes,” and nothing else. Lasorda got on his cell phone. Five minutes later a minivan rolled up and he was gone. We waited another half an hour for the “next” cab before settling for a crowded airport shuttle.
That, my friends, is the definition of being “big leagued.”
In this column, I hope to give you a sense of what it’s like to work in professional baseball, but not professional baseball. Every month, I’ll share some of my past experiences and whatever happens in the 2006 season. The 76-game season gets underway June 20 with four home games against the Great Falls White Sox and two home games with the Helena Brewers. To get you warmed up for your Billings Mustangs, here are three stories I wrote about the Ponies amazing run to the 2003 Pioneer League title. Here’s a hint: it involves a Don Larsen-esque effort in the championship game.
See you at the ballpark.
--Matt Bender (
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(Second Cobb Field Picture couresty of Mark McLeod)
(Scoreboard and championship pictures courtesy of Dean Hendrickson)
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