Nice Work If You Can Get It

Always wanted a Major League career but don't have a 98 mph fastball? No sweat. We teamed up with the Wall Street Journal to write the playbook for finding your dream job in sports

A couple of minutes watching LJ break tackles—or a couple of seconds watching LeBron work the perimeter—is enough to remind most of us that we'll never have careers in sports. At least not the sweaty kind. But a quick peek inside the corporations that employ Johnson and James reveals that, these days, there's plenty of room off the field to live the dream of landing a job in sports.

Not too long ago, gazillionaires with names like Busch and Wrigley owned and ran sports franchises like something straight out of A … of Their Own. Barons cut checks, ex-jocks coached, and when an owner died, his kids inherited everything. Nowadays, though, sports haven't just gone corporate, they've gone pro, with HR departments, community outreach associates and VPs of every stripe. As team values skyrocketed—and as media, sponsorships and player deals grew more complex—clubs realized they needed the serious skills of lawyers and marketers, sales gurus and finance whizzes. A job in sports isn't limited to a gig with a league; it could mean managing a carmaker's sponsorships or coordinating relationships between a shoe company and its endorsers. And just as the language of sports has conquered the business world (try finding a CEO who doesn't blather about home run product launches and All-Star sales teams), corporate America has become a feeder system for the sports world. Consider two of the NFL's top marketing execs, who hail from General Motors and IBM. "If you can do it at a major entertainment or consumer-products company," says NBA commish David Stern, "it likely has a counterpart in our industry."

Good thing, because more people than ever want in, including newly minted grads from some 300 sports-management programs around the U.S. (Last year, the Indians received 1,500 applications for six internships.) The most popular job categories today: community relations, marketing and PR. The jobs might be in North Dakota, says Buffy Filippell of TeamWork Online, a sports-recruiting software company that helped leagues fill 2,200 sports openings in the past 15 months. "But if you're 22 and movable, you should be able to find a job in the sports business."

All of which explains how the Flyers Skate Zone in Pennsauken, N.J., is finding a new Zamboni driver. Comcast-Spectacor, which owns the Flyers, doesn't want to settle for some board member's neighbor's nephew; it posted the opening online. To qualify, you need high school equivalency, a driver's license, two years' experience with ice-rink operations and a willingness to work weekends. If hired, you'll be expected to help maintain the building and prepare "weekly resurfacer maintenance schedules and documentation." Hey, it's a start.

Fantasy Player

Matt Silverman was just another Wall Street guy who liked sports. Then he got the chance to turn around baseball's worst franchise

By Tim Keown

You're free to define success any way you choose, but one of the biggest events of this Devil Rays season was a timeout. It happened on Aug. 3, in the late innings of a game against the Tigers, when first baseman Travis Lee requested time to jog to the mound and let his pitcher know he'd be playing behind the runner.

The next day, Rays manager Joe Maddon, a man of enduring optimism, asked team president Matt Silverman if he had by chance taken note of why Lee approached the pitcher: His voice couldn't carry from first base to the mound over the noise being generated by the 12,665 fans at Tropicana Field.

Silverman and Maddon shared a moment of subdued satisfaction, adding Lee's jog to the growing evidence that Silverman and the Rays' new management group are turning the moribund franchise around. Success, in this instance, was defined by decibels. "It might not seem like much," says D-Rays centerfielder Rocco Baldelli, "but everything here is looking positive now. There's a plan."

That plan, though, had not been devised in the usual manner, nor by the usual baseball lifers. Silverman owns an unlikely résumé—he's a 1998 Harvard grad with a Wall Street background—and at 30, he is currently Major League Baseball's youngest team president. But spend any time with him and you will quickly become sure of one fact: Anyone expecting a goofy, just-happyto-be-here dude starstruck by his proximity to pro athletes will be sorely disappointed. Silverman is reasoned and analytical, choosing his words as if the wrong one would be fatal. "I think age was a bigger issue when I first got here," he says, "but now I don't feel it."

There is nothing about Silverman that suggests he will be the inspiration for a how-did-I-get-here movie script, no surprise for a guy who graduated cum laude from Harvard. But Silverman's path to one of the most prestigious jobs in sports was more go-figure than man-with-a-plan. He worked for D-Rays principal owner Stuart Sternberg in Sternberg's division of the mergers and acquisitions department at Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs, where they discovered a shared passion for baseball. Silverman had grown up in Dallas, where he hurried home from school to catch the Cubs and his hero, Ryne Sandberg, on WGN. One summer, he even joined his father and grandfather on a trip to Wrigley.

When Sternberg bought into the D-Rays, in 2003, Silverman was hired as vice president of planning and development. He was named president last October. "I knew in '03 that Matt would be running things, and he was only 27," says Sternberg, who spends the bulk of his time in New York. "I had zero doubts. He has a remarkable way of assessing a situation and attacking it."

While Sternberg and others speak of Silverman's spontaneity, Silverman hides it well. Because sometimes a dream job is a lot of work. The enormity of the task before him—changing the culture of Devil Rays baseball—hasn't left him very much time to marvel at the seeming randomness of his good fortune. More to the point, he doesn't budget marvel time into his BlackBerry. That doesn't mean his single-mindedness has completely dulled his sense of wonder. Silverman and 29-year-old Devil Rays GM Andrew Friedman conducted the interviews for the team's vacant manager position by meeting with,
among others, former MLB greats Terry Pendleton and Mike Schmidt. Afterward, Silverman discussed this with some buddies and decided it was, indeed, a cool thing. "Caught up in it, I wasn't thinking about it, but looking back, it was a great opportunity," Silverman says. "My friends couldn't believe it, that's for sure."

Bringing the D-Rays into prominence (or at least into the major leagues) would be as unlikely as Silverman's hiring. As the man charged with overseeing the team's business operations—from community service to concessions—Silverman

isn't arrogant enough to believe he'll reinvent the business of baseball. Reinventing the Rays, on the other hand, is a matter of survival.

More than that of any other sports franchise, the D-Rays' culture needed a major infusion of energy and innovation. Tampa Bay has drawn two million fans just once, in its inaugural year of 1998, and the club has been last in attendance in the American League for five straight years. The pettiness of ex-owner Vincent Naimoli didn't endear the team to locals. Naimoli was known to travel by golf cart through empty stadium lots four hours before a game, berating parking attendants who sat down to combat St. Petersburg's infernal heat.

Under Silverman's direction, it is a gentler Devil Rays organization. Last April, the team took a series from the Red Sox, and after the final out of the decisive game, the Tropicana Field sound system blared the Fenway Park standard "Sweet Caroline." After a few bars, the song was interrupted by the retro sound of a needle scratching across a record, followed immediately by a high-decibel blast of the Rays' theme song, Bruce Springsteen's "Better Days." By far, the new regime's most publicized decision was to institute free parking at Tropicana this season. Behind the scenes, though, more fundamental changes were taking place. Silverman sent team employees to Disney World to observe firsthand the commitment of its workers to customer service. He then started R.A.Y.S. ("Ready At Your Service") University, a mandatory preseason crash course in customer relations for game-day personnel. Ushers, now called fan hosts, were given pay raises and team jerseys to replace traditional usher uniforms. And an incentive system was established that provides bonuses to fan hosts and other employees noted for exemplary work. "They've empowered game-day employees," says Rick Vaughn, the Rays PR man. "They told them, you're free to make decisions. That was like taking chains off people."

The experience at the ballpark has changed as well. There are hundreds of flat-panel TVs throughout Tropicana so fans won't miss a pitch if they leave their seats. The team has also installed a 10,000-gallon tank, home to roughly 30 cownose rays that can be petted and fed. According to Silverman, who keeps track of such things, about 2,000 fans per game make their way to the tank. "We liken ourselves to hotels, resorts and restaurants," Silverman says. "Those are the businesses where customer service goes a long way toward creating repeat business."
Tampa Bay's attendance is up about 20%

from last year, to just under 17,000 per game. The figure is still ahead of only the Royals', but it's progress nonetheless. Silverman has even stumbled upon a more remarkable achievement: turning perception into reality. Vaughn says casual fans who attend games or watch on TV will tell him, "It's great how the team's playing better." In truth, the Rays are headed for yet another last-place finish. "The old saying is, 'The beer always tastes better when you're winning,' " says Rangers prez Jeff Cogen, a friend of Silverman's. "In this case, maybe the team looks better when the beer tastes better."

Silverman's analytical and unemotional manner holds up to the most rigorous challenges, but Opening Day in Baltimore's Camden Yards was an exception. The Orioles provided a box for Sternberg, Silverman and Friedman, and before the first pitch, there were a lot of handshakes and backslaps and maybe even a few stifled tears. By Silverman's standards, he cracked. "It hit me harder than I expected," he says. "It wasn't unbridled happiness, but satisfaction. It was the culmination of a lot of work, but I wasn't expecting the rush of emotion. Frankly, I wasn't prepared for it."

Then the game started. The Devil Rays ended up losing, and it was back to work.

Or, in Silverman's words: "Business as usual."

He sounded almost relieved.

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The Entourage

Behind every good team …is a good team

Money Man

-Alison Overholt

A lifelong Red Sox fan, CPA Steven M. Piascik hit the jackpot a few jobs back when his boss had him file taxes for some pro ballplayers on the firm's client list. Fast-forward 14 years and you'll find the 38-year-old still living the dream, running his own accounting firm in the Richmond, Va., area and pulling in $400,000 or more each year. Piascik's client roster includes Jets guard Brandon Moore (left), as well as a number of NBAers, MLBers and other NFLers.

Best part about working with jocks: "They can afford our fees."

-Michael Prospero

Times have changed since Arthur McWilliams (with team members Andy Christensen, Lydon Murtha and Paul Farino) started washing dishes at Nebraska 45 years ago. "Used to be you'd throw a 16-ounce T-bone out there, and football players would eat it," says McWilliams, who's spent the past 10 years as Nebraska's food service manager. "Today it's fresh salmon with asparagus." But the 65-year-old Husker (who makes about $80,000 a year) enjoys treating his gridders like kings, practically cooking to order and roaming the dining room for feedback. "If they're grumbling," McWilliams says, "then the food's not right."

-Nick Timiraos

Stand if you know what a traveling secretary does. "He takes care of guys like me," says pitcher Brad Penny. And guys like Takashi Saito (far right). Besides booking flights and hotels and handling players' ticket requests, Dodgers do-it-aller Scott Akasaki—SoCal native who studied Japanese in college—has been LA's interpreter since 2002. Pay starts at $50,000 and tops out at $100,000, but for Akasaki it's not about the money: "It's a dream job."

-Amy K. Nelson

Call it six degrees of Kelly Calabrese: Eleven years ago, the licensed massage therapist gained Tribe infielder Carlos Baerga as a client at her private Cleveland practice. He sent teammates to her, and when outfielder Kenny Lofton went to Atlanta, he hooked her up with Ryan Klesko, who brought Calabrese to San Diego. In 2004, she became the Padres' full-time therapist, one of a handful in MLB (whose salaries range from the mid-five figures to the low sixes). Says Calabrese (working on Mike Cameron, below, with Jake Peavy in the background): "My hands kill all the time."

Nothing a good masseuse couldn't fix.

-Stephanie Kang

Just how did Miami conquer the NBA? Gotta be the shoes. "Seeing Dwyane Wade [right] wear my shoe and win the championship?" says designer Duane Lawrence. "That's gratifying." Since 2004, the 24-year-old (a Heat ball boy before attending Detroit's College for Creative Studies) has helped Converse dream up kicks like the ring-bringin' WADE. Converse shoe designers start at around $50,000 a year, but it takes 18 months for their imaginings to become shoe-store reality. Even then, success isn't a layup: "People don't always want crazy product."

The Fast Lane

-Matthew Cole

All speed, no bleed. That's the beauty of radio control (RC) racing, and nobody does it better than Paul Lemieux. After watching the 22-year-old race, Tony Stewart (left) inked Lemieux for his fledgling RC team, Custom Works/TrueSpeed. "Pushing a car to its limits without sitting in it?" says Stewart. "That's special." In February, Lemieux took the title at Orlando's Snowbird Nationals (his third major this season) and may pull in as much as $70,000 this year. Says Stewart: "Paul could race NASCAR if he wanted."

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