The Sting Of Failure

Last spring I had it all figured out. At some point in March, I decided that I was going to resign after the season and move home. I would stay on in Bowie to do PR for our haunted house and head home in one of the first days of November. I told a handful of people and had housing lined up.

I thought it was going to work out perfectly. I moved into a new apartment with a pair of co-workers in March and we all had designs of leaving at the same time. One roommate's boyfriend was supposed to be playing in the NFL so she would move wherever he was going and the other roommate was going to find another job.

Now several months later, I'm still here and staring another season in the face. How did this happen?

I did not account for the fact that I have no marketable skills. To date, I have been offered two jobs since college, and I have accepted them both. I have applied for many, many other jobs over the four years since I graduated. This year, as the season drew to a close, I had the two most attractive job prospects of my life.

In late July, a Major League team had an opening to do public relations for their community relations team. Between my love for my job and my desire to do good things in the community, this was an ideal position for me. And it was in the big leagues.

I applied near the end of July, did a phone interview in August and was invited in for an interview in September. Out of more than 200 applicants, I had made it into the final five. I had a decent interview, not stellar but one of my better ones. Now all I had to do was wait.

As I was waiting, something unexpected happened. The Director of Communications for the Orioles Triple-A affiliate took another job, leaving an ideal job at a higher level in the same organization. As the communications guy in Double-A, I was in a good position to land the job. To make it seem like more of a lock, my general manager told me about the position and personally called Norfolk's general manager to recommend me. Out of more than 100 applicants, I was one of three invited in for an interview.

Norfolk asked me for writing samples, and I sent the farm. Game notes, media guide, serious press releases, funny press releases, game day programs, web stories and an in-depth interview with a former player. It was an impressive sampling of my abilities.

I had a great phone interview and went for the in-person interview. It had been roughly three weeks since my interview with the Major League club and I had not heard back. I was expecting an offer at the end of the Norfolk interview.

When I arrived, I spent about 40 minutes chatting with the assistant general manager about a wide array of topics while we waited for the general manager to become available.

I walked in, having never met this man before, and the first thing he says, "Who does your hair?"

Uh-oh.

We talked for a while and went to lunch. They had never dealt with a beast like me before. For being one step apart in the same organization, we do a lot of things differently. I did not receive an offer, but I did learn a lot from talking to them. They told me I was the first of three candidates and once they completed the interviews they would try to make a quick decision.

Two weeks later my phone rang and I got the bad news. They went with somebody else, and told me that while they thought I would have done a great job, the other guy's previous organization did things more like Norfolk did. It is unfortunate, but we were not the best fit. I fancy myself a public relations professional and want to tackle a wide array of tasks, and they were looking for a baseball information guy to focus most of his attention on stats. Good luck to the new guy, even though I have not had the nerve to call him and welcome him to the organization. The worst part is that he has slightly less experience then me. We both started as assistants (interns) in 2008, but while I was promoted to my current position after the first series, he remained an assistant through the season.

After that phone call, I was five weeks removed from my big league interview and was starting to lose hope. I sent follow up e-mails after the interview, after two weeks, after six weeks and after 10 weeks. I had also been periodically checking their website to see if they had announced a new hire. After ten weeks, my contact told me that they had not hired for the position but they had a very strong candidate that they had been in contact with. Unfortunately, it appears that I am drawing dead.

Here is my conundrum - am I an up-and-coming baseball executive who is a season or two of experience away from landing a Triple-A or Major League position, or do I really have no marketable skills? While those were two big opportunities where I made it farther than hundreds of other candidates, I also had an in with each organization. I applied for some other baseball positions this off-season without receiving so much as a phone interview.

My place is in Minnesota, that is where I belong. I should be chasing my niece and nephew around their backyard in Inver Grove Heights. At this point, I'm still willing to move anywhere to chase my baseball dream, but I can not see myself working as many as 100 hours a week through a six-month season for less than $30,000 for many more seasons.