[chimanbj]

I’m 37 years old. I’ve been a baseball fan all my life. But I couldn’t even make the high school baseball team because I couldn’t throw from the outfield consistently. (I should have tried out for first base) I had become a bit of a geek about baseball, competing in fantasy baseball tournaments, and winning 3 out of the last 4 ESPN fantasy baseball leagues. I do have a day job, of course, working as an analyst for IRI in Chicago. My wife is the principal at Rolling Meadows High School. She was unhappy there, though, and quit in June, after 7 years at the school. She said she wanted to work in a smaller area which would afford her more flexibility and control over the school she was working in. She began to search for positions in small towns in Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa. I was content to stay with IRI, but I knew it was a dead-end position. Something had to give.

My wife found a job in Clinton, Iowa, working as the Superintendent of the Clinton Schools. I was obligated to follow her, and her 6-figure salary. My family, including our two sons, moved from Chicago to Clinton in the fall of 2005. There’s only one school in town, so enrolling the boys was no problem. Everyone was situated except me. Our youngest son Adam was enrolled in Washington Middle School and our oldest, Scott, was enrolled in Clinton High School. I looked at working for the community college, but something told me to check out the local minor league team.

The season was over, and the town wasn’t feeling too “up” about the team, after finishing last in the Midwest League. While walking around Clinton’s Festival of Lights holiday festival the week before Christmas, I was busy talking with my wife and tripped over a series of wires and fell into a tall man who was out with his family as well, spilling my hot chocolate all over him. As luck would have it, the man I bumped into was Jon Daniels, the General Manager of the Texas Rangers, who just happened to be in town.

“I come here every year for this festival,” he said, after we had gotten ourselves together. I told him about how I followed baseball and how it is my passion. After doing some further discussion that night and over the next few days, Jon revealed to me that the manager position of the Clinton Lumber Kings was vacant, as he fired the manager at the end of the season.

“I don’t have a lot of faith in this team, although the town is great,” he revealed to me. “We’re contemplating dumping this team and going with another team like the Schaumburg Flyers if this team can’t turn it around. The owner doesn’t want to spend a lot of time getting someone in this role, however. It hasn’t been a high priority of mine.”

A moment passed, and then I said the words that sound so stupid now, but changed everything for me, “If you’re willing, I’d like to manage the team.”