The Tampa Bay Rays hold an annual charity golf outing to benefit our Rays Foundation charity. The event was held in Sarasota/Bradenton at the amazing Ritz-Carlton Members Golf Club.It's our largest fundraiser of the year for the Foundation as well as one of the best chances for our partners to be treated like VIPs and actually get to hang out with our players. As an intern in Corporate Partnerships, I knew full-well I would be working it. For a half-second I thought I might get asked to play. But that would have just been bad. Anyway I was assigned out Speed Golf hole incidentally with my supervisor Sean. It was a great time and we made sure all our partners and guests were greeted with a smiling face, Rays swag, and lots of ice cold drinks. It was important that I worked this because it helped to see another "all hands on deck" event. Our whole department put in at least 11-12 hours. Although I can think of worse places to be than a golf course in March in southwest Florida. Our departments wished good luck and farewell to Sam from Community relations Monday night with a soirée at The Canopy Rooftop Lounge - The Birchwood in downtown St. Pete. While I was fashionably late after my misadventures going to Tampa and back, i had a great time with coworkers and socialized. And just look at that view!
I was asked to go to Tampa to our MillerCoors partner to pick up some beer supplies for a gift basket for our golf outing. No biggie, I thought. Worst that can happen is it takes me a while.. That, my friends, is one of the perks of the job. One of the things that was not a perk of the job? This drive, round-trip took 2.5 hours, 60 miles and featured two detours and 2 accidents. In rush hour traffic.
So turns out a certain 15-time World's Heavyweight champion and polarizing sports entertainer is a occasional guest of the Trop as he must be local. So much so that some of our long-time staff have less-than-glowing stories to tell about him away from the cameras and so much so that I randomly found an autographed John Cena action figure in storage. It's years old though.
If you have any resources that can help determine who signed these balls, have a special knack for it, or know a guy, please! HALP! It won't earn me any brownie points at work, just peace of mind.
The weekend of FanFest--as chaotic as a game, but without the all the hassle of clearly-defined roles and all that baseball weather. The end of the work week and into Saturday was filled with preparations and cleaning, set up and hustling. FanFest is 20 years strong, and every year we have to essentially reinvent the wheel and try to both give the fans everything they want and nothing they don't, stay fresh but not divert from what works, fix problems from years past, and appease PARTNERS!~ It's a huge juggling act and I think our team(s) of staff did a great job. I was a part of putting together some of our Charity Yard Sale in the 162 Landing. This is where we sell old merchandise, collectibles, and assorted team memorabilia with all proceeds going to our Rays Foundation. it helps us clean out or backstocks of old stuff, gives the fans something awesome to collect, and it all goes to a good cause. Another thing I did was help with the Goodwill partnership table display. They wanted to engage fans with trivia questions so we were tasked with coming up with Rays-centric questions. It was actually a difficult job, trying to come up with questions that were challenging without being impossible. I got the medium-to-hard questions, so I really tried to be creative UPDATE: FanFest was a rousing success. It was well attended, we raised nearly $100,000 for charity, we signed up over 3200 people for miniplans, and I heard very little complaint about anything. Our fans can be a little finicky and fickle, but the response was overwhelmingly positive. Today was the fitting end to a good week. We were not very busy during the early part of the day, It was obvious to many that it was Friday--a lot of fogginess and sluggishness around the office. Some staff were busier than others, some more energized than others. Kim and I at the CP interns desks were in the camp of eager for the weekend. Eventually, we sat in on a exploratory call between Joe and Carmella and All Children's Hospital. They are a returning partner and have very strong opinions and ideas about what they want out of their partnership. It's commendable. Again, it's fun and reassuring to engage in a partner who is active and eager to gain from the partnership But that all did not matter. |
Our Intern Scavenger Hunt popped up on our calendars without warning a week or two ago. We didn't know who organized it, the details of the event, not even who all would be there. When the time came, we had been briefed, quizzed, and pumped up by our department to do our team proud. When we got there, there were 27 total interns (which is crazy; we have probably met like 10). The teams were broken up interdepartmentally to create some new bonds. While noble, I say boo to that. I wanted to WIN, not make friends haha. Anyway, we were told we had a clue to start off, that would lead us around the stadium to all our additional clues and we were to be done or at least meet up at The Porch in Center Field at 3:30. That gave us an hour and a half. |
That's when the sprinting happened. At this point in my life, no one could accuse me of working out too often, so this was not to my advantage. I was paired with a girl from Stadium Ops (Ali), a girl from Marketing (Jessie), and honestly a girl whose name and department I don't recall (some good the event did) [UPDATE: she's Lauren from Ticket Sales]. We were kicking butt and going fast and then it all slowed down and we could not seem t progress or find more clues. We were college educated kids all dumbfounded by simple riddles. It was mostly embarrassing and frustrating. The big twist clue was to "find the person who has the keys to the batters box". Of course, no such thing exists, so no such person exists either. This was meant to be the final clue and meant to make everyone chuckle at the intern's bewilderment. However, we managed to get it practically in the middle of our clues, which meant while we knew the joke we could not progress because we thought we needed something from someone regarding the keys. We wasted so much time and got so frustrated that a while before 3:30 we just went up to the Porch and found that we were already losers and could only place 3rd at best. We tried a little more before giving up and returning to the Porch to find out what we did wrong. Turns out, at one of the more innocuous clues we had gone to Spot A to grab the envelope for that clue, not knowing that Spot A was actually the "answer" for a separate clue altogether. That got us all thrown off and out of order.
It was fun, we learned a little bit and got to be social with our coworkers, both intern and staff alike which is always awesome. It really is a fabulous group of people in the departments I deal with most closely.
It was fun, we learned a little bit and got to be social with our coworkers, both intern and staff alike which is always awesome. It really is a fabulous group of people in the departments I deal with most closely.
This morning at the request of VP Josh Bullock, Kim and I assisted him in executing a small event for the Leadership Tampa group as they held their Pro Sports Day. They came to the Trop first to listen to our dignitaries speak and answer questions, then they got back on a bus and went to Tampa to visit the Bucs and/or Lightning. What a fun day! Our presentation featured manager Kevin Cash, VP of Baseball Ops Chaim Bloom, President Brian Auld, Sr. Vice President/Chief Sales Officer Mark Fernandez, among others. It was held in our Hancock bank Club which is a fabulous space down the right field line in the suite level.
The rest of the day was spend doing some clean up from the Little League Initiative as it pertains to the jerseys. We have to communicate with the leagues that expressed shortages or size issues and rectify those problems. Not easy or fun, but it is a rewarding task.
The rest of the day was spend doing some clean up from the Little League Initiative as it pertains to the jerseys. We have to communicate with the leagues that expressed shortages or size issues and rectify those problems. Not easy or fun, but it is a rewarding task.
Author
Tim is a sports professional just taking his licks and seeing all the sports industry has to offer. He is married and is born and raised in western Michigan.
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