From Dream Game to Dream Career

Hey Renegades fans! My name is Jeff Goldklang, and I’m President of the Gades as well as Managing Director of the ownership group. Megan asked me to write a short post describing my path in baseball as well as my love for the game. The two are not mutually exclusive- in fact, they feed off each other.

I threw a complete game perfect game in my first Little League game ever. I was nine years old, and had reached the apex of my career in uniform. I managed to play high school and eventually college ball until I tore a rotator cuff during my freshman season (though not before surrendering what is believed to be one of the longest homeruns in the old Silver Stadium in Rochester, over the distant CF wall). While my uniformed days may have been over, I was determined to forge a life in the game I loved.

My first experience with minor league ball was in Pittsfield, Ma in the mid 80’s. I worked the concession stands and occasionally got to shag balls in the OF. A Cubs affiliate at the time, it was a veritable turnstile of talent. Mark Grace, Jerome Walton, Greg Maddux, Rafael Palmeiro, Joe Girardi, Mike Harkey (best AA pitcher I’ve seen), Jamie Moyer, etc.. I remember the camaraderie and close knit feel of the staff, the connection to the fans and players, and the sense of local baseball that allowed me to fall in love with MiLB. I’ve always enjoyed MLB (I attended 83 total Yankee games in the summer of 1993, getting to know every cheap hotel on the East Coast), but there is accessibility on the minor league side- in every sense of the term- that is foreign to the majors.

I worked briefly on the talent and marketing side with SFX Sports, an agency that was a consolidation of several small to mid-range outfits. I enjoyed the work, but I’d be lying if I said it was fulfilling my desire to be involved in the actual sport. Not because I didn’t find agent work interesting- it was. Rather, the fact that I didn’t have the “touch and feel” of the game at my fingertips caused me to consider a different path.

I got back involved in MiLB in 2002, and that road has led to my current role. What are some of the things I love about my job? I love having five Opening Days (MLB and our four clubs), I love watching Gades players take their first pro at bat or throw their first pro pitch, I love the look in the eyes of a kid who just got a promotion and I love the fact that you can read the hurt in the eyes of a skipper who just told a kid his dream was over. I love walking into the stands and realizing I work in a ballpark, I love the sounds and smells of our staff ramping up for a game, I love the quietness of the parking lot after a packed house has cleared out, I love seeing our partners out in the Hudson Valley and helping them as much as they help us. I love talking to scouts in the stands, and I love talking baseball with strangers. I love the Winter Meetings and I love the smell of leather and the sound of wooden bats. I love the phrase “pitchers and catchers”. To me, the “dog days” are not August, but the deep winter nights when baseball seems like it will never arrive. I love baseball, plain and simple. Without those who are reading this blog, we wouldn’t have the ability to entertain four thousand people a night. You are, and always will be, the lifeblood of this great game. We are indebted.

Thank you!

Jeff Goldklang

Tagged as: Baseball, Goldklang, MiLB, Renegades