FirstEnergy Getting Ready

Right off the bat, I apologize for the blog post this week being delayed by a few days. Throw in a few technical difficulties coupled with a rush to get a number of things done, and well, here you have a post on Wednesday. Starting next week, we’re back to Monday’s! Blog dates aside, I really must start off by tipping my hat to all the R-Phils employees and other workers who have been doing an unbelievable job getting this stadium ready for Opening Day. By the way, it’s only 15 days away.

FirstEnergy Stadium is really something you have to see and experience in person: it’s historic yet brand new, classic yet stylistic, and completely fun and interactive. But as touched on in the last post, there is so much effort in the baseball off-season by everyone involved, and the grounds crew and maintenance crew have been on top of their game. The concession areas are just about ready to open (can you smell the Churgers in the air?), the picnic area on the third base side is looking good, and the seats are ready for thousands of R-Phils fans to pack this place come April 8th. So again, when you come to a baseball game, you may not think about what it takes to get a stadium ready for game time. I’m guilty of not realizing all that hard work…until now. Hats off to the workers here. I can’t wait for everyone to see it.

There are so many different things to see at a minor league game, and one of those is the historic display case near the entrance. Yesterday I was given the task of filling that case with jerseys, hats, posters, banners, pins, and so much more from the 1960s all the way up until last year. I was shown a few pictures of what it looked like last year and how it was designed, but I feel that I certainly put my own touch on it this year. Starting on the far right are the most recent R-Phils jerseys and hats and so forth. There’s Rollins and Howard, Hamels and Burrell, and so many more memories. As you move along to the center part of the case, I went back in the years just a bit. There hangs the 1995 Championship banner, along with some R-Phils Hall of Famers who are forever immortalized. I also placed all the “Kings (and Queen) of Baseballtown” statues along the shelves. On the far left, it get’s a little old school. A newspaper from decades upon decades ago, highlighting the first ever game at the new stadium. There’s the old jersey, the old cap, and so much more. I feel pretty proud of the way it came out, and hopefully you’ll get the chance to take a look sometime this year.

Down in Florida meanwhile, the boys on the Double-A roster have been doing quite well. The new additions, who may or may not start here (Aumont, Gillies, Ramirez), are all improving by the day and opening eyes. There are some familiar faces and there are some surprises as well. Going into today’s game against the Double-A Yankees, the Double-A Phillies squad stands at 4-4. Worley pitched a heck of a game yesterday, tossing four perfect innings en route to a 2-0 win. It’s going to be so exhilarating to actually see these guys in such a short time, take the field I’m looking at right now and play ball. Speaking of which….

I’ve never dealt with a tarp before. Ever. The best memory I have involving a tarp is back a few years ago when the Phillies helped the Colorado Rockies grounds crew hold down the tarp in all that wind. Remember that? Classic. Well, it’s safe to say that I have a second tarp memory after the past few days. That’s right, this intern has the title of PR, but like the family we are here at the Reading Phillies, everyone chips in. It was raining just a bit and our head groundskeeper, Dan “Dirt” Douglas, called everyone out for a little help – just in case it started down pouring later on (which it did). Myself and about fifteen other interns and full-time employees, jumped and stood on top of the tarp. Trust me, this is far more thrilling to do that to read about, but hopefully you’re getting a feeling of what it’s like. We held the railing on the first base side and pushed the tarp back with our legs a few feet. After that it was pushing, pulling, dragging, with dirt and mud all over. But I’ll say this – the field looks great, and Dirt was right.

Some other things I’ve been working on finishing are the program, the bios of the players (with head shots!), and continuously updating the spring training statistics. Today we’ll also go over the game script in a test run here in the press box. That means I’ll be working Click Effects and the group message board and so forth. It’s just practice now, but that becomes reality in just over two weeks.

It’s hard to imagine that this Friday will mark four weeks down here as the R-Phils PR Intern, but time sure does fly. I can easily imagine it being sometime in September, looking back on this blog post, and wondering where all the time went. There is no doubt this season is going to be a blast and I’m going to be learning on the job. But instead of thinking ahead, I think I’ll just focus on the present. That means getting ready, because before you know it, it’s media day and then Opening Day. How about that?

Go R-Phils!