I spent one of the best summers of my life in Upstate New York living in Ithaca with Death? and interning for the Elmira Pioneers baseball team and this ballcap stayed on my head for almost the entirety of the summer. Whether I was shagging flies in the outfield, writing press releases, representing the Pio's while sitting in David Letterman's Late Show crowd, getting doused by beer and champagne celebrating our first half championship or just hanging out by Cayuga Lake, most likely this cap was on my head.
It was 2001 and I was a Sports Management major at Bowling Green and wanted to continue learning and working for a baseball team. Two years prior I worked for the Grays Harbor Gulls in Hoquiam, Washington and I learned a ton about running a small minor league team. I was hoping to intern that summer for my major but unfortunately due to my idiocy and the bureaucracy at BGSU, I wasn't eligible for internship credit. I would have to do it for fun and maybe a little bit of money.
Thankfully I did make a little bit of money but the best thing about the Pioneers is how much fun we had. The credits and the money didn't matter at all. We had a very close knit front office composed of three full-time employees and four interns, all but one under the age of 25. We worked really hard and played really hard and had a blast at work every single day. Plus we got free baseball caps, polo shirts and t-shirts so we could represent the Pioneers wherever we went.
I still represent the Pioneers to this day by pulling out this cap from time to time despite the fact that it barely fits and is pretty damn nasty. Anything I can do for the team that gave me my best experience in baseball and one of the best summers of my life.
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