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(mid tempo music) (upbeat music) - Welcome to Business Forward.

I'm your host, Matt George, joining me tonight, Jason Mott.

Jason is the General Manager of your Peoria Chiefs.

Welcome.

- Well, thanks for having me, Matt.

- All right, let's get right down to it.

So let's talk about you, how long did you play ball?

- Till I was 16, actually.

- Okay.

- Yeah, I got hit in the head when I was 16 and couldn't shake it.

- [Matt] I got you.

- I was done and we tried for a year and it just couldn't get out, every time they threw a ball, it didn't matter if it was 10 feet on the outside.

I flinched and.

- [Matt] oh, wow.

- So at 16 years old I entered into baseball and not that I was that good anyway, I was good shortstop, but that was about, hitting was not my forte.

- Yeah.

It's crazy though because you know, you do read about some of these major league players are very good players.

You get hit in the head, Chris Bryant.

- Yeah.

- And, and that plays with you.

- Yeah.

- You know, plays those games.

So did you know, like when you were 18, 19, as you're getting older getting into, did you always want to be in sports or have a tie of sports?

- I did, you know, sports is everything I played growing up.

It was who I was, you know, it's funny cause I thought I wanted to be an accountant for the longest time at like 12.

That was, somebody said, what do you wanna be?

And I go an accountant.

Like why?

I'm like, I don't know.

I was good at math, and but no, once I got into college, I started looking like, how can I be involved?

And I found my major, which was Sport Management.

Didn't know what it meant, but I was like says sport and it's got management in it.

So it's gotta be something fun.

I thought it was gonna be a coach too, maybe, you know, I thought about maybe coaching basketball.

But I think I made the right decision.

- Yeah.

Well those accounting days back when you were at 12, you need them now.

- Right.

- Right, I mean, when you're running, it's a business.

- It is, it is, and now I'm glad that I'm not accountant full-time after having to look at reports.

That's for sure.

- That is true.

So let's just talk about the Chiefs here.

Let's just, oh, we're gonna briefly talk about history because I think no matter how much you know about baseball, which I feel like I'm just one of those old-school, knowledgeable baseball guys, but you think back and you walk into the hallway of, of the stadium and you, you see all the guys on the wall.

- Yep.

- And it's just flat out amazing.

And I know a lot of other cities can claim a player or two.

- Right.

- But we can claim like 25, or more.

- Yeah.

On that wall.

I think we're at, we're close to like 160 now, if not more.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- And I think, and I've been working on it today, cause I think we have seven people that have made their debuts already this year.

Eight just literally got called up a few minutes ago before I got here.

- [Matt] Wow.

- And so he'll probably make his debut Ivan Herrera who played here in 2019.

Well, just got called up to replace Yadi, he went on bereavement list.

So, should be number eight already this year, which is crazy that we're like six weeks into the season or two months.

And we're eight debuts.

- Yeah.

for clarification.

I think what I was thinking was, there's a lot of guys that make the, go on to the next level, but there's a only a handful of guys that, that have that status of Yadi.

But the Chief's seem to have a whole heck of a lot.

- We do, you know, and it's crazy to think about it.

You know, you go all the way back to '83.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- And you look at like Wally Jr. Like I remember watching him just to, I can't even imagine him playing in the minors, like now that I'm in the minors, it's hard to think about all those guys that I watched growing up, played potentially here, somewhere close.

- [Matt] Right - And there's, there's a lot.

I mean it's and there's more coming, you know?

- Isn't that great.

- Yeah.

We love it.

- That's gotta be just so cool.

But so The Chiefs used to be called The Sons back in '83 and changed to the Chiefs in '84, '85, I think.

But during that time, I think in '84 that's when Maddon was the manager, and so it's not just players.

- No.

- I mean you go to Maddon and then four years after that you've got Jim Tracy.

- Right.

- That's crazy.

- Right.

- I don't know.

Then you throw in the whole Pete Vonachen and thing.

- Right.

Because Pete was a legend and obviously the statue there.

- Right.

Know I think my favorite story with Maddon and Pete is Rocky was telling me this, is when Maddon showed up, he walked into Pete's office and goes, hey Pete, I'm Joe Maddon.

I'm your new manager, I'm first time manager.

And he looked back goes, well, hey Joe, I'm Pete Vonachen and I'm first time owner.

So I guess we'll figure this out together.

And Maddon still remembers him.

You know, we ran into him after The Cubs won the world series in '16, down at the winter meetings, Rocky and I were walking by and he goes, let's see if he remembers me and Joe stopped, and he is like, Rocky.

He's like, man, we miss your pass man.

He goes, he would've been in that locker room if we would've, if he was around the, I would've brought him up to Chicago.

He would've been there when we won it.

- That's crazy.

- Just cause of, you know, they started together and he, he still remembers him to this day.

- Yeah.

I'll tell you something crazy a few years ago, and this is the year before COVID, I was at Wrigley, I took my son, he was probably six, seven, and I ran into Rocky.

- [Jason] Oh, okay.

- And Rocky goes, hey come on down.

And so he took us down to the field, he yells into the dugout, Maddon pops up and comes and grabs a baseball and signs it to Matthew, and there's Baez and.

- Right.

- There's all those guys there.

I mean, it's just crazy.

- It is.

I mean, people I think, think sports are such a big industry and they're really not.

I mean, it's a really small-nit industry.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- People know every, you know, everybody.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- You know, like I can, I can call Jason Mard and or text him.

And I do every once in a while just to check-in and see how he's doing and you know, I've got those relationships.

- [Matt] Yeah.

That's great.

- It's crazy how, how small it really is when you think about it.

- Yeah.

So when the new park came about, I was actually at that game.

- [Jason] Oh, were you?

Okay.

- Yeah.

And at the time, but here's what's crazy.

I think it, I think it right now, we still have the neatest stadium for a town our size.

And I know there's some new ones popping up.

- [Jason] Right.

- But there's still something about going to the ballpark here in Peoria.

- Oh it is.

You know, it's very, I think it's crazy to me how close you are, to the play.

I mean, you're really right there on top of it.

You don't get that feel everywhere.

I remember when I drove up here and interviewed, you know, I was in Memphis and AAA and I come down Jefferson Street, and I looked, and I was like, man this, am I still in Memphis, you know?

- Right.

- I mean, it wasn't as big, but it was very similar to the look and even walking around, I was like man, I really got this eyre feeling that I was still in Memphis with a smaller version of the AAA Stadium down there.

And I love, you know, our stadium.

I love that there's so many things that people can do.

You've got the, the big areas, a lot of space.

- Yeah.

- But no, it's a nice little ballpark, that's what everybody talks about when they come, even from outta town is.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- What a nice little ballpark it is and, you're right, it's perfect for our size.

- Yeah.

We at Children's Home, we take a group every year of our staff, and we sit out there in left field and we have a nice little food display out there and just have a great time.

And we've, the last four times we've done it, we've had 75 and sunny every time.

- [Jason] Well then you need to be there every match then.

- It's meant to be, right?

- Right.

- So let's talk Cards, Cubs for a second.

Yeah.

Cause right now you're with the affiliated with the Cardinals.

- Right.

- But then it goes back and forth.

So have you been only affiliated with the Cardinals in your time here?

- I have yeah, and.

- Yeah, go ahead.

- Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't think it'll change.

I mean, we've got, we signed a 10 year agreement.

I think really with the Cubs now, South Bend, the owner of South Bend is actually a minority owner for the Cubs.

- [Matt] Ah.

- So I think that's how that kind of happened.

And she said, how I'll be a minority owner, but I want your affiliate.

So I think both clubs are probably said, I'd be shocked if there was any kind of movement going forward.

I know talking to John Mozeliak, you know, he talks about, they have their top three organizations all within four hours or less.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- Of St. Louis.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- You know, geographically is perfect for them.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- So I don't think I see them changing, and you know, people are like, you gotta change back to the Cubs, I'm like eh, I'm from Missouri, you know?

- [Matt] Yeah, well.

I think it's just neat for a region.

Cause I mean, it's not just Peoria, I mean, you get fans from all over that come, and Cardinal fans from all over, and I think that's pretty cool.

So you're High-A Ball, is that correct?

- Correct.

Yep.

- So what changed?

Cause it used to be Triple, Double, Single, A.

Right?

- It's always been, there's always been two in the low, as you got into minor baseball, you had Rookie Ball, then you had Advanced Rookie, which for the Cardinals, would've been Johnson city and then State College.

- [Matt] Okay.

- And then you had us previously at Low-A, Palm Beach at High-A.

- [Matt] Oh.

- So when they shrunk the organization a little bit, basically they got rid of Rookie Ball and then they kept the two High-A, Low-A, for the longest time even when I got here, I always used to ask like, why aren't we High-A?

You know, we're closer, like why are you sending people from the Midwest to Florida to come back to the Midwest?

And it just happened to work out with the restructuring.

I was like, maybe this is when they'll do it, and we got lucky.

So it's, you know.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- I felt like we had a High-A ballpark.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- You know, and we were running like a High-A team.

Just makes more sense now.

- All right.

So we talked earlier about, you know these names, but when you look at Mark Grace and all these guys that have come through, my favorite player, one of my top favorite players of all times, Greg Maddux.

- Okay, yeah.

- So when you look at some of these guys that you've worked with in this past few years, what story do you have with just one individual that we would know their name, that you just sit there and go just a class guy, or he was such a jokester, whatever it may be.

- It's probably probably Brenda Donovan who honestly just made his debut a couple weeks ago.

You know, he was here in '19, always just a happy-go-lucky, just like, hey, what do you need?

Can I do anything for you?

Just a really good, good kid.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- And then we have the pandemic, he doesn't get to play, and then he comes back in '21 and he walked in, and walked straight up to me like, all right, we're back baby, let's go.

And I was like, hey, at least we're High-A this year, right, you're not coming back to Low-A.

And, and he was like yeah, and so he wasn't here long.

And he text me from time to time.

So he's like, hey, texted me last year like, nobody has a card to me this year.

Did you guys put me in your card set?

I'm like, yes we did.

And he goes man, can you send me one?

I'm like, yes, I'll hook you up.

And so even when he made it, you know.

- Ah that's so cool.

- I sent him a text, hey, congrats man, you know we're super proud of you.

And so just, don't forget the little people when you become big and famous here in Peoria and he's like never man, you guys were awesome.

- [Matt] Wow, I mean that's.

- He's just one of those guys that gets it.

- Pretty cool.

That's pretty cool.

Yeah, I've always wondered, and you would know being the GM, there's just certain teams in major league baseball that I think this is right, so you just correct me if I'm wrong.

That just have a culture that's different than some of the other teams.

I'd put the Dodgers in there, I'd put the Yankees in there, I'd put the Cardinals in there, and there's probably a few other teams, maybe the Braves.

But when you look at these teams, you sit there and go, the expectations alone to being a professional ball player.

Is that true with the Cardinals?

- [Jason] It is.

- Okay.

- You know, I think they all have different expectations of what they want and how they want you to represent their organization.

And you're right, the ones you now announced or mentioned there are up there.

I think to me, the craziest thing about the Dodgers is, they've taken the health and wellness of their club to a whole new level.

I think almost every one of their affiliates now, have a trailer that follows them around wherever they go, and they cook them breakfast, they cook them lunch, they cook them pre-game meals, snacks, post-game meal.

They just have two guys in a truck and a trailer that, you know, they're at home in Grent or in Midland, they're there.

But they were here a few weeks ago and I kept asking 'EM, like, where's my meal?

- Right.

- Like you're cooking for them, I mean.

- Yeah.

- [Jason] You can cook for me too but.

- Well they're protecting their investment.

- Right, exactly.

You know, it's changed.

- Pat Venditte.

- Yeah.

- Played for the Dodgers, and he said, I asked him this same question.

I said, who, you know, when you look at teams and look at culture, cause I've always been fascinated with culture of sports.

- Right.

- Of teams.

And he said, you know, Dave Roberts is just a class man and his expectations when I played there, it was just different than some other parks that he played in or other teams.

- Yeah.

I could see that, I mean, he looks like an old-school guy that, you know, he expects you to perform at your top level, no matter how you're feeling, ad I think you should, I mean, at the end of the day, you know, you're getting paid to perform and, - [Matt] Yeah.

- And you know, they want more money when they play well, but they don't return money when they don't.

So you might as well set the expectations.

- Let's talk about business for a minute cause GM, I think people think it's just an easy job, you know, but it's really not.

- No.

- I mean you have to, you oversee the day-to-day everything.

- Right.

- And that includes everything.

- Right.

- So you're in charge of sales, sponsorships, the suites.

- Right.

- I'm guessing.

- Yep.

- Tell me where I'm wrong.

All the tickets, you need people in the stands, but what else do you do?

- You know, making sure that the stadium's up-kept, you know, all the, any kind of renovations that we do, since we own the stadium, we are one of the few teams that own our stadium.

Really, the only thing I don't oversee is the players and the coaching staff.

- [Matt] Wow.

- You know, anything, even the stuff on the field is still, you know, we oversee it.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- You know, people ask me like, you don't do the player moves?

Like no, you don't want me to do the player moves, so.

- [Matt] Right.

- I'm a little, if you go four-for-four, you're my favorite player, If you go over four the next day, ah I'll send you down, you know.

- So you don't want me you know.

But yeah, it's a lot.

- Yeah.

- You know, and now we're going, there's the renovation's coming.

So now that's just kind of another, another thing on the plate a little bit, but you know, it keeps me busy and I'd rather be busy than not busy, I guess.

- How do you keep the field so nice.

- That all Mike, Mike Reno.

He is, and I know everybody says it, but I would fight anybody that we got the best in the business here in town.

- Well, I agree.

That's why I said it.

- Yeah.

- I mean, you drive by that field.

I mean there are people on that doing work on that field all the time.

- We have a lot of events.

I mean, you think about us, Bradley just got finished with their schedule for this year, we had 18 high school games.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- In April and May on top of it, and you know, Mike is one of those that, he's a perfectionist, you know?

So he puts a lot of hard work into it.

He trains the staff well.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- And he's got an NFL background.

A lot of people don't think know that.

- [Matt] Oh really.

- So his wife works for KAT.

That's why they moved here.

Well, he's from St. Louis.

- [Matt] Okay.

- Originally, she grew up here locally, but they worked in Miami and so he worked for the Dolphins and the Marlins, in Miami.

And when they moved here, I remember Rocky telling me, he kept getting this resume from this guy named Mike Reno.

And they were like Dolphins and Marlins and he'd crumbled up and throw it away, like yeah right, you know, and then one day Mike showed up and he was like, hey I'm here to talk to you about the grounds crew keeper.

And he was like, oh that was serious.

And he was like, you really do live here.

He goes, I thought you were just being funny.

- [Matt] Right.

- But, so he actually still goes and does all the games in Europe in the fall, does the Super Bowl every year with NFL, and so, I mean he caught the field goal of the Rams, Patriots a couple years ago.

He caught the field goal, that the Rams kicked.

- Wow, fine.

- And I was like, wait a minute, was that Mike?

So I like ran it back.

And I was texting my staff going, I think that was Mike, copy that put it on social media.

And so we copied it, put out there like, hey anybody else's grounds keeper just catch that field goal in the Super Bowl, nope just ours, okay.

- This is how we roll.

- Right, and obviously he didn't like it cause it got a lot of publicity and people wanted to interview him, and he just likes to, just let me work on the field.

- Lay low and chill yeah.

- Yeah, Let me work on the field.

- I took my son this past high school season, we went to like Peoria Christian Games and we saw Peoria Heights play them a lot, and recently, and the field is just in phenomenal shape, so the stadium.

And cleanliness is, is huge in this business.

- [Jason] Right.

- So all the way, so kudos to your staff and your team that you have.

Do you get to run concessions and keep those dollars?

I mean, does that flow through you too?

- A little bit.

We've got a third party vendor named Diamond Concessions.

- [Matt] Okay.

- They've been with us since 2019 and they've got a unique background that they actually own seven minor league teams.

- [Matt] Wow.

- On their own.

So they kind of understand what we do.

- [Matt] I gotcha.

- So they kind of run everything, you know, obviously they run it by us, we approve it, and then they do all the work and we get a portion of it.

- Yeah, I read something about you and about what you do and I liked the way this was written.

It said, so if I wanted to buy or rent a suite, and I own my own business, I'm creating memories for companies.

And it's true because if you think about, I've probably been in those suites 10 times, but I remember every one of those games.

- Right.

Oh I think anytime you come out to the ballpark, that's really what it is, is we're just creating memories that hopefully, you know, whether it's with your son or company or whatever it is, it's you get a chance to, you'll remember it, you know.

And I remember the good and the bad, you know, like I was out there with my son one night, just happened to pop in and he's sitting there next to me, and I always, I guess I think about things like what would I do in this situation?

And I had this thing pop in my head goes, what if a foul ball came this way?

What would I do?

And sure enough, within like a couple pitchers later here comes this foul ball scream right at my son up in the suite.

So I just kind of throw my hand out and deflect it.

But I was just like, man I gotta stop thinking about that kind of stuff.

- Right.

- But you know, he still remembers it, he goes, remember that time when that ball almost hit me and I'm like, prefer not to.

- Yeah.

Like our kids are the same age.

And, one of the things that my little boy said a couple weeks ago, as we're going to a high school game, it was great, we walked into the stadium and he looked up at me and he said, dad, I forgot my glove.

I need to go get my glove.

And it was in the car, but we walked all the way back.

And those are the memories.

I'll never forget, you know, those little things like that.

- No, they're fun to do and you know, I always tell people the way I look at it, coming to a baseball game is really taking a nine-inning vacation.

It is really what it is.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- You know, let life go.

- [Matt] Well, well said.

- Yeah, just come and whatever's going on at home, let it go for nine innings, come enjoy it, and then it'll be there when you get done.

- Yeah.

What's the hardest thing about your job.

- Outside of managing the people?

I think that's probably the toughest thing you want to, you always wanna build around your staff and everybody's different.

So learning what makes them tick?

What can you push?

What can you not, on them?

That's probably.

- [Matt] Entertaining.

- Yeah.

- Hiring and, you know.

- Yeah.

Oh, it's gotten of course, you know, now it's tougher.

- Yeah.

- But we made the decision this year, we kind of flipped course and went extremely young.

So I've got probably four or five people full-time that are under the age of 23 on my staff.

And, but I want to build them up.

I want to get them the experience.

- You're mentoring 'EM.

Yeah.

- And then hopefully in a year or two, they'll just roll with everything, and then I'll just sit there and watch.

- Who do you report to?

- So we've got 48 owners.

- Okay.

- But there's a board here in town locally of three or four that I'll meet with here in town, and just kind of keep them abreast of what's going on.

And, but yeah unfortunately, I don't know a lot of ours owners, you know, they're all over the country I think now that they've moved - Yeah.

- Kind of transferred but 48 different ones.

- So the Cardinals, the General Manager of the Cardinals cannot sit here and say, I'm signing so and so to five years down in High-A ball.

- No, he does, they sign 'EM to contracts, but they don't put levels on 'EM, and that way they can move.

So like, you know, they sign a bunch of guys, I think in the off season, like the, from the Dominican, they signed to contracts, but.

- [Matt] I gotcha.

- We don't know where they're going.

Haven't seen 'EM yet.

So hopefully at some point we will.

- Do you put together the budget, and then you present it to that board.

- Yep.

- And then they.

- They approve it.

- They approve the budget.

- Yeah, and then we just update 'EM, you know, either quarterly or whenever they ask for it, we give 'EM an update, and.

- How do you project ticket sales.

- Kind of based the year prior, you know, we were, we were on a great path going into '20, even in '20 we were well ahead of.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- Where we're gonna be.

Now it's, you're kind of starting from scratch a little bit, trying to, cause you just don't know, there's too many variables now with that, but I kind of take it back to where it was when I got here.

We just kind of projected what I thought we could do.

- [Matt] Okay.

- We've had a lot of success, you know, we'll build it back, and we're off to a good start.

I mean, things are, sales are going really well this year, which is great to see, start to see people out.

- Do you have a marketing plan or strategic plan?

Or Both?

- Both.

- And then is the marketing plan tied to the ticket sales?

Or not?

- Not really.

- [Matt] Okay.

- You know, you need to market regardless, you know, so I feel like you gotta market to hit your ticket goal.

And so we've got different areas, you know?

- Yeah.

- From radio to digital, to you know, social, there's so many different avenues now, to do different things in.

And I think the big thing that in our industry, what we're trying to do now is even, you know, trying to build the brand.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- You know, that's a big thing you want people to know kind of who we are, and you know, like Gorman just made his debut on Friday in Pittsburgh.

And if you watched the video on ESPN of his family, it zooms in on his grandpa who gets emotional, but right behind him is his mom, and she's rocking a Peoria Chiefs Jersey, I was like, yes.

- That's Awesome.

- You're rocking our Jersey so that was awesome.

- I didn't see that, thats cool.

- We're gonna clip it and just kind of.

- Yeah.

Play off of it.

- Yeah, so.

- [Matt] Why not?

- So you talked about brand, so let's go to community real quick.

So you moved from Memphis to here.

Rendezvous is one of my favorite restaurants down there, but you move here brand.

How do you sit here and build brand moving forward?

Just keep grinding and grinding.

- Yeah.

I think things have changed, you know.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- Over time.

I think when, when I got into the, I think we talked about travel sports before went on here, travel is a lot bigger than what it used to be when I grew up.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- You know?

- And so I think now it's just trying to find that flexibility.

- Yeah.

- For people to come around and get people excited about it, making the tweaks, but then also having fun with it.

I think the thing I love about ours is, we can do whatever we want.

So we've got a couple new identities that we've released for this year and the first one's coming up Saturday.

- [Matt] Oh cool.

- And so.

- [Matt] Well, I appreciate you coming on and you guys are gonna have another great year.

Thank you anytime.

- My pleasure.

- I'm Matt George, and this is Business Forward.

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