Kaitlyn Smith ’23 (from left), Sally Stokes ’26, and Caroline Bedrosian ’23 take a selfie at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia as part of a DavisConnects experience in January.
ABOVE: Kaitlyn Smith ’23 (from left), Sally Stokes ’26, and Caroline Bedrosian ’23 take a selfie at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia as part of a DavisConnects experience in January.

An Inside Pitch

Colby students learn about the business of sports with an inside look at the Phillies organization
Words by Abigail Curtis
Photographs by Matt Stanley
On a sunny January morning, a small crew of Colby students gathered outside Citizens Bank Park, the home of the Philadelphia Phillies, enjoying the unseasonably spring-like weather and eager to spend a day learning about the business of baseball.

Once inside, they walked through corridors festooned with oil portraits of baseball greats throughout the decades, wooden models of prior ballparks, stadium chairs from years past, celebratory photos and framed newspaper front pages from great wins, and other Phillies memorabilia.

They clustered against the windows in the press box and broadcast booth to take in the magisterial view of the ballfield and the Philadelphia skyline beyond. In the home dugout, they leaned against the railing, gazing over the emerald-green, impossibly manicured infield, just as professional ballplayers do.

And they heard from a lineup of the men and women who run all aspects of the Phillies franchise all year long.

“Even though this place is new, it still feels like there’s a lot of history here,” said Kaitlyn Smith ’23, an economics major from Belgrade, Maine. “You never really know what goes into a huge organization like this until you actually meet the people and they explain their job to you. It’s been really interesting, just listening to everything these people do on a day-to-day basis.”

“One of the highlights of being involved with Colby all these years is doing what I can to help students envision what their future might be. They all want a dream job when they graduate. This gives them an idea that there are a lot of paths to the summit.”
—Sandy Buck ’78, Colby trustee and part-owner of the Philadelphia Phillies
The idea for the Phillies Trek, as it became known, originated with Cole Palmeri ’24 of Hamilton, N.J. The economics major mentioned to Jay Wall, DavisConnects’ career specialist in arts, entertainment, and communications, that he dreamed of working in sports after graduation. In the United States, professional sports is big business. It generates billions of dollars in revenue annually and employs hundreds of thousands of people. To those outside the sports industry, however, the sector can feel a little opaque.

There’s no simple answer to the question of what is the best pathway to becoming an industry insider, so Palmeri, at the suggestion of the team at DavisConnects and with the blessing of President David A. Greene, reached out to Trustee Sandy Buck ’78, a stalwart supporter of the College and part-owner of the Phillies, to learn more. Even better, what if there was a way for the students to head down to Philadelphia to see for themselves?

Palmeri got in touch with Buck and learned that they shared both a love of baseball—Palmeri is a catcher and outfielder for the Colby baseball team—and the same high school, the Hun School of Princeton. Buck was delighted to help turn the Phillies Trek dream into reality. At the end of January, Palmeri and nine other students who are also interested in sports as a career headed to the ballpark to find out more.

“It was the coolest idea,” Buck said. “One of the highlights of being involved with Colby all these years is doing what I can to help students envision what their future might be. They all want a dream job when they graduate. This gives them an idea that there are a lot of paths to the summit.”

A different kind of career center

DavisConnects is not an ordinary career center. With a $25-million donation from the Davis family and trustee of its charitable foundations, Andrew Davis ’85, LL.D. ’15, as well as a supportive alumni and parent network, Colby is able to take a robust and creative approach to help students figure out their next steps after college. “A student’s economic circumstance will not be the barrier that prevents them from participating in internships, research, or global experiences,” said Damon Yarnell, the dean of student and global advancement.

“We prioritize initiatives like the Phillies Trek because we know from direct experience that connections with Colby alumni and parents change students’ lives,” Yarnell said. “Today’s Colby students are bright, curious, qualified, and can do just about anything. The chance to visit a world-class enterprise like the Phillies enables students to understand the variety of opportunities that are open to them and to see themselves in roles that they may only have dreamed about, or that they didn’t know existed.”

“Sports has always been my passion, but I never really knew what a career in sports meant. It was really interesting and very encouraging to hear how a lot of people find their way to sports and just how much they love their jobs.”
­—Pepe Villamil ’23
That’s how it worked for the students who went on the Phillies Trek, including Sally Stokes ’26 of Oakland, Maine, who figured that she’d probably learn that many employees got their start playing college baseball. Instead, she discovered that women from lots of different backgrounds work in important roles throughout the organization, and that was inspirational to her.

“I absolutely loved it,” Stokes said. “I learned so much, and I definitely got bit by the bug to work in sports. It was in the back of my mind before, but now it’s something I really do want to focus on and try to achieve. Portland Sea Dogs, that’s the only thing I know about baseball. But I’m sure that after this, I’ll be a massive Phillies fan.”

Tradition and innovation

Citizens Bank Park in South Philadelphia, the fourth stadium in Phillies history, opened less than a decade ago. Although the natural-grass ballpark still has a feeling of shiny newness about it, the venerable traditions of the Phillies are very much present.
DavisConnects prepares students for the world by delivering transformative career-oriented experiences. Directed by Dean of Student and Global Advancement Damon Yarnell, ​​DavisConnects was made possible by a $25-million gift from the Shelby Cullom Davis Charitable Fund, whose trustees include Andrew Davis ’85, LL.D. ’15, in April 2017. Andrew Davis’s commitment to Colby has included serving as a trustee from 1996 to 1999 and as a College overseer from 1999 to 2006.
The team, founded in 1883, is the oldest, continuous, one-name, one-city franchise in all of professional sports. The pride of those who work there is as obvious as the two World Series trophies from 1980 and 2008 on display in a light-filled atrium in the administrative wing.

The trophies acted like a magnet, pulling the Colby students close to take their photos with them before the day’s information sessions began. “I definitely had a fan moment by the trophy case,” said Jared McNair ’24, an African-American studies major from nearby Penns Grove, N.J. “This is my hometown team.”

Then they settled in to learn about a multitude of topics, including operations, team travel logistics, research and development, finance, social media marketing, and more.

The students got an inside view of how the Phillies hosted the World Series last fall (before ultimately losing to the Houston Astros in Game 6) and asked about that eternal mystery of ballparks: Why the heck do concessions cost so much? The short answer is that concessions are run by outside vendors and are a source of revenue for the franchises. Phillies operations staff were happy to report that the franchise hosts $1 hot-dog nights and allows fans to bring their own food and drink.

“Feel free to pick our brains on anything Phillies,” Jameson Hall, the team travel manager, said.

Students stand in a dugout at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia.
Above: Students stand in a dugout at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia.

The complex business of baseball

While doing so, the students learned the business of baseball can be like an iceberg. The elements that most fans think about—the star athletes and the games—must be supported by an enormous, multi-faceted operation, each part of which has to be done correctly in order to keep the franchise running smoothly. From scouting players in foreign countries to keeping the ballpark as packed as possible for games, the list of jobs that must be done is long.

“If people ask what the challenges are, it’s that you’re responsible for 70 or so people on a daily basis,” Hall said. “A lot of it is trying to be organized, to prioritize, and pay attention to detail.”

DavisConnects is dedicated to student success, both on campus and off and before and after graduation. The DavisConnects team provides specialized advising and fosters world-class connections.
But the work is engaging and satisfying, employees said. Although they all shared a passion for baseball, their backgrounds were diverse, with one who had previously worked as a high school band teacher and another who was an aerospace engineer for Northrop Grumman. One throughline was that many of the employees started by doing internships with the Phillies or other sports organizations.

“Everybody has very different, weird paths,” said Corinne Landry, director of baseball operations and former band teacher.

Colby students also learned that while baseball historically may be America’s national pastime, teams like the Phillies cannot simply assume that fans will attend games because they always have. Instead, teams are looking for new ways to appeal to younger generations, such as adding more social gathering spots to the ballparks.

“Baseball’s had this problem for a while. It has such a great history, but that is dying off,”
said Shannon Snellman, vice president, finance, and controller. “It’s actually becoming more of an experience now.”

Jared McNair ’24 (foreground) grew up nearby in New Jersey and appreciated the opportunity to tour the park. “This is my hometown team,” he said of the Phillies. “I definitely had a fan moment by the trophy case.”
Above: Jared McNair ’24 (foreground) grew up nearby in New Jersey and appreciated the opportunity to tour the park. “This is my hometown team,” he said of the Phillies. “I definitely had a fan moment by the trophy case.”
“Today’s Colby students are bright, curious, qualified, and can do just about anything. The chance to visit a world-class enterprise like the Phillies enables students to understand the variety of opportunities that are open to them and to see themselves in roles that they may only have dreamed about, or that they didn’t know existed.”
—Damon Yarnell, dean of student and global advancement

Finding a path to the future

The forthright way the people in the Phillies organization answered questions was valuable, as was the overview into how the business works, said Pepe Villamil ’23 of New York, N.Y., a psychology and Spanish double major who plays catcher and first base for the Colby Mules baseball team.
To date, DavisConnects has awarded more than $5 million in funding, including a projected $1.5 million for the 2022-23 academic year. That includes nearly 2,000 grants to fund global, internship, and research experiences in dozens of countries on six continents. DavisConnects has awarded Davis Global Engagement Fellowships to sponsor research and internships for students who have demonstrated exceptional depth of thought and passion in global engagement, created signature career treks and programming, supported Colby entrepreneurship through annual hackathons and pitch competitions, coordinated 15 faculty-led experiences through the Davis Fund for Global Innovation, quadrupled the number of employer partnerships to more than 1,500, and doubled student appointments and workshops to 6,000 annually.
“Sports has always been my passion, but I never really knew what a career in sports meant,” he said. “It was really interesting and very encouraging to hear how a lot of people find their way to sports and just how much they love their jobs.”

And after the day was over, Palmeri was all smiles, delighted that the Phillies Trek was even better than he had hoped it would be.

“I knew it was going to be a fun day, but I didn’t think it was going to be this fun,” he said. “Talking to the people in the front office and seeing where they came from and what they do now gave me a lot of hope that I could do the same thing.”

David Buck, executive vice president of the Phillies (and no relation to Sandy Buck), said that from his perspective, the trek worked out very well. Watching the students soak in information reminded him of an important moment in his own college days, when he went to hear a recent graduate talk about getting a job at ESPN. “It opened up the whole sports world to me,” he said. “If we were able to help one student with their future, then the day would be a complete success, in my opinion.”

Sandy Buck, too, was delighted with the outcome of the day at Citizens Bank Park.

“It went really well. I think it met or maybe exceeded the students’ expectations of what it was all about,” he said. “At the end of the day, that’s what really matters to me.”

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