The 2021 season was certainly a challenging one for anyone running a professional baseball team. But for the Somerset Patriots, there were additional challenges outside the normal course of events. For his leadership during an eventful season, Patriots president/general manager Patrick McVerry is the Ballpark Digest Executive of the Year for 2021.
Challenge 1: Shift from the independent Atlantic League to affiliated ball as the Double-A affiliate of the New York Yankees. Challenge 2: Address the ballpark upgrades required by Major League Baseball after its takeover of Minor League Baseball. Challenge 3: Maintain steady leadership after the loss of team owners Steve Kalafer right before the beginning of the season. Challenge 4: Run an operation with initial limited capacity due to COVID-19. Challenge 5: Deal with a flooded ballpark near the end of the season--and turn that situation into a fundraiser for the local community. We discuss each of these situations with McVerry in this hour-long podcast.
Jesse Goldberg-Strassler is Voice of the Lansing Lugnuts and author of The Baseball Thesaurus and the upcoming second edition of The Football Thesaurus, both from August Publications. Kevin Reichard is editor of Ballpark Digest and founder/publisher at August Publications.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Girlfriends: Trust Me Babe
When a group of women from all over the country realise they all dated the same prolific romance scammer they vow to bring him to justice. In this brand new season of global number 1 hit podcast, The Girlfriends, Anna Sinfield meets a group of funny, feisty, determined women who all had the misfortune of dating a mysterious man named Derek Alldred. Trust Me Babe is a story about the protective forces of gossip, gut instinct, and trusting your besties and the group of women who took matters into their own hands to take down a fraudster when no one else would listen. If you’re affected by any of the themes in this show, our charity partners NO MORE have available resources at https://www.nomore.org. To learn more about romance scams, and to access specialised support, visit https://fightcybercrime.org/ The Girlfriends: Trust Me Babe is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts. For more from Novel, visit https://novel.audio/. You can listen to new episodes of The Girlfriends: Trust Me Babe completely ad-free and 1 week early with an iHeart True Crime+ subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Open your Apple Podcasts app, search for “iHeart True Crime+, and subscribe today!