Staff scrambles to prep for today’s opener

It’s been a busy week for the
Scrappers’ front office team.

BY WILL HANLON

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

NILES — A lot of behind-the-scenes work by people not in team uniform helped make possible today’s Mahoning Valley Scrappers season home opener at Eastwood Field.

Stephanie Fife, Scrappers promotions manager, said she’s been looking forward to today for a while, but at the same time the office has been pretty busy.

“It’s been very hectic,” Fife said. “I can tell you that. Everybody in the office is trying to get everything ready for the opener. Everything you can imagine is coming at us right now.”

This season marks the first full year Fife will spend with the organization, and so far she loves it.

“I love coming to work every morning and never want to not be here,” Fife said. “There’s never a dull moment.”

The assistant general manager, Jordan Taylor, agrees: Hours in the office have been long and hectic. “The people here are like a second family to me,” he said, explaining how often he’s been at work lately.

Taylor’s main duties include generating new business, keeping current clients and groups and developing different marketing strategies to improve the group sales rate.

“As far as perks go, the biggest thing is just working in a baseball stadium,” Taylor said. “When I’m walking into work, I’m walking into a stadium.”

Andrea Zagger, the club’s box officer manager, oversees all aspects of the box office, from season ticket to daily ticket sales. Her people have been considerably busy at the ticket window lately.

“We don’t get to make it out of the office too often,” Zagger said.

Zagger said opening day is one of the biggest days of the year for the organization, and her crew is preparing for a night of long lines and, probably, a sellout.

Cleaning, and prepping

Dave Silverman, a summer intern for the organization, works as an assistant to the director of concessions. Silverman said a lot of the deliveries started to come in more than a week ago, such as beer, food and paper towels for the restroom. Silverman said a lot of time lately has also been devoted to cleaning.

Brandon Jirousek, creative services manager, is in charge of video production for the stadium.

“This year, we put a lot of investments into the video board, and we’re going to utilize it a lot more than we have since we got it three years ago,” Jirousek said.

Jirousek said that in the last couple of weeks they’ve been shooting videos of the players and have plans to “spice up” the PA system. Jirousek hopes all the work his team has done recently gets a warm reception from the fans.

Head greenskeeper Dan Stricko said he and his crew are ready for the big day, too. They’ve recently completed renovations on the field and are finishing up last minute things for tonight.

“I’ve put in almost 100 hours this week,” Stricko said. “Everybody thinks getting to work on a baseball field is a dream job, but they don’t realize it’s a lot of hard work.”

This will be Stricko’s first season as head greenskeeper.

“Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve wanted to be around a baseball field, and now, here I am.”