![\"\"](\"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/mystman.jpg\" "\\"mystman\\"")
<\/a>A friend of the Sombrero has had quite a month of May (and parts of April).\u00a0 He accepted a job with a large scouting agency to analyze prospect statistics for a summer, he earned his masters degree from a very high-ranking economics program, and he is currently in a long interview process with a certain desert-located big league team named after a snake.\u00a0 If I seem like I am being a little cryptic, it is because our friend, who will be referred to as Eat-a for the remainder of this post, has not been given the job quite yet.\u00a0 Eat-a has been kind enough to include me a little in the process and has enlightened me as to what is expected from realistic applicants for jobs in the big leagues.\u00a0 I personally found some of it surprising, but the majority of his process has been largely what I would have expected given how coveted these jobs surely are.<\/p>\nEat-a played ball in college with most of the Sombrero writers and appeared on numerous All-MWC teams as a Pioneer.\u00a0 He captained the team as a senior, and threw professionally in Australia after his graduation.\u00a0 Essentially, Eat-a had a very successful career in the game and we all greatly benefitted from being his teammate.<\/p>\n
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Academically Eat-a was nothing short of exceptional.\u00a0 At Grinnell, he majored in both Economics and Mathematics, two of the more challenging majors the school offers.\u00a0 Both departments boast star-studded faculty members wearing degrees like merit badges.\u00a0 Eat-a was an Academic All-MWC selection three times and earned Dean\u2019s List recognition practically every semester.\u00a0 The most impressive thing about his undergraduate career in the classroom was how rarely he actually found himself there.\u00a0 Eat-a basically did not need lectures to succeed because his talents in academics are so vast.<\/p>\n
Eat-a took a year off after graduating from Grinnell, and in that year not only played in Australia, but he also returned to Grinnell to coach the pitching staff.\u00a0 That season, at the top of his rotation sat two players who eventually would be voted MWC Pitcher of the Year.\u00a0 One of the arms belonged to Rickathee<\/a>, a Sombrero-wearer.<\/p>\n Eat-a then attended a graduate program in economics at the University of Texas, a member of an international class of surely some of the finest applicants practically any school in the country could boast.\u00a0 While there, Eat-a developed his dream (and the skills needed to attain it): to work within a front office with the ultimate goal of becoming a Major League general manager, a dream job for any geeky baseball fan (all of the Sombero-wearers).\u00a0 I personally would trade at least some body parts for that kind of career.\u00a0 My guess is that every one of the writers for the Sombrero other than Brettsta<\/a> would do likewise.<\/p>\n Eat-a received his masters a week ago, but his interview began well before his graduation.\u00a0 The interview has been primarily over the phone and via email and, up until a week or so ago, has been mostly a getting to know one another type of thing.\u00a0 Then it started getting a little more stressful. Eat-a called me around 1AM Thursday night regarding a recent \u201cquiz\u201d he had been given as part of his interview process.\u00a0 This quiz required Eat-a to make statistical arguments for a number of awards as well as identify strengths and weaknesses of that desert-based team interviewing him.\u00a0 He had to describe creative projects he had been involved in relevant to baseball as well as answer several trivia questions.\u00a0 He was asked to name a player whose production so far in 2010 is unsustainably high and why it is unsustainable.\u00a0 He also was provided video of three anonymous prospects and asked to visually evaluate them.\u00a0 This is the part that Eat-a asked me to help on.\u00a0 Fortunately for us the players were all high profile 1st<\/sup>-rounders and had few if any real flaws.<\/p>\n Eat-a will find out about his future with the Snakes in the next couple of days, maybe even today, and I assure you that I have not seen him this nervous since he was a player. Eat-a\u2019s level of urgency and intensity always showed when he was throwing the ball, and while the front office is an area of the game that is new to him, I notice the same urgency and intensity in him that I noticed while he was playing.\u00a0 We are all really proud of him and know there is no better applicant on the planet.\u00a0 Let\u2019s keep Eat-a in mind these next couple of days. May 25, 2010 A friend of the Sombrero has had quite a month of May (and parts of April).\u00a0 He accepted a job with a large scouting agency to analyze prospect statistics for a summer, he earned his masters degree from a very high-ranking economics program, and he is currently in a long interview process […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,15,6,14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":322,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319\/revisions\/322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegoldensombrero.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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