Al Guido Interview: Getting Started With The Lakewood BlueClaws

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00:00 So talk about the early days, South Jersey, Comcast, I mean, starting getting into business.

00:07 Was the Lakewood Blue Claws before Comcast or after Comcast?

00:10 Lakewood Blue Claws was after Comcast.

00:13 Yeah, so I played small Division III football.

00:16 Where?

00:17 The College of New Jersey.

00:18 All right.

00:19 And I've loved sports my whole life.

00:21 And my father, one day, I was working at American Express, and my father took a classified ad,

00:27 which you will remember, a classified ad from the Philadelphia Inquirer.

00:34 And they were hosting a job fair at the Philadelphia Spectrum for sales associates.

00:40 And I went down there, I bought my $15 upper level ticket, I got hired, I was making six

00:45 bucks an hour selling tickets out of the Philadelphia Spectrum for a team called the Philadelphia

00:49 Wings, which is indoor lacrosse.

00:52 And then fast forward, whatever, 20 years now, and it's been a wild ride.

00:55 But Comcast was great to me.

00:57 I loved my time in the NBA and NHL.

00:59 And then minor league baseball, if you're an aspiring, if anyone's on here watching

01:04 aspiring sports executive, minor league baseball is great.

01:07 So we go from the Flyers, the Phantoms, the Wings, Wells Fargo Arena, Eddie Snyder, the

01:14 Legacy, to the Lakewood Blue Claws.

01:16 Way to go.

01:17 How did that work?

01:18 You know what?

01:19 I thought I did sales for a while, and I was lucky enough to be kind of promoted up through

01:23 the ranks pretty early in my career.

01:25 And I really wanted to lead a team again.

01:27 I was a high school quarterback, I was a high school point guard, and to me, to be the captain

01:32 of a quote-unquote ship was important.

01:34 And Lakewood gave me an opportunity through that ownership group to manage a staff.

01:39 And it was the first time I got a chance to have my own staff.

01:41 And it was great, because they owned the Blue Claws, which was AAA or single-A Philadelphia

01:45 Phillies, and also the Trenton Thunder.

01:48 So I was able to get a little bit of knowledge between the Yankees and Phillies organizations.

01:52 And to minor league, there's nothing, as we know, like minor league baseball.

01:55 Did you wear the mascot outfit for a while, too, or not?

01:57 Only on my last day.

01:59 They ran me through every single position on my last day.

02:01 But the only bad story I have is I showed up in a suit for my interview, and they laughed

02:06 at me.

02:07 They said, "Hey, buddy, this is minor league baseball."

02:09 So the next day, I came in in shorts.

02:11 By day three, the bell rings in the office.

02:15 And when the bell rings, it means it's time to pull the tarp.

02:18 Now I didn't know that.

02:19 And so I'm looking around, and all these people are running.

02:21 And I'm like, "What's going on?"

02:22 They said, "Hey, Guido, did you bring your tarp clothes?"

02:25 And I'm like, "What's tarp clothes?"

02:26 They said, "Oh, we didn't tell you that in your interview?"

02:28 So by day three, I was pulling tarp.

02:30 And this is why.

02:32 Minor league baseball teaches you all the skills, EQ and IQ, because even at the highest

02:37 levels, sales to sales, marketing to marketing, operations to operations, the ability to do

02:41 it all across the spectrum at minor league baseball is something I'll never forget.

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