David Price's $217M Deal

David Price, one of the best left-handed pitchers in the League, recently signed a $217 million deal with the Boston Red Sox.   

The former Blue Jays pitcher  received the highest signing deal for a pitcher, and the seventh highest in baseball history.  The deal with the Red Sox calls for 7 years, no deferred money and a three-year opt-out. Price had one of his best season in 2015, going 18-5, 225 strikeouts over 220+ innings.  

Rock Footballs Road to NCAA Tournament

Last Saturday, the Slippery Rock Football team won against Assumption College.  That win takes them to this Saturday's game against Shepherd in West Virginia.  This is the first time since 1998 that Slippery Rock will be playing in the NCAA quarterfinals.  1998 was the only time that Slippery Rock made it to the national semifinals.  This will be the fifth time that the two teams meet.  The Rock have a 3-1 advantage in the all-time series.  Shepherd will have the home field advantage this Saturday.  The winner of this game will play in the national semifinals on December 12.
Let's Go Rock!

Our Family's Annual Turkey Bowl

In 2007, my family started a tradition that has lasted ever since.  Every Thanksgiving my entire family, 30+ people, come to my house for Thanksgiving dinner and its related festivities.  At about 2 or 3'clock we play our annual Turkey Bowl Football Game.  The tradition, spearheaded by my dad, has a complete set of rules and regulations.  An MVP trophy is awarded at Christmas and the recipient may keep it until the following Thanksgiving at which time it must be returned.  Each MVP recipient gets their name engraved on the trophy.  The football game itself ranges in player's ages from 6 to 85 years old.  The game is two hand touch, for obvious reasons.  Rules are usually made up as the game goes seeing as the officials are on the field playing in the game as well.  The second year of its installment, I won the MVP award, the first girl in our family to do so.  It is always a crazy but fun time spent with family.

 

Career Interview Project: John Monsted

For my Intro to Sport Management class, we were required to interview a professional in our career interest area.  After looking around, I finally settled on interviewing John Monsted, the Chief Financial Officer of the YMCA in the Harrisburg Area.  I interviewed John last Wednesday and we had a great conversation.  It was a great experience and I gained some very insightful knowledge.  I learned that there are major differences in how nonprofit and for-profit organizations operate.  Nonprofit organizations do not have the budget to pay more employees than they need.  Because of this, they lack a Human Resources Department.  As CFO, John also handles and heads all Human Resource responsibilities.  After talking with John for almost an hour and a half, I walked out of there with a practicum for this upcoming winter.  It was a great experience and it was a pleasure to talk to such a humble individual.  Needless to say, I am very anxious to begin my practicum in December.

Setting Up a Winter Practicum

Last Wednesday, I settled the dates and responsibilities that I will  be doing for my winter practicum.  This will be my first practicum.  I am doing it with the YMCA in Harrisburg, PA.  I will be supervised by the CFO of the Harrisburg Area YMCA, John Monsted.  Some of my responsibilities will include:

• participating in and/or observing regular financial and non-financial operations

For financial operations:

• Accounts Payable
• Payroll
• Human Resources
• General ledger reconciliation
• end-of-year reconciliation and closing
• various internal audits
• working with external auditors
• W-2 preparation
• United Way applications

For non-financial operations:

• membership operations
• Development Department initiatives
• Marketing Department initiatives
• sports-related operations that occur throughout the Association while I am completing my practicum.

I am looking forward to starting this new and exciting experience on December 14th. 

Yogi Berra Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom

On November 24, Yogi Berra and Willie Mays were both awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  Over the summer, in my Sports in the 21st Century class, I wrote a blog post about Yogi Berra and his legacy that he left not only on baseball, but those around him.  In the post I also stated how at that time, there was a petition to award Yogi Berra with this Medal of Freedom.  It was fulfilling and great to see all the people who recognized his legacy and sign the petition.  Yogi not only played as catcher for the New York Yankees for 14 seasons, but he also served in World War II in the Normandy Invasion.  He was just shy of personally receiving the award; Berra passed away in September of this year.  He is a well deserving individual and is certainly continuing with his witty "Yogisms" up in heaven.

Yogi's son Larry Berra receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom

Which MLB Teams are Leading the Social Media Charts

Despite the Kansas City Royals winning the World Series this year, the New York Yankees lead the charts in the most Twitter followers and the most Facebook fans.  The Boston Red Sox follow the Yankees on the leader board.  The Royals don't come in until 12th and the New York Mets at 14th.  Even though the Yankees are at the top, the NBA team, the Los Angeles Lakers, have more followers on Twitter than the Yankees and Red Sox combined.  This just goes to show that MLB has a lot to do to capture the attention of the social media world.