Last month I connected with John Tull while working on a Fun While It Lasted piece on the Peninsula Pilots of the Carolina League. The Pilots were a down-on-their-luck baseball club in Southeastern Virginia and Tull was just one in a long list of men who tried to make a go of it on the Peninsula in the 1970’s and 1980’s.
John had some great stories and it intrigued me that he was appointed to run a Carolina League club in what was more or less his first year of full-time employment in the game. John’s interview seemed like a good way to kickoff our occasional series on Breaking Into Professional Sports, where executives and investors look back on their first year in the sports industry.
After two years in Peninsula, John Tull went on to a twenty-year (and counting) career in sports marketing and management, running teams in minor league baseball, the East Coast and International Hockey League, and professional soccer among others. Today he is the Manager of Business Development for Penn State Sports Properties.
The following is an excerpt of our complete interview with John Tull. Click here to read the full piece.
FWiL:
How did you get involved with the Peninsula Pilots in 1988? Did you have any previous sports industry experience before you were thrust into the GM role?
Tull:
I was finishing my Master’s at Indiana University-Bloomington in 1988 and working as intern in my hometown of South Bend with the South Bend White Sox for the 1988 season. This internship completed my Masters degree.
1988 was our inaugural season and we were owned by Jay Acton and Eric Margenau. I did everything from sell advertising to line the field, water the field, pull the tarp, make hot dogs, change kegs, assist with concessions inventory, calculate labor cost each night, manage souvenir inventory, etc. Pete Bock, a friend of Miles Wolff, who owned the Durham Bulls, was asked by Eric and Jay to come to South Bend and evaluate the staff. He gave those guys a report that I was a hard worker, smart kid, jack of all trades, and would be management material. John Baxter, the GM of South Bend came to me and said: “JT, we love the job you are doing. You can either stay on in South Bend and sell tickets and ads and help with concessions etc, or you can move to Hampton, Virginia as the Assistant GM of the Peninsula Pilots and help hold the fort down.”
I arrived there in the fall of 1988. When I got there, the very first day, the GM they hired for me to work for resigned. He said he could not work there. Then they hired a new GM within a few weeks who arrived in December. By February they had fired that GM and made me GM. So I went from Intern to GM in one year. Crazy times!
FWiL:
You came to the club in late 1988, a few months after Baseball America called the Gil Granger’s Virginia Generals the “worst” and “wackiest” club in America. Jay Acton and Eric Margenau had bought the club and renamed it, but you still inherited the Generals’ reputation. Can you share a few stories you heard about the Generals and the general condition you found the team in when you arrived in Virginia?
Tull:
I arrived in Hampton in October of 1988 to find a ball park that was in terrible shape. The bleachers were broken, the little concession stands were trashed and it looked like no one had played baseball there for a very long time. We were the new Peninsula Pilots who were going to play as an independent team that first year in 1989 under our field manager Jim Thrift. We had a lot of work ahead of us ranging from rebuilding the bullpens, fixing up the concession stands and restrooms and making the park presentable.
FWiL:
Talk a little bit about your experiences during that first summer of 1989.
Tull:
Our manager Jim Thrift put together a hodge podge group of baseball players ranging from New York Mets and Yankees prospects to independent players. We had some former Durham Bulls and Kinston Indians including Tim Kirk who I believe had a cameo in Bull Durham as a pitcher.
In 1989 we were supposed to have the Famous San Diego Chicken perform at the game. His picture was on the pocket schedules and everything. Things were so bad that the owners backed out and did not want to pay the Famous Chicken‘s fee. So I had to cancel him. Instead I brought in Doodles the Chick-Fil-A chicken. Some of the fans were upset.
Dale Long worked for Major League baseball and would travel the minor league parks and submit reports on the field conditions and the lighting. I remember thinking there is no way this stadium will pass any standards tests. We always did.
I remember calling games at 3pm in the afternoon because we had no tarp. Then I would watch dozens of cars pull up at 6pm under sunny skies thinking there was a game. Not hundreds of cars but dozens, but still dozens was too many as you felt bad for the folks driving in thinking there was baseball.
I was 26 years old, managing a small ticket office, concessions, stadium operations, player development with Jim Thrift, the accounting, stadium ops etc. My right hand guy Tiny was great but it was a long hard summer. I think we had the worst record in baseball. I remember constantly running to a Farm Fresh to purchase ice because we always ran out.
I stayed positive the entire time! Had to make good with what we had.
FWiL:
We’ve got to hear more about the Pilots P.A. announcer who sang “White Rabbit” in the voice of Haray Caray.
Tull:
That was Terry Armour, our beat writer from The Daily Press/Times Herald. Terry filled in as PA announcer once in a while. He was a character. One of the funniest guys I knew .
Sometimes Terry would break out Harry Caray doing Take Me Out to the Ballgame for the crowd. One night during the 7th inning stretch instead of Take Me Out to the Ballgame he started singing Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit over the PA instead. Looking back it was funny. At the time it was funny too.
Was it the right thing to do? Probably not. My ex-wife wife helped me out a lot too and also did some PA which was not that well received by the War Memorial Stadium crowd either. Lessons learned by a young GM.
Terry was a very good friend of mine back then and we remained friends when he went back to Chicago and I went back to South Bend and then off to hockey for the next 12 years. God rest his soul! Terry died in 2007 at age 46.
