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Weekly UpdatesChicago native Pete Laven fell in love with Little Rock as an Arkansas Travs summer employee in 1992, returned in 2000 to help out full-time in the Travs front office, and was promoted by Bill Valentine to the team's general manager position in 2006. He's helped the franchise's move to the plush Dickey-Stephens Park in 2007 and, learning under Valentine as well as with stops early on in the Single A circuit at Albany, Ga., and Kannapolis, N.C., he's helped bring the club up-to-date in its marketing and sales.
Meanwhile, when he finally gets to walk around the park from the sixth inning on, he might be spotted eyeing the scoreboard for the latest Cubs updates while holding out hope, like all lifelong Cubbies fans, that "this will be the year."
ArkansasSports360.com sat down with Laven, who turns 40 in August, during a break in the Travs' schedule. (And, though he hears his name called a variety of ways, it's "Lav-un" like ESPN basketball analyst Steve Lavin, with a short-vowel sound.)
AS360.com: What's a guy from Chicagoland doing in Little Rock all these years now?
Laven: I grew up in LaGrange, about 25 minutes outside of Chicago ... I graduated college back in 1991 as a journalism major and had no idea what I wanted to do. Minor league baseball was becoming more than just farm teams for the majors, they were marketing themselves as a way to be a business on their own. We had a suburban minor league team up there, the King County Cougars, an Orioles affiliate, that was successful, very cutting edge. I liked what I saw and thought, 'How do I get a job in this sport, I'd love to get a job with a minor league team.' I met with their [general manager] and he told me about a job fair in Florida every year. You slap down $275 and get your resume posted. I ended up getting hired by the Travelers and joined five other guys for a summer here, sweeping up peanut shells and mopping up Coke stains around the ballpark, all for $600 a month and a rent-free apartment back in 1992. I loved every minute of it, so I wanted to see how far I would go.
AS360.com: What was your title then?
Laven: I was a stadium operations intern. We did everything from g rounds crew ... they didn't do on-field promotions back then, so our job in a game consisted of running the trash from the beer stands to the trash dump and shagging beer for the cooler. The payoff was we got free Busch beer at the Warren House apartments, where they put us up.
I came back the following year as director of stadium operations, basically in charge of the interns. After that season, with the small staff they had--three people, Bill [Valentine], an assistant GM and a secretary--I knew if I wanted to advance in the system, I had to go out there and get work.
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When I came back in 2000, I was assistant GM/director of concessions, but truth is we all wear a lot of hats. It was still a small staff at Ray Winder Field.
Hap [Seliga, Valentine's assistant] was doing a lot of the day-to-day stuff for Bill and did almost all the sales by himself. He definitely brought the organization up to speed on what other teams were doing. That's what I was used to doing too with those other teams ... I never thought Hap would leave, but he had a passion for bicycling and went into that business, and I immediately filled his shoes in 2003.
AS360.com: Valentine surprised everyone by retiring in March. Does he still visit the ballpark? Have things changed in your role since he left? Did his retirement that close to the season surprise you?
Laven: Bill, he comes around every so often but he'll call a lot. His wife is still our bookkeeper. He just called me about 20 minutes ago, in fact. He'll call just to talk about the team, if they're struggling, what's going on. He wants to talk about baseball like he always did.
With his retirement, it's different now. Everybody asks me, 'Why haven't you moved into Bill's office.' Well, I can't clean my own desk off right now with all that's on it. It's not a priority. There area lot of things that come before that. It will probably be after the season is over before I move in to Bill's office.
Bill is such a consummate figure around the team that the atmosphere is different on a day-to-day basis. With the timing of it, it's bee hard to reflect on the differences. We're just all fortunate to have worked for him.
It was kind of a surprise when he retired. They always talked that Bill doesn't know what the word retire means. But he confided in me a couple of weeks before that he was strongly considering it, just the long hours and he might want to start doing some other things and get rid of the stress that goes into worrying about certain things, like if it was going to rain. Talking to him, he can't be more happy and relaxed now.
AS360.com: Being GM for a minor league team, of course, isn't like a major league GM with rosters, signing players and such?
Laven: Right, it's all about day-to-day operations. We don't have anything to do with signing players, releasing players, trading players, that's all done by the parent club.
AS360.com: Since the move to Dickey-Stephens, has there been one area in the change of operations that's been most pleasing to you?
Laven: I think just the overall fan experience, seeing the families come out. You probably wouldn't have seen that at Ray Winder Field, because now you have wives and mothers who enjoy it because of the Kids Corner and they can bring their children there. There are more things going on--the walk-in gift shop, the museum--that appeal to the non-diehard baseball fan. You can't survive anymore in minor league baseball on the diehard fans coming out to support you. You have to appeal to a broader range. We do that, from the Hookslide Corner [a beer area that's almost like a club] to the Kids Corner.
AS360.com: When the new park opened, we heard it said that it would be fun at first but the newness would quickly wear off. From the huge crowds you've had in Year 3, though, the opposite seems to be true. Are you seeing the support continue to grow?
Laven: Yes, we're still getting new people experiencing [Dickey-Stephens] for the first time. People have busy schedules but are finally getting here and falling in love with the place ... It has to level off at some point, but this year we're having more fun than ever. We're on a good pace to top the attendance record again. We'd like to get up to 390,000 fans this year. That's our goal.
AS360.com: What new attractions have been implemented this season?
Laven: Once a month we're doing post-game concerts in the Hookslide Corner, calling it the Corona-Dos Equis Concert Series. We're continuing to tap into the new audience of young 21- to 42-year-olds that inhabit that area ... We have some good local concert acts and some regional ones that fans will really like ... We have a dance team, the Halos, coming out every Saturday. They debuted May 9. It's not something we do over a 70-game schedule, but once a week gets people talking, and that's the part I love. Everybody has an opinion on it.
AS360.com: OK, we know this is silly to ask, but Cubs or White Sox?
Laven: Cubs all the way. I'll always be a Cubs fan. They'll win the World Series again, I just hope it's in my lifetime. It's been difficult seeing the Cardinals and White Sox win the World Series lately, or seeing the city celebrate the White Sox winning. I couldn't take any joy in it.
AS360.com? So, you went to Cubs games a lot as a kid?
Laven: Yes. When I was a kid, a bleacher seat at Wrigley Field was $3.50 and you couldn't purchase them until right before the game. Me and my brothers used to bring a baseball and our gloves and play catch on Waveland Avenue, then get our tickets and rush down and get seats down close to the baskets so we could get balls during batting practice. We spent as much time as we could in the summer at Wrigley. It's different now, though. Bleacher seats are sold in advance and you have to pay scalpers $100 to get one.
AS360.com: Finish this sentence, "I have the best seat in the house because ..."
Laven: I get to see so many different kinds of people on a day-to-day basis."
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