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Anything BUT Politics
A groundbreaking new podcast, Anything BUT Politics, is redefining how we view political figures by focusing on everything about them—except their political careers.
Anything BUT Politics
Beyond the Diamond: Fisher Cats' New Leader
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Taylor Fisher's remarkable journey from teenage fan to General Manager of the New Hampshire Fisher Cats epitomizes the American dream of turning passion into profession. Growing up just 45 minutes away in Merrimack, Massachusetts, Taylor attended Fisher Cats games decades before he would ever imagine running the organization. His story serves as proof that with determination, education, and a clear vision, careers in sports are attainable.
The serendipity of sharing a last name with the team he now manages brings a smile to Taylor's face as he recounts his 13-year climb through baseball's ranks. After studying finance at Bentley University and sports leadership at Northeastern, Taylor's career began with humble game-day internships before landing his first GM role with a summer collegiate team at age 22. Eight successful years with the Nashville Sounds followed, where he rose to VP of Ticket Sales and Service while meeting his wife at the ballpark.
Taylor provides fascinating insights into the true role of a minor league GM, dispelling common misconceptions. Unlike their major league counterparts who handle player trades and roster construction, minor league GMs focus entirely on business operations and fan experience. The Toronto Blue Jays control all player development aspects, while Taylor ensures both players and fans have exceptional experiences at the ballpark. His perspective is refreshingly honest: "Every day I get to work for a baseball team, my office is a ballpark. It's not that serious."
Now back in New England with his young family, Taylor's vision for the Fisher Cats is ambitious. "The first 20 years of Fisher Cats baseball was awesome," he shares, "but the next 20 are going to be a whole different level." He wants fans to see games as "a three-hour mental vacation" from life's stresses. With Diamond Baseball Holdings' resources behind him and his deep understanding of creating memorable game experiences, Taylor Fisher is poised to elevate New Hampshire's only professional sports team to unprecedented heights.
Join us at the ballpark this season to experience Taylor's vision firsthand. With 69 home games offering 69 entirely different fan experiences, there's always something new to discover at a Fisher Cats game!
Anything But Politics is a groundbreaking new podcast that is redefining how we view political figures by focusing on everything about them—except their political careers. Co-hosted by former journalist and media expert Tiffany Eddy and seasoned lobbyist and ex-politico Tom Prasol, this video podcast dives into the personal lives, passions, and pivotal experiences of notable figures, offering a refreshing and intimate look at who they are beyond the public eye.
Meet Taylor Fisher, New Fisher Cats GM
Speaker 1Hi everyone, I'm Tiffany Eddy.
Speaker 2And I'm Tom Preysol.
Speaker 1And we are so excited to welcome you back to another episode.
Speaker 2Of Anything but Politics.
Speaker 1Where we pretty much talk about, you know.
Speaker 2Anything but Politics.
Speaker 1But you know what? Today is exciting? Because we're going to even take a departure from politics and we're going to go into the sports world where we can talk about sports right.
Speaker 2Yeah, I think this is going to be the easiest anything but politics we've ever done, because there's really no reason to even come close to dipping our toe into politics. And so today we're lucky enough to be joined by the newest general manager. I believe it's the fifth in the team's history of the Something like that. Something like that of the New Hampshire Fisher Cats. So welcome, taylor Fisher. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's such a pleasure to have you on Now. First question that I have to ask and you and I bumped into each other this morning at the Boys and Girls Club Foundation of Friends Breakfast but your last name is how do you spell your last name? How do you pronounce that?
Speaker 3It's the same way. It's Fisher Fisher. Oddly convenient it's. How do you pronounce it?
Speaker 1It's the same way. It's Fisher Oddly convenient. So did they like when they put out the search to find a new general manager. Was there a criteria that your last name has to be Fisher or?
Speaker 3maybe. But when, once I got the job back in December, I started back in December, my mom was like they're going to think you own the team and I was like that's best case scenario.
Speaker 1Did you?
Speaker 2buy the team? Definitely not.
Speaker 1No, no, but your name's on all the clothes.
Speaker 3It's on every piece of clothing so like how cool is this uh, it's, it's been awesome, um, I started back on December 2nd, um, born and raised in Merrimack, massachusetts, so I came uh to Fisher Cats games. Uh, 20 years ago, um, before I started my career working in baseball. So it's just this crazy full circle moment where now my friends and family get to come to our games for a team that I now get to run where I was a fan when I was I don't know a teenager, and now I get to bring my wife and our two little kids to the ballpark too. So it's just extra special.
Speaker 1That is awesome. So tell us a little bit about growing up in Merrimack, massachusetts. How did your family bring you up to the Fisher-Katt games and what are your memories from that?
Speaker 3So yeah, born and raised Merrimack, massachusetts, so about 45 minutes southeast of here, I just kind of like love Meyer League baseball in general. So we went to a lot of Portland Seadogs games up in Maine. My aunt and uncle were season ticket holders there, so we went to a lot of Portland Seadogs Seadogs games. Um, up in Maine. My aunt and uncle were season ticket holders there, so we went to a ton of Seadogs games because they just doled out their season tickets to everyone in the family all the time. So got to go to a ton of Seadogs games but still went to a handful of Lowell Spinners games a little bit closer to home and then, um, fisher Cats games as well. So I came to a small handful of Fisher Cats games growing up and it was just, it's just been kind of weird. Like 20 years later, walking back into the ballpark for the first time back in the week of Thanksgiving was my first time, like back home, back in the stadium, and I was like I kind of remember all this.
Speaker 2So. So when you growing up in Merrimack, what did you do? Like were you a baseball player. I know we kind of talked about this, but you're tall. You look like you'd be a heck of a pitcher, but you know.
Speaker 3Yeah, the baseball career was cut short. I think I played T-ball. It ended around fourth grade. I played basketball and soccer pretty much my whole life through high school and then like intramurals in college and all that was not like some five-star athlete by any any sense of the imagination, but just grew up a die-hard Boston sports fan, and so if you had to rank all the Boston teams, the Red Sox are number one. Sure, so for as long as I can remember, at least since middle school, like I've been telling everyone that I'm gonna run the the Red Sox one day. At the time I didn't really know what that entailed. I just like this was pipe dream in my head. But then once I finally realized that you can truly have a career in sports and not just play sports, growing up and professionally like, every step in my career has kind of been like is does this get me closer to the Red Sox?
Speaker 2Yeah, and I was hoping you could tell me a little bit about that, because I know you stayed local. I think you went to Bentley for undergrad, so what does it take to get to where you're at? Like, what do you major in?
Speaker 1Yeah, what skills do you need to become the general manager of a minor league team?
Speaker 3You need a little bit of everything. So, on the school side, I went to school for corporate finance and accounting and I feel old saying this, but when I went to college, sports management wasn't a common major. Bentley is a 100% business school. So what I like to tell people is that Bentley was really hard. They churn out accountants and people in finance and all that, and it's a great school. It's a phenomenal school.
Speaker 3Um, my grandfather, um, graduated from there and he was an accountant and so I really thought I wanted to follow in his footsteps. Got to sophomore year, accounting classes were so hard and I was like I don't think I really want to do this. Um, but I but I stuck with it, got my degree in corporate finance and accounting. But really, what Bentley is known for is they just churn out people to the big four accounting firms. That's like their notoriety and they do an amazing job of that. But I didn't want to do that Like I wanted. I didn't want to be a number at a huge firm. And so my one of my professors, senior year, reached out and was like hey, like what, I want to help you. Like, what do you want to do? What kind of questions do you have? And I mentioned again the goal of running the Red Sox and he said his um, one of his, uh, former colleagues was a professor at Northeastern um, where they had a relatively new masters of sports leadership program. Um, so I applied, got in there. It kind of aligned nicely because I graduated from Bentley like the tail end of the recession.
Speaker 3So I was essentially unemployed for 13 months after graduation. I was working at a before and after school program that I had worked at in high school and through college and a couple of random jobs here and there, but I was essentially unemployed. So I had the time to go to grad school. So I went to Northeastern. All my classmates were like there were classmates like me who had aspirations to work in sports, but then I had classmates who worked for ESPN, the SEC network, like all these college athletic departments and sports teams. I was like this is awesome, like this is the networking I wanted to do. And then one of my classmates she was actually the assistant general manager of a summer collegiate baseball team in Lynn, massachusetts and they needed game day internships and you needed an internship to complete your master's. So my classmate actually hired me, um, as a game day intern. I'm in that, got my foot in the door Um and I?
Speaker 2what kind of courses do you take for sports leadership? You know, I'm just curious Is?
Speaker 3there. Yeah, there's a bunch of different things. There's like, uh, venue operations, there's like sports marketing, there's um ticket sales and service, and so there's just a wide variety of. You can kind of hone um your class schedule based on kind of what avenue you want to go, because a lot of um, like a lot of people, use sports leadership to go more on the athletic director side or collegiate athletics, and the collegiate athletic world is way different than the professional sports world. Um, so there was a whole multitude of classes and it was just like for me that was a hundred times easier than Bentley, but it was because it was something I was so, so passionate about, that Like every class I had almost a hundred, and like it was the four oh and every class, like I was like this is what I know I want to do.
Speaker 1And that's so awesome, because if you're good at it and you love it, then you know that that's where you're going to be excelling.
Speaker 3So that makes perfect sense.
Speaker 1And you were always. Baseball was always kind of the center of your focus or where you wanted to be going.
From Fan to Sports Career Path
Speaker 3Not initially until I had the internship. So opening night in Lynn we were kind of told on the front end a good opening night in Lynn was like 1,500 people, very small stadium, summer ball, summer collegiate. So if we got to 1,500, that was a good night. We get to opening night, pure chaos, for good reason Huge crowd for that stadium standards we had 2,300 people and the lines were so long at concessions and everyone's having a beautiful night, everyone's having a blast.
Speaker 3And the thing I remember most is so the gm. His name was bill terlecky. He worked in baseball for almost 40 years, huge mentor to a ton of people that still work in baseball, and I was just very fortunate that he was my general manager and so there's a time during the game where there was basically every game day intern was working one concession stand. It was a pizza pizza stand and we're lined up all the way down these tables just dishing out pizza to all the fans. Because the line was literally all the way down the concourse and he came around the, came around the corner and he just started fist pumping and he's like that's what I love, like that's what we need, like everyone just jumped in and did what was needed.
Speaker 3And, um, I went home that night because I was still living at home at this point and I said to my parents, I'm gonna work in baseball for the rest of my life. And they're like pump the brakes, it's day, it's truly day one, the first game, at least I'd, I'd worked up until the opening night. But first game and and the books like pump the brakes a little bit. I was like no, like I know. And they're like okay, like let's see where this goes.
Speaker 1Um, and now we're year 13 is this year wow, you're 13, so you went from that internship and and yeah what were some of the next stops to bring you here to the Fisher Cats?
Speaker 3so stop two. Um, this is a lot more glamorous sign than it was. But after my game day internship season, Bill called me into his office after the season it was like, hey, I want to see how I can help you fully get your foot into the sports world for good. Yeah, that's wonderful.
Speaker 3And when I got to his office by this point I had a full-time job actually, and so I drove there for my full-time job. And when I got to his office he was like I had zero intention of this being how this conversation was going to go. But one of the other teams in the league just called me. They're looking for a general manager. And I was like well, that's cool.
Speaker 3But like what's that have to do with me, bill? And he was like I think you should be the general manager. And I was like what are you talking about? I was like I was a game day intern. And he's like oh, no, no, no, like it's different in summer ball. Like the gms here, for the most part he's like I'm old, I've been in here doing it for a long time, but like a lot of gms are just like they're really young, they're really hungry, they just you need to have great work ethic, you need to have fun and you'll figure it out. And I was like, well, if you think I can do it, like I'm all for it.
Speaker 2This is like dream job step right out of the gate right out of the gate.
Speaker 3Let's figure it out. He introduced me to the owners. I got the job. What I like to tell people, which is very true, is my title was general manager, because I was literally the only employee. They couldn't give me another job and I learned a ton. It was like a game day internship on steroids. I had to do everything. I had to sign players, which I was horrible at. I don't have an eye for baseball talent I was horrible at. I don't have an eye for baseball talent but I had to figure out concessions and transportation and social media and ticket sales and everything. So it was awesome.
Speaker 3And was this local as well? Sorry, that was in Old Orchard Beach, maine. Okay, so there's a 30. Great spot. Yeah, I lived a quarter mile from the beach the ballpark's like maybe a mile from the beach. It was my first time truly living alone, so that was. It was just fun, like first fun experience living alone, um, and I got to do everything. I learned what I liked, what I didn't like, what I was good at, what I was bad at and what I needed to do better if I wanted to like progress in my career. Um, so I have a question about this.
Speaker 2Go for for it. So what were the crowds like up in old orchard as compared to your internship in Lynn Cause I feel like, being a summer resort area, there's gotta be bigger crowds.
Speaker 3Uh no, because those crowds like to go to the beach. Okay, they don't like to watch baseball. So, even though we were like right by the beach, everyone's at the beach. Um, so old orchard beach is, there's like 8,000 people that live there year-round. During the summer, 120,000 people live there year-round and they all go to the beach. That's crazy so the crowds are a little rough most of the time. Also, too, we're so close to Portland, so we're competing with the Seadogs and the Seadogs are the Red Sox AA affiliate Like that's a huge draw, so not as successful as.
Speaker 1I would have liked. So about how many people would go to those games.
Speaker 3On a good night, a few hundred.
Speaker 1Okay, yeah, and what was the mascot?
Speaker 3Well, it was the Raging Tide. So yeah, the Old Orchard Beach Raging Tide. The logo is just like a big wave in the shape of kind of like a baseball crashing in on the shore.
Speaker 1That's so funny.
Speaker 2So okay, so you work as a general manager up in Old Orchard, and then what's stop? Number three yeah, three.
Speaker 3So the Raging Tide were owned by a retired couple, john and Pam Gallo, and they're the best. They were working alongside me through all this stuff. But basically they were funding the team with their retirement and at the end of the season they're like, hey, we actually want to enjoy retirement and not pour money into this baseball team. Totally respect that we still check in every so often, I still need to say hi to them now that I'm back home but they decided to shut down the team at the end of that season. So I was unemployed for a short period of time and then I got my first step into affiliated baseball, minor league baseball, and I became a sponsorship account manager with the Frederick Keys, who at the time they were the single A affiliate of the Baltimore Orioles. So, like all throughout my career, I kept kind of going back to sales and so when this position opened, like trying to get brands to market themselves in minor league baseball, like that was really exciting to me and so that was stop three in Frederick.
Speaker 1And then Nashville.
Speaker 3And then Nashville. Yeah, so I was in Nashville for eight years. So I spent stop three in Frederick and then Nashville and then Nashville. Yeah so I was in Nashville for eight years. So I spent two years in Frederick, made a lot of friends there, had a lot of success there and then made the transition down to Nashville, essentially as an account executive on the ticket sales and partnership team my title was business development and then spent eight years there. I got promoted three times over eight years and then when I finished up there in November, I was the vice president of ticket sales and service, so kind of overseeing the whole ticket sales world.
Speaker 2For the sounds Well, I think I read a story that ticket sales exploded under you.
Speaker 3I would say so. My friends in Nashville might give me crap for that, but yeah, I would I would say so yeah we had a lot of success down there. What was the secret sauce?
Speaker 2I, I think the beauty.
Speaker 3The beauty of nashville is we are in a major league size market. You have the titans, you have the predators, you have nashville sc um. But the awesome thing about the sounds is that they're the longest tenured professional sports team in Middle Tennessee, and so so many people have so many memories coming to Sounds games, and so there was an old stadium that was down there for a while, very run down, and then the new ballpark opened in 2015, just before I got there and so the city was kind of like reinvigorated for the sounds. But the thing is, all those other options in town are really expensive, so, relatively, the sounds are extremely affordable.
Speaker 3But we're like right downtown, so easy to get to, awesome fan experience, incredible time, and middle Tennessee has over 2 million people in it, so you have a huge market of people to pull from. So we definitely worked really, really hard. But we also had this awesome fan base to pull from and we did have a ton of success. We rose to be in the top revenue team in all of minor league baseball. So that's something I'm really proud of for myself and our team, because we worked really, really hard that whole time and it was just like an absolute pleasure to be part of that organization for as long as I did so. Is that where you met your wife? That is where I met her. We met at the ballpark.
Speaker 2So in Nashville.
Speaker 1Sounds like a good story. Let's park here. Here's to meeting your wife.
Breaking Into Baseball Management
Speaker 3She worked in our ticket office on the game day staff. I was working in the front office and basically when I started down there the whole front office was really just we were all in our early to mid-20s and so it was just one big friend group. And so you're in Nashville. I don't know if you two have been in Nashville, but like Broadway's awesome. Yeah, a bunch of bars, live music everywhere, so like everyone on staff like just went to Broadway like virtually every night and just had a grand old time. So my wife Becca, she became part of the friend group and it just kind of started organically from there and now we're about to celebrate our sixth wedding anniversary this year. So congratulations.
Speaker 3But yeah, so Nashville, all the most significant things in my life happened since I moved to Nashville and so we met each other, got married, we now have two kids, we bought our first house down there. All of the most important, like I would say, career success that bought our first house down there, um, all of the most important, like I'd say, career success that I've had happened down there and which kind of really I feel like helped me establish myself in the baseball world. Um, so like if you told me I was going to be in Nashville for 20 more years, like I would have been perfectly okay with that. Like the sounds are an absolutely incredible organization. Nashville is an absolutely incredible city, but when New Hampshire came calling and it was the ability to come home and, like I said, bring our kids home around all our relatives because my wife's from Connecticut, so just being home with all of our New Englanders was just like I couldn't pass it up.
Speaker 2So did they reach out to you, or how does this process work for finding a new GM right? Yeah, aside from looking for someone with the last name Fisher.
Speaker 3It kind of came out of nowhere. Our ownership group here with the Fisher Cats is Diamond Baseball Holdings. They have come in and kind of taken minor league baseball by storm. So there's 120 minor league teams. Every major league team has four affiliates below it. Um, so out of the 120 minor league teams, as of this past week, diamond baseball holdings now owns 43 of the 120 teams. Um, so they've they've just done some incredible things for so many teams because they're really scaling 43 businesses. Now there's 43 individual businesses that, through our ownership group, now has access to technology and resources that a lot of small market teams, new Hampshire included, would have never had access to, whether it be ticketing systems or just technology platforms and things like that, better pricing on equipment and all sorts of things.
Speaker 3It's helped immensely. So it's lowering a lot of expenses, especially for smaller teams. That kind of put us on a level playing field with everyone, but then also allowing us to get better margins on things when we're selling things and all that. So it all started where they just reached out to me out of the blue and just said hey, I'm sure you've heard of us before. We've bought a lot of teams. We're just kind of reaching out to introduce ourselves to people who have worked in baseball for a while and would you be open to having a conversation? And I was like, sure, sounds good. I always tell everyone that has worked for me like you should never say no to a conversation because you never know what might come in the moment or down the road. So just had the put on my calendar and started the call and it was purely just in a purely just conversation. And then the person I was speaking with asked if I knew that the GM position was open here. I said no, did you know?
Speaker 3I'm from Massachusetts and they're like nope, and I was like sounds like we should kind of continue this conversation, and it just like quickly kind of steamrolled from there and here we are.
Speaker 1Wow. So when you now and it must be surreal when you walk into the stadium and you think, like I'm in charge of all this, yeah, it's pretty surreal. I mean, that's a first of all. That's incredible, so congratulations. Like I'm so happy for you and I can't wait to see what you do with this team. But what are you like? What's your responsibilities now? To oversee the Fisher Cats, Like what? Everything, but what does that entail?
Speaker 3Uh, the simplest way of explaining it is everything Like, once you step on the field, that's all the blue Jays, um. So the blue Jays are parent club, have been since day one, um, but everything baseball specific is handled by the major league club we are. The goal of the minor league team is to fill the stands, come up with the best promotions, have the best experience. So really, on the experience side, that's the whole fan focus and all that. And then on the baseball side, it is our requirement to make sure we are providing the best facilities for player development Because really, at the end of the day, our players and our coaches too, like they don't want to play and coach for the Fisher Cats, they want a major league job and they want to make it to the Blue Jays or whatever team ultimately gives them that opportunity. So it's our job to make sure while they're here they have an incredible experience and they enjoy the Fisher Cats experience. Like no one wants to stay in double-A baseball at the end of the day. So that's the goal.
Speaker 3But from my side of things, like every day I've been saying every day is like kind of a little chaotic, but all for good reason. Like I say to our staff, I say to our fans like every day, like I get to work for a baseball team, my office is a ballpark. Like it's not that serious. Like, yes, there's a lot of serious things we have to deal with that are serious like in our world, but in the grand scheme of things, like it's really not that serious Like my. The comparison I use is like I come from a family of first responders. My dad's the fire chief of our hometown, my brother's a firefighter, my grandfather was the fire chief prior to my dad. Like we have a lot of EMTs and other first responders in on both sides of our family. My father-in-law is a firefighter as well, and so like that's a real job, that's a hard job, like you have to save lives every day.
Speaker 3I get to make sure that when you guys come out to the stadium I say it's a three-hour mental vacation, like I think we can all agree.
Speaker 2There's a lot going on in this world and if you can just show up to the ballpark, have a hot dog, a cold beer and watch some baseball, like it's pretty easy at the end of the day, don't threaten me with a good time, no, but I'm really glad you asked that question because I think for most of us, when we think of a GM for a baseball, team we think of the Theo Epstein right, we think of someone who's involved in the trades, the lineups and all of that.
Speaker 2And so what you said was essentially the Jays take care of all that. Yes, so I guess this is one of my questions. I'm assuming you probably have an answer for it but how much of that is controlled by the Blue Jays and not the coaches on the ground here?
Speaker 3Yeah. So I don't know all the nuance of how the Blue Jays run their baseball operations, but what I learned a lot in Nashville is there are different teams that get like uber like like into the details, and so there would be times where our manager down there would tell us where the major league club would call him and be like, okay, so-and-so is gonna hit second. Today we only want him to swing at breaking balls and like it can be that specific or like we only want normally this guy plays first base. We're going to try him in left field today. A lot of that because at the end of the day they're developing talent, so they're trying to see where all these players will be a best fit and work with them to hone their skills. So it can get like uber particular about that stuff. I don't really know how the Jays handle that quite yet, but it is like it's very interesting that is fascinating.
Speaker 3The point is really not like the goal isn't to win games, the goal is to develop players. So if you win games and win a championship at the end of the year, I'm going to be super excited because I'll get a ring, but at the end of the day, like that's really not the purpose. The goal is to make sure the guys are making it to the majors.
Speaker 2And so that's what's really interesting to me, because so I was in, I was an athlete growing up and, while I completely understand, you're there to develop the players and you know you got a guy rehabbing, you know you want him to do X, y, z, but you know, as a coach and as another player, you want to win right. So like yeah, six, six game win streak. And it's like all of a sudden you get the phone call, all right, so and so's only gonna swing at breaking balls.
Nashville Success and Ticket Sales Growth
Speaker 3I'd be like really it is a fine line, like at the end of the day, like we've had. We've had a couple tough losses this year and it's like that yeah, that stinks, that still hurts, yeah, um, we've also had some incredible wins. We had we've had a walk-off win. We've had a lot of fun this year winning games too, but, like at the end of the day, that's really not the ultimate goal.
Speaker 1You would think it would be tied into ticket sales too right, because everybody wants to be on a winning team. So, if you are winning. You know that would probably be more attractive, I would think, to the general public to want to go to games.
Speaker 3Yes and no. Like the beauty. So this, like I said, this is year 13 working in baseball. I have never once in my career had a fan say they're not renewing their season tickets, not renewing their sponsorship or not renewing their group outing because the team was bad. And just as a point of reference, in my 12 years working in baseball, I believe I've only worked one season where the team made the playoffs.
Speaker 3Um, so that's the beautiful thing about minor league baseball is like when you go to a red sox game if the red sox stink, you're going to lose season ticket orders. People aren't going to renew their seats, the they don't care about the fan experience as much. I think a lot of the larger leagues are trying to adapt to the minor league mindset where they're, the fan experience in the in the arena or stadium or whatever is going to um be a heavier focus so they can like just stay consistent with ticket sales and all that, so there's not the heavy fluctuations of if the team stinks, like the Dallas Mavericks train Luca Donchitz. Um, like their GM is getting skewered right now, yeah, and like they're probably gonna lose a ton of season ticket horrors this year. Like, but if you have an incredible fan experience.
Speaker 2The fans will keep coming back yeah, plus, there's also something that's pretty special about it. I'm just thinking about Moneyball and Billy Bean and Scott Hatterberg playing first base. Right, that's something that could happen at a Fisher Cats game.
Speaker 3And you could say I was there when so-and-so tried first base.
Speaker 2And now look at him.
Speaker 1Yeah, exactly. And just jumping onto that, speaking of talent, as Tom alluded to, he used to play baseball.
Speaker 2I thought we were talking about talent.
Speaker 1He might have gotten a little bit older, but you know what are the chances about maybe giving him a shot one more time.
Speaker 2I'm a heck of a bullpen catcher.
Speaker 3We'll probably do that for you. Maybe a first pitch. I know we talked about that a little bit. We'll see how the arm's doing.
Speaker 2Yeah, I always wanted to be a bullpen catcher, because you take league minimum and you just hang out in the bullpen and just play catch.
Speaker 1Yeah, we should do an anything but politics. Opening pitch.
Speaker 2I love it.
Speaker 1But Tom would be great for a pinch hitting catcher.
Speaker 2I don't know, I wasn't really known for my stick. I'll pass along his resume to the Blue Jays baseball office.
Speaker 1All right. So I guess lightning round um you know Fisher cats, do you have a favorite Bobcat Fisher?
Speaker 3cat, house cat. Uh, not really a traditional cat guy I'm. I'm definitely a Fisher cat guy, that's that's for sure. Um, I was kind of alluding to before the interview that, uh, um, I did see my first Bobcat in the wild. I believe it was last week, my first thing. In the morning we always let our dog out into the backyard. Thankfully it's fenced. Um, he came back inside and then my wife was at like the kitchen window and she's like, oh my gosh, like is Fletcher inside, and I was like I just totally forgot that he walked by and I was like I don't know, Like I'm kind of freaking out.
Speaker 3Cause she was freaking out and I'm like, oh yeah, he's right there and she's like look out the window and there's a huge bobcat just like walking along our fence line and I was like that's terrifying, welcome, welcome to New Hampshire.
Speaker 1Welcome back to New England, yeah, yeah and how does it feel to be, you know, in New Hampshire, becoming part of the community? Because it really is. It's such a wonderful, tight-knit community that I would imagine is now starting to embrace you.
Speaker 3Yeah, I love it. I just have loved going out to a bunch of the networking events, the breakfast, everything, getting to know everyone One of my aunts and uncles they live in Greenland and then we had a camp up in Tamworth, new Hampshire, for many, many years as our family. So we've spent a ton of time in New Hampshire but now being settled and and really getting meeting the community and we moved out to chester.
Speaker 3um, so chester's beautiful, yeah, um, nice and quiet and quaint and full of bobcats yeah um but uh, no, it's been great meeting everyone and and just getting to know our fan base, know our partners and and just trying to show people that, like with with diamondball Holdings coming in, they bought us last February, so we've been with them over a year I'm just trying to show the community that the first 20 years of Fishercats baseball was awesome, but the next 20 are going to be a whole different level, and so that's just one thing. I'm trying to ingrain in people that everything's going to be different, moving forward and just more exciting, and we're just going to continue to improve on the fan experience.
Speaker 2Yeah, that was one thing I was going to ask is what can we look forward to this season? I mean, is Casey the bat dog coming back? Casey's still there. Yeah, he's still there, All right, good. So.
Speaker 3Casey's locked in, for she's always on three games at homestand, so Casey's back this year. I just have like a lot of lofty goals and I can't like share most of them, but like I just want to see like how much we can do different at the ballpark. I think, coming from a very big market team, I'm trying to see like what can translate to a much smaller market, but also to like, is there anything physically different we can do at the ballpark? I don't know, but I'm going to ask and I'm going to see what's possible. So we're just going to have fun with it.
Speaker 2Yeah, I'll tell you, one of my fondest memories as a child going up to a Seadogs game because I grew up in Massachusetts was they did a Field of Dreams. I've been to that game.
Speaker 3It's awesome it's so awesome.
Speaker 2Yes, they all wear the old uniforms. They've got corn stalks that come out of the wall.
Speaker 3It's very cool. I love going to that game. Yeah, we have a lot of fun promotions. We have 69 home games a year, so the goal is to have 69 entirely different fan experiences. We don't want to ever get stagnant.
Minor League Operations vs. Major League
Speaker 3And that was the mindset in Nashville, because you got music venues, you got the other sports teams, you got a million things to do in Nashville. So if we stay stagnant in any way, shape or form, we're going to fall by the wayside. It doesn't matter that we've been a team for 45 years. If we don't do things differently every year and improve on things, we're going to become old news. So that's kind of the mindset here. But the exciting thing about here is the Fisher Cats. We're the only sports team in New Hampshire so we own that. We're New Hampshire's team, we're not just Manchester's team. So that's how we want people to kind of recognize us and also just have the granite state level. It's not just Manchester, and if we can pull some fans from Maine and Massachusetts too, that's even better.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean, I'll give you some ideas right now, Just yeah, we can talk about it. I mean, I mean, given your Nashville connection, I wouldn't hate a Hattie B's night. You know, there we go A Tootsie's night. I'm just you know, tootsie's is kind of a tourist trap, though that's a hot take by me, probably, but I never lived there, I just visited. So guilty as charged.
Speaker 1And you can hire Tom too.
Speaker 2You're looking for an internship right, yeah, always Game day internship. That's fantastic. You can do the sumo wrestling.
Speaker 3Do you want to be Bubba Blue or Rowdy Red?
Speaker 2I mean blue is more my color, okay, okay.
Speaker 3I'll let Rowdy know you're down for that?
Speaker 2No, but I think it's really exciting. So do you travel with the team?
Speaker 3No, no Everything. The only person who travels with our team from our front office is our radio broadcaster, so he goes on the road with the team. I'm kind of glad I don't travel with the team because I would never see my family. But we are going to make a trip to Portland in July so I can get my first Seadogs game in, and I think 11 years will be the last time I went to a Seadogs game. Going to go down to Hartford to watch the Yardgoats when we play down there. So that's June 1st. We're going down there. So definitely want to take in games in other markets but thankfully the travel is not a requirement.
Speaker 3That's good and when you, especially if you're a father of two young kids and so we talked about them a little bit, but I don't think we mentioned it on this but you have two children and what are their names and their ages? Yeah, so, kennedy, our daughter is two and a half and she's a very mature two and a half, very tornado two and a half. And then Theo is our son and he just turned six months this past week and he's just like a unit, he's huge.
Speaker 1And don't forget oh sorry, Was he named after Theo Epstein?
Speaker 3He was not Like. So one of my season ticket holders in Nashville actually gave us the name Kennedy. My wife and I were down to three names but we weren't like really sold on any of them. And so I just asked all my seasoned TikTokers and they're like oh, I love the name Kennedy. And so I texted my wife. I was like I love the name Kennedy and she's like, okay, so that's how we got to Kennedy.
Speaker 3And then when we found out my wife was pregnant with Theo, we were like, oh, it would be funny if we named our kids after presidents. And then people think we love presidents, which is we don't have that fascination. But then we did start going down like names of presidents and there's a lot of good first and last names that would serve a good first name. So my wife and I each made a list. On my list of names I had Theo and she had Teddy. So we're like well, theodore captured both of those and so that's how we settled on Theo. So technically we have two presidents' names but not for that reason.
Speaker 2We somehow figured out a way to get politics in here.
Speaker 1I guess we got politics into this discussion. Alright, we checked the box. Yeah, this qualifies. We can air this and don't forget your third child, your pup.
Speaker 3Oh yeah, there will be no third baby that's for sure, but yeah. Fletcher is our dog. He's five, he's turning six this year, but yeah, he's a pit boxer mix and he's the best. He's just a big lounge dog. He's 80 pounds, so he's not light, but he just loves just hanging out and chilling.
Speaker 1He could have beaten up the bobcat.
Speaker 3He's pretty soft. He definitely could not have. He's a big softie. He would have tried to make friends with the bobcat and then sprinted in the other direction.
Speaker 1That's funny.
Speaker 2So one last thing I wanted to ask and I had another idea.
Speaker 1Yeah, oh boy.
Speaker 2Have you ever thought of cotton uniforms? I hear they're very breathable. You just got gotta be careful. The shrinkage it's a seinfeld reference.
Speaker 3Oh, sorry one of my co-workers in nashville would skewer me right now because I've never seen seinfeld and he made fun of me all the time, like how can you have never watched seinfeld before?
Speaker 1tom just wanted to say shrinkage on the podcast. Just wanted to quote george costanza yeah right, one more serious question, but when you walk into Fishercats Stadium, which is a beautiful stadium too, right by the river and you know, right in the corner of Manchester, I always thought it was just a beautiful place to go. What strikes you? What's your favorite aspect of the ballpark?
Coming Home and Future Fisher Cats Plans
Speaker 3Oh man, like, I just so like. My ultimate ballpark experience is walking into Fenway and I love how, when you walk in on the concourse like you're kind of in a tunnel, but then as you look up the small ramps you can see the green monster in pieces, and so that gives me goosebumps every single time. I think for me it's honestly like I just love I'm a big fan of like looking from the press box down on the field because you just love. I'm a big fan of like looking from the press box down on the field Because you just see, especially like not on game day, because you're kind of just like it's just you and the ball and the ball field, and so that's what I love is like just going up there and just looking over the stadium and just being like it's really cool that I get to do this job every day. It kind of puts things into perspective a lot.
Speaker 3My mom always had this phrase growing up, like if, whenever the Red Sox would get eliminated or the Patriots would lose or whatever, like I'd get bent out of shape because I love Boston sports, and she would always say don't be dumb, people have cancer. And so when you hear that your whole life. Like it puts things into perspective. So like every day I walk into the ballpark, I'm like like it puts things in perspective. So like every day I walk into the ballpark, I'm like this is the greatest job ever. Like there's nothing that's so serious that's happening here that can't easily be tackled in some form or fashion. Like we've definitely had to figure stuff out and I'm learning on the fly and I've certainly made mistakes along the way. But like at the end of the day, when I go up to the press box and I look down at the field, it's like I get to look at this every day.
Speaker 2Like it's not that serious. Yeah, and I do love the setup too with the Fisher Cats, because you come up the stairs and that's kind of when you see everything.
Speaker 3Yeah, and it opens up.
Speaker 2similar to Fenway, just a smaller scale. Yeah, of course, but it is something super special.
Speaker 3Yeah, no, it's awesome. I got a cool job and I recognize that we have fun every day.
Speaker 1That's awesome. I can't wait to see what you do with this team. I'm really just so super pleased that you came on and we got to know you a little bit and everybody else gets to learn a little bit about you, but what an awesome, awesome career that you've had.
Speaker 3Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1I wish you like, huge success.
Speaker 3We got big goals. So like, just give me some time. We're working on a lot and I appreciate you having me on, but we're going to do some fun stuff with the cats.
Speaker 2Like I said, I'm available. I've already been spitballing ideas, but really, Hattie Busey, I'm in. I love hot chicken.
Speaker 1We'll definitely do opening pitch if we can get an invitation.
Speaker 2Yeah, let's do it. You can throw it though. Hey, I said it once, I'll say it again Don't threaten me with a good time.
Speaker 1Well, taylor Fisher, general manager, new general manager of the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, thank you so much. This was informative and fun and, just you know, love what you're doing.
Speaker 3Yeah, thank you for having me. Yeah, thanks, we'll see you at the park, sounds good.
Speaker 1And thank you everyone for tuning in to this episode of.
Speaker 2Anything but Politics.
Speaker 1Where we talked about anything but sport. Well, no, we did talk about sports, but yeah, thank you very much for watching, and we've got much more to come. I'm Tiffany Eddy.
Speaker 2And I'm Tom Preysol, and we'll catch you next time.