The People Who Make Virginia

From Pro Baseball to Building Hope | Trey Barham

• Gray Broughton Injury Law • Episode 4

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0:00 | 46:09

Trey Barham's years in professional baseball formed the foundation of the work he does today, whether it's resilience, perseverance, or community involvement.

A native of Norfolk, Trey spent 8 years as a pitcher in the Oakland A's farm system, and our conversation today starts with a behind-the-scenes look at the process of being scouted, recruited, drafted and then moving from level to level through the minors, playing with and against stars like Mike Trout, Manny Ramirez, Josh Hamilton and more.

Playing so many games per year, changing teams, meeting new teammates and saying goodbye to old ones, even moving countries: there's nothing quite like the reality of pro ball. 

Trey's career in fact started by playing college ball at the Virginia Military Institute, studying biology, a degree that would set him up well for his current work. VMI was an unexpected turn, but it shaped the character, leadership and decision-making skills that have been so valuable since.

As his playing career came to an end, Trey transitioned from baseball to nonprofit work, focusing on community impact. Trey is now Director of Partnerships for Roc Solid Foundation,  a charity that builds hope for kids fighting cancer nationwide.

Roc Solid distribute Ready Bags to families just after they hear the devastating news that their child has cancer, and also provide backyard playsets to kids in treatment. Since public, general-access playgrounds tend to be pretty heavy with germs, kids who are immunocompromised simply cannot risk playing there. Roc Solid coordinates the fundraising, distribution and assembly of safe playsets so kids can do what they do best: play.

Trey will be the first to tell you the joy and healing that play brings to these children, and the various ways individuals and organizations can get involved to support this cause.

"It's such a fun moment when you have this little kid that's gone through so much, and then all of a sudden just bright smiles and happy. 

But to be the connector, to get the email or the phone call back that says, 'Oh my gosh, this was the most fun team building experience we've ever had. This was the most impactful moment we've ever had as a team together,' it's honestly the most cup-filling part of it." - Trey Barham

Learn more about Trey Barham and Roc Solid Foundation:

Chapters

00:00 Baseball Career and Experiences
08:49 Parenting and Encouraging Sports in Children
12:57 Life Lessons from Sports and Professional Experiences
22:43 The Standout Players in Baseball and Sports
26:30 The Mission of Roc Solid Foundation
30:01 National Reach and Community Impact
36:22 The Importance of Play in Healing
41:55 Upcoming Events and Opportunities to Help

If we can ever be of help to you, give us a call at 1-877-VETS WIN, or visit https://www.graybroughton.com.

SPEAKER_04

A hug from a mom or dad who's standing there watching their kid play on a playset who haven't been able to for a year.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Their kid's four, hasn't been able to go outside, hasn't been able to slide or swing. It just feels different. And it's incredible. And I'm so grateful and honored to be in that position to make that happen.

SPEAKER_00

This is the People Who Make Virginia. Real stories from the people making a difference in our communities. Brought to you by Gray Broaden Injury Law, a veteran-led trial-ready law firm.

SPEAKER_03

All right, so we're back. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you are, this is the People Who Make Virginia. And today we have the honor to have Trey Barum with us with the Rock Solid Foundation. Is that did I do it right? Yeah, right. Oh yeah. And honorable mention, I don't have Gray or Sharif with me today, but today we have John Raysack. He is our COO at the firm. John has a pretty interesting background himself, so he can do a whole episode by himself. But he'll be joining me today along with Trey and learn more about what Trey is about and what his foundation is about. So athlete. Yep. Baseball player. Sales guy. I don't know if you call me an athlete. I was a pitcher. I was a baseball player.

SPEAKER_02

Dude, you're an athlete. You're an athlete. I feel like a pitcher is like the quarterback on the football team, right? That's what I'm saying. So you're the center, you're the center of the defense.

SPEAKER_03

For the most part, yeah. Yeah. So athlete, sales guy, and now running a director of partnerships for a nonprofit. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. So yeah, man, take us through that.

SPEAKER_04

Who is Trey? Wow, yeah. Can start all the way back in 1985. Born in Norfolk. Kind of lived in Hampton Roads my whole life. Been there for 40 years now. Just turned 40 this past November. Grew up there. Mom, dad. Dad worked for the Department of Defense as a naval inspector. Mama stayed at home for most of the part. Sister ended up teaching for a while. And now her and her husband have a pet crematory. So that's kind of fun. But from there, yeah, I went to VMI. So raw VMI. Spent four years at VMI as a baseball player and studying biology. And then after there, I got a chance to play professional baseball. Found my way after to play there for eight years. Traveled all over the country. Never got to the big league, got to triple A. So if you're familiar with minor league baseball, the team here in Richmond used to be the double A for the Giants now, right? But it used to be the AAA team for the Braves. What's the difference? It's just a level up. So you go from the big leagues to AAA, double A, then you get to A ball, and there's high A, low A, then there's short season A, then there's levels below that. So does A Company own like So each major league franchise farm team? Their farm season.

SPEAKER_03

Got it. Yeah. Got it. I know I'm wearing a baseball shirt, but I should I should know all these things. But backstory I found is at a thrift store and I really like it. It's a great shirt. Hold on.

SPEAKER_02

What what what is that? Do you know what logo is?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, this is the uh is it the Tri-City Chili Peppers. Chili Peppers. I I knew I know that.

SPEAKER_02

A or triple A.

SPEAKER_04

I'm not sure. They might be a collegiate summer league team if I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_02

What's the three cities for the Tri-City?

SPEAKER_03

I know they're out of Petersburg, I believe, or Dinwiddie.

SPEAKER_02

Okay.

SPEAKER_03

But yeah, I think when they say Tri-Cities, what I don't I really don't know. I guess Richmond, Chessfield.

SPEAKER_02

But you got it because you like the Chili City.

SPEAKER_03

That's right. I like I like the color. It's a good golf shirt and it's uh chili pepper swinging a bat. Why why not, dude? It's fun. But no, that's interesting. That's something I did not know. So major league owns.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, so kind of like if you look at basketball, basketball has the G League, which is minor league there. The SEC is minor league football, I guess you would say. For sure. But yeah, so major league baseball has a lot of levels. So when you get drafted, it's not straight to the big leagues. I mean, even the guys that go in the first round end up going to either high or double late to start their career. And then they're there for three or four years before they get to the big leagues. Wow. So I was drafted and sent to Vancouver, British Columbia for my first assignment. So my first assignment was literally the furthest away from home I could possibly have been sent.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, not exactly ugly either, though. No, it wasn't terrible. West Coast's a little different than the East Coast.

SPEAKER_04

Pacific Northwest is gorgeous, especially that time of year. I mean, we were drafted in end of June, early July. So I was there, you know, July, August, September, which up there is I mean, that's perfect weather. Canada's big baseball people, like you wouldn't really know that, but really they love baseball up there. And we got great crowds. They loved the team. We were well appreciated and taken care of in town. So awesome first assignment. But from there, you know, that was in 2008 and nine, I was in Kane County, Illinois. Ten, I was in Stockton, California. Eleven, Midland, Texas. So you're getting traded. No, these were all with Oak, these were all with Oakland, moving up their farm system from the lower levels all the time.

SPEAKER_02

Working up from A to AAA to, you know.

SPEAKER_04

And then Triple A was in Sacramento, California. So back in California. So again, drafted by the artists formerly known as the Oakland A's to become the Vegas A's or whatever the franchise decides to stay with. But yeah, that's kind of how it all worked out. So the movie Moneyball. Yeah. Yeah. Everything about that is kind of exactly how 2008 went.

SPEAKER_02

Billy, uh, what's the Billy Bean. Billy Bean. That was early 2000s, wasn't it? Moneyball? Yeah. Early 2000s.

SPEAKER_04

Really rough that time of year. Because you were four to eight races.

SPEAKER_02

Was he still kind of like filtering through the system at that time? Very much so. For Oakland? Like was he still their GM? Still GM.

SPEAKER_04

Yep. He was around for a while while I was still there.

SPEAKER_02

So have you ever like talked to him or something?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, we had a couple times in spring training. He was always around and always in the clubhouse trying to make sure he everybody not necessarily knew who he was. It was obviously who he was, but just I thought he was a pretty good GM. Again, I was never in the big leagues, but from my level of just having big man on campus walking around, it was I thought he was personable. He loved soccer, by the way. Big soccer guy. Did you have a favorite team at the time? I grew up a Mets fan. The Norfolk Tides or the Tidewater Tides back then were a farm club for the Mets. So got a chance to follow a few players through there. Benny Agbayani is one of my favorite players growing up. You probably have no clue who that is, which is fine. But big Hawaiian Samoan guy just crushed the baseball and came through AAA about the time I really got my interest peaked in baseball and was going to baseball games and stuff like that. So I grew up a Mets fan. I am just a baseball fan now. Like it's fun to root for the Mets just because my boss is a Yankees fan. So I'm not going to be a Red Sox fan just to be that guy. But Mets are fun to kind of poke at a little bit. And um David Wright, uh big Hall of Famer for the Mets. Yeah. He was from our area, is only a few years older than me. So watching him kind of become Mr. Met and, you know, Captain America for that team was really cool too. So kind of kept following a little bit through there. But now if I get a chance to go to a game or watch on TV, I just want to I want a good game. I want a pitchers duel. Let's get out of there in two hours. Yeah. One nothing. No hitters, those kind of things.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Why? And this seems like a simple question, but why baseball? I was blessed to be left-handed and I threw it hard.

SPEAKER_04

So how did you find that out? Mom, actually. My mom just played catch all the time. My dad was a tennis player. So the arm motion was always kind of seen, like I always recognized arm up over top and that kind of stuff. But just playing catch and throwing and throwing and throwing, I very young, I learned I threw harder than everybody else. And as we continued to get older, I I never like a lot of kids that when they're young and you're like, well, that kid's really good. They usually peak when they're like 12 or 13. And then everybody else catches up to them. I always was like just kind of a step behind the best player on each team. And then I just kept progressing. Yeah. And I always I never got held back. I was always pushed to play up a level. If I had a chance to, when I was nine to play with the 11 and 12 year olds, I was allowed to and pushed to. So just I got blessed with a lot of really good coaches when I was young from that nine to 13, 14 year range. A lot of people who knew what they were doing, which is a blessing. Some guys that played some, you know, high-level college ball and again had a feel for pitching, how to hold a baseball, how to do different finger pressures and stuff like that, which when you're 11 and 12 years old, learning those kind of things is a little higher level.

SPEAKER_02

9, 10, 11, though, that's also like where, and I don't know how it is in baseball, like in hockey, that's like where you start to get to like the high level, like, all right, you're gonna join this travel program, which is the travel program, which will feed you into the programs, the next level, right? Is that baseball kind of that same age?

SPEAKER_04

So AAU was really big back then. I there used to be some videos online, the AAU national champion back to back to backs. But travel ball really started to pick up about the time I was 12, 13. Our team was the blasters. And man, if you want to put an all-star roster together from the MLB, just from guys that played for the Blasters, there's I can name six or seven right now. Kadire, Upton's, like a lot of really, really good baseball players from Virginia played for that organization. But yeah, it's about that time when you're 12, 13, you kind of know, hey, if you're gonna keep playing baseball, it's not gonna be at the rec level. It's gonna be, you know, on a select team. And back then, like our high school teams were still really competitive too. So high school baseball was really, really big for. Was that just a tide water thing, or is that Virginia as a whole had a really big baseball following. Yeah, like a lot of schools were really, really good. And the school I went to, I would have gone to a traditional public school, but there was a private school in the area that was really, really good at baseball. And I wasn't recruited, but I was definitely hey, if you're interested in coming, we'd love to have you kind of thing. So we had that conversation with my parents, and it ended up being about a 40-minute drive to school each day, but it was an opportunity to play at a again a higher level for a school that was being seen. The school I would have gone to was Churchland in the middle of Portsmouth, Virginia, which I've love my home city, but yeah, it's not a baseball school. No, there weren't scouts at our games and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_02

So the mom and dad drove 80 minutes every day to take you to and from school. By the time I started going there, I was driving.

SPEAKER_03

So but still, mom made the push, it sounds like they were for it. They definitely financially made it. She's the one that got you into the sport. Yeah. Okay. Nice. Nice. Is there a reason?

SPEAKER_04

Dad was an athlete. Dad was a very, very good tennis player, has big silver plates from tennis championships. He's won from college and like amateur level tournaments and stuff like that. So a couple uncles played some high-level football in college and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_02

Athleticism runs in the family. We're big-bodied people first. First baseball player.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, first baseball. Well, one uncle played baseball in college for a little bit, but not too long. Yeah, not turning away.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not going pro. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

That's cool. Well, being 40 now, you know, me being a younger, us, I guess, actually, being younger parents, looking back at what your mom and your dad did to make sure that you got to that point, how did that make you feel? And being a dad yourself, like, what does that mean to you? It's fun.

SPEAKER_04

We've had these conversations with me and my wife of my daughter's six now. She's starting to get into some sports and things. She swims, she does gymnastics, soccer. So how do we encourage without pushing to make her find the love and let it her find it, not us pushing it? I was never pushed. I never was told, grab your stuff and let's go to practice. You have to go. Right. We made a commitment, you're gonna go to practice, but it was never forced. It was always on my terms. If I if I wanted to go hit extra in the backyard, there was opportunities for me to. They had T's and nets and whatever I needed to succeed or even just practice. So, no, we we'd have that conversation a lot of you know, where do we fit in with this? How can we encourage love and help her find what she wants to do and just give her those opportunities to succeed at whatever it is. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I feel like, I mean, and I'm not talking from experience, I've just I've seen it where you know, those parents that go a little too hard, push too hard, too young, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they get burnt out. And then yeah, one of the reasons I'm not coaching. Yeah. And then and then, yeah, the kid just hates.

SPEAKER_02

I mean, they they learn to just or they plateau in like high school basically. Right.

SPEAKER_04

Because the burnout is real. I mean you've been doing it every day for 10 years. Like as a professional, I did it every day for eight years. Like, it grinds on you as a 14-year-old, and you got your buddies off running off doing all the fun stuff too. Especially baseball, because it's a season so long. I mean, that is that is a grind.

SPEAKER_02

That is a grind.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, yeah. Even the minor league schedule was 140 games in 152 days. Like it didn't stop. And yeah, spring training before it, postseason afterwards, fall ball.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, never stopped. No, but that that's also my uh I'm trying to get I have a two-year-old, but he's running around and he understands the concept of kicking, so it's like I have a two-year-old, so you know that parrot you talked about that's starting him too young and pushing too hard, that's probably me. No, I basically give him a ball and I'm just like, kick it. And then he picks it up, and I'm just like, kick it. But no, it's I I'm I I agree with you, and my wife and I have also had that conversation. It's like, yeah, it's whatever really he wants to do. I don't care if it's soccer, baseball, basketball.

SPEAKER_04

If it's something I don't even know that I can participate in.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, exactly. Like my only thing is like I just, for example, baseball or basketball. Like, I've never really followed those sports, so it's gonna be just like, hey man, it's between you and your coach at this point. Um I'm sorry. You know, but no, that's that's great. So baseball.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, so after baseball, my last year playing was in 2015. Finally got a chance to play closer to home. I played in Maryland my last year. So all the other time I was on the West Coast, or the closest home I ever got was like Chicago, or I can't look it up on a map, but wherever Nebraska is, is that south of Chicago or west of Chicago? But I played there for a year too. So that's the closest I ever got to home. I never really played close by this way.

SPEAKER_02

And you picked VMI because baseball they offered you a spot to play baseball, or why how because VMI is a very unique, it's not like Yeah, I went to this college and I played baseball. It's like, no, no, no. I made a decision to go to the, you know, like Sharif and I like I call it the Virginia Mental Institute, right? Right. Uh and you know, for those who don't know, like I I went as well, right? And you were a senior when I was a freshman, actually. And Dykes and Rats for those unfamiliar with you know, how did you pick VMI?

SPEAKER_04

So about the time I made the same decision to go from public school to private school for baseball, I went to a summer showcase and played really well, pitched well, and got a letter in the mail, hey, we saw you there, we'd love to follow you and kind of go from there. And my mom threw it away. I never saw it. That was from VMI. Yeah, it was from it was from the assisting coach at that time, Andrew Slater. And a couple weeks later, months later, I went to another showcase and pitched well again and got a chance to meet face to face. And he said, Hey, you know, we've been following you, excited to potentially offer you. And that conversation happened. He was like, Yeah, we've sent you a couple letters, and I was like, never got them. Never seen them. And I could see my mom was like, Yeah, I've no, I she admitted straight to the show.

SPEAKER_02

What is she? I guess you gotta want to hear that.

SPEAKER_04

We had a couple friends that had gone and she knew about it, and she was like, I don't, that's not a fit for you. That's exactly what my mom was. And I agreed, but did it anyway. But when I started kind of following, and I kind of got the offer to, hey, we'd love to have you. I started looking at the roster, how the team had been performing, all of those kind of things. And at that time, going in as a freshman, there were six seniors that were all pitchers that were going to be graduating. So the opportunity to play quickly was presenting itself. Yeah, rebuilding basically for the division one MCAA program. Yeah. So chance to step in again from what they said, yeah. I was gonna be a guy for them. Please come. Here's some money. So it was a great fit from that perspective for baseball. And then again, I was short, out of shape, kind of trying to figure out life out. It gave me an opportunity to really do that, to get my body in shape, which helped me propel further into baseball. It gave me a chance to figure out what I would want to do outside of baseball, which at that time was my degrees in biology. I was gonna go pre-med and join the Air Force and kind of go through med school with them. And then after my sophomore year or second class or third class year, going into second class year, another really good summer. I played in the Cape Cod Baseball League, got seen by plenty of scouts, and knew that at that point the opportunity was going to present itself as long as nothing crazy happened. Yeah, injuries, whatnot. Yeah. So again, at that point, you have to switch with ROTC to either commission or to go through leadership training. So I went through the leadership training side, knowing and hoping baseball would continue to work out. So, no, that's why it wasn't my first choice. I had actually thought I was gonna go to ODU. Most of my family was ODU, my sister, dad, uh, wife's got her master's degree from ODU. So a lot of family was old Dominion graduates, and I love the baseball program there. I could have lived at home and commuted back and forth. And about the time all these decisions were being made, the head coach there was being relieved of his position. He was outright about it and told me, Hey, I don't think I'm gonna be there anymore. Keep your options open. So I did. VMI was the next one on deck, and hindsight's is what it is. I'm happy I made that decision. Great place to be from, not at this point that's right. That's a good way to describe it.

SPEAKER_03

Can y'all explain the two paths that you just said, like either commission or you said leadership? Yeah. So I'm surrounded by BA VMI guys. And it's just like every time the VMI comes out, let me sit here for 30 minutes.

SPEAKER_02

So yeah, what's the VMI's still like you got Federal Service Academies, right? It's like West Point, Annapolis, you know, Air Force Academy. You go there, they pay for your tuition all four years, and then you commit to serving. I think it's like five years at the end of those, right? VMI, Citadel, a couple other schools, Norwich, they're senior military colleges, right? So they're all military schools. But the difference is at VMI, you do ROTC just like you would at a regular college. You're just doing it in a military environment. And so like VMI's got like a 50% commissioning rate, which means 50% of the kids there do ROTC all four years, the military, whatever branch, all four branches, I guess like the six branches now with the Space Force or whatever. But like all the branches, our respective branches pay for your college tuition, and then you owe them four years of active duty and four years reserve, and you get done, right? And you go serve as an officer, a commissioned officer. That's what the commissioning track is. And then the other track, which you know, that's the other half of the MI is kids go there, they do ROTC the first two years, and then they decide, well, hey, look, I'm not sure commissioning is they saw the option to continue on that track, you know, which is what Trey was talking about, but it's like obviously his options had opened up at that point and pro balls on the table, and it's like, okay, do I want to go to the Air Force or do I want to go, you know, pursue career in Pro Ball? And I I mean I think you know, any like 20-year-old kid looking at that to think you're gonna leave that option out. Not that hard. Yeah. And so they still do like ROTC, it's just a different track of ROTC that's not focused on becoming an officer. So you're still getting all the leadership training, you're getting the leadership training VMI offers. You're getting a lot of those same core things. It's just at the end of it, one, you're paying you or your academic scholarship or or athletic scholarship, but like you're putting your own bill for those last two years.

SPEAKER_04

And then when you get out, you're not having to uh And that's one of the biggest differences is like West Point Navy, like you have to commission. Like you were going there to become an officer. So when you leave, everybody else salutes you when you leave there. Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_03

With this, the VMI doesn't force you to do it. Okay, got it. Awesome. Now I'm I'm learning now when the conversation comes up. So obviously, after that, you you pursued baseball. Is there any memorable in the eight years? Anything anyway?

SPEAKER_04

It's was a hell of a row. Like, I mean, I started in 2008, and my first year was again, we were in Vancouver, and the hockey team there loved us.

SPEAKER_02

Like the Canucks?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, like they'd come to games, they would take us out afterwards, like we were on lists of anywhere we wanted to go, basically, in Vancouver. So your first year in Pro Bowl, you're like, okay, we're living it, right? Yeah, yeah. Then you get to the stadium, and it's a wooden locker room with dirty floors and it's minor league baseball. Yeah. But it was a blast. I mean, stadiums and people screaming at you.

SPEAKER_02

I was gonna say it was all it was all. I was that guy. I was that guy. I can't remember the Tacoma. I can't remember what was the name of the team. The Raini Ears. Yes. I've been there. Raine Ears games, uh military appreciation night, like three dollar beer, and you could just go there, tickets were cheap, and you would. I mean, I'd go with a bunch of other officers. I was when I was stationed out at Tacoma, and like it'd be the point, like we'd heckle so bad that like it'd be the point, like we're walking in, and like, you know, the cops are standing at the gate, or like you guys again, and we're like, oh yeah, hey, it's like you guys gonna behave or like totally and like yeah, by the fourth inning, you're just like it's all fun though.

SPEAKER_04

Like, we've only I only had like two or three instances where like it kind of crossed lines. There was one you can find the video online, a guy jumped out of the crowd and like stormed the field. Like a st yeah, like so while you were on the mound. No, I wasn't playing in that one. I was hiding in the bullpen where I usually was. But no, I mean I've played with some incredible athletes, I've had a chance to be teammates with Coco Crisp, Manny Ramirez. Oh wow. I've faced Josh Hamilton, Mike Trout. Like I've been a chance to face some of the world's best baseball players and was on the same field with them. So a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_03

That's really cool. Switching gears a little bit, now that I think about this, we were talking a little bit about it before we started recording. You mentioned you and your your company, and and we'll actually, do we talk about his company first or do we talk about the video he made with Barstool Sports?

SPEAKER_02

I was going to Barstool, but I want to I qu a question for you. When you're playing against those guys, right? Like I was looking at the highest level of sports I ever played was high school sports, right? But like we had a kid on my high school team that did get drafted in the NHL and he was a Hobie Baker finalist, which is like the college hockey high, yeah, right? Like he was like on the finalists, like he went to the dinner. Like he's one of those last three standing and he got drafted in the NHL. I don't think he ever played a pro game, but he made it to the AHL, which is the second highest league in the US, right? It's like triple A.

SPEAKER_04

Yep, right? Yeah, the Norfolk Admirals were ECHO and AHO for a while.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that's right. So and when he was playing against normal high school kids on my team in like North Texas, it was such a night and day difference. Thousand percent. I mean, he would literally come obvious. A guy's name's Austin Smith, and he would come in and he would come from a travel tournament and show up in the third period of our game, like literally, like between periods. And he's like, we see him walking in at the end of the second period, throw on his pads, go out there, we're down by three. And he's like, Yeah, hold my beer. Got this. Go out there, score three goals. It's like, all right, cool. Oh, we need a fourth. Okay, yeah, sorry.

SPEAKER_04

One more.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Cool. It sounds different with these guys.

SPEAKER_02

Is it like when they take the batting practice and stuff?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, you hear it. It's it just sounds different.

SPEAKER_02

That crack is different, right?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. I was coming out of the tunnel when Josh Hamilton was taking BP in Frisco, Texas. He was down on rehab assignment. He had been hurt and was coming back. And you know, there's a break between the sounds because they were changing hitters, and all of a sudden the first one was like, everyone kind of stopped. The DJ stopped. Next one. And about that time, I crested the tunnel and you can see the outfielders like running into the wall and watching this thing go up and over. Man, crushed. And you look back, and it's Hamilton. Next one hits midway up the middle of the eye, the batter's eye. It's noticeable. Yeah. A thousand percent. Trout, the moment he stepped on the field, you knew he was better than everybody else. Yeah. The first step he took running, you knew he was gonna be faster than everybody else. Guy could steal third base before you lifted your leg. Like he was lightning fast. So, no, those guys absolutely stood out when you were on the field. Brandon Crawford, World Series champion with the Giants. When we were in A-ball together, you could just tell by the way he floated and fielded ground balls and threw, like, this guy's gonna be a stud. Like, yeah, he's better than everybody else. And we we were amongst the best of the best at that point, and he's still better than everybody around him.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Do you kind of see you and your teammates kind of go like every time they would they would just step in? You get frustrated some.

SPEAKER_04

Like some guys are just really, really tough outs, or just you hit a ball on the nuts and you think it's gonna get up the middle, and all of a sudden the guy's just making a play on you. Yeah. It doesn't matter. But no one's gonna catch that. Oh no, no, no. He's just floating underneath it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

That's awesome. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02

Barstool. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, what's the one? No, no, no. No, you're good. You're good. I was it's just it's cool thing.

SPEAKER_04

Sports has definitely been a big tie-in for what I get to do now. So now, so after baseball, I found my way into sales. I helped open the top golf in Virginia Beach as one of the membership salespersons and loved it, loved the hospitality side, loved getting to bring people good times. Top golf's so much fun. Yeah, that's what they're showing up ready to have a good time. And I'm working with the VIPs at that point, all the platinum members and corporate partners and all of those things that show up. So I get to help them experience that. They're bringing their friends, they're bringing their clients. How can I help elevate their experience? So that was a lot of fun. After that, I found my way into medical sales. I'd like the sales side of it as a former athlete, finding something to kind of compete against. Sales was right up that alley. Um wanted to use my biology degree. Yeah, hey, this beautiful piece of paper on the wall. Let's go sell some medical devices. That's a great business. There's plenty of money to be made. I, again, kind of already part of my background.

SPEAKER_02

But were you like selling like hardware for like that goes? I ended up with ortho.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, so a company got I worked for has now since been absorbed by Stryker, which is one of the most common ones.

SPEAKER_02

Stryker's masses.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. So I did ortho. I did upper extremity orthopedics.

SPEAKER_02

So you probably know a company. Hand wrist shoulder elbow.

SPEAKER_04

Which was a perfect hardware. Which was a perfect fit. It already been cut open. Like talking to doctors and surgeons was really easy.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Hey, here's what I'm selling. Yeah. What are you cutting? Like, are you even doing shoulder orthoplasty or you know, do you ever get to go on the OR? Yeah. So I every case is where they would call you being a good thing.

SPEAKER_02

You had to hand like the assistant, the party. I wasn't allowed to touch anything.

SPEAKER_04

I had a laser pointer. Yeah. But all of her trays had to be like sterilized and stuff like that beforehand. They'd open them all up and it's a cool job. It was some people couldn't handle it, like because you were from your surgery, the person's on the table and their shoulders wide open. The smell of human flesh burning is one you'll never get out of your nose. Yeah. So like being in there was for me a blast. Like even when my wife had her C-section, I'm sitting here like leaning around the thing. The doctor's like, What are you doing? I'm like, this is so cool. I was all into it. So I loved it. And it just was super grindy. It was long hours. There was a lot of other things that had to happen. Our hub wasn't in Hampton Roads, but every hospital I served was in Hampton Roads. A lot of our stuff was literally up here in Richmond at a storage unit that I had to come back and forth for. So it got to be a little bit grindy. The money was great. I do miss it. Like again, that was really, really fun, but it allowed me to kind of transition into what I'm doing now, which is director of partnerships for a really fun nonprofit. So I work for Rock Solid Foundation, and we really are here to love and serve kids fighting pediatric cancer. That's what the mission is. That's our founder is a pediatric cancer survivor, and he had a construction business when he was a little bit older in 2008 when the housing market crashed. His construction business went with it. I mean, he they were doing framing and stuff like that. So he married the two worlds together. So Eric's our founder, he had liver cancer, hepatosumphen blastomas. I'm not even going to try to pronounce the whole thing. But he also had two cousins that had cancer. So they both had pediatric cancer. Nicole had a brain tumor and passed away when she was five. Shannon had leukemia, and unfortunately, she beat it when she was little, but it came back when she was in high school and took her life right before 17th birthday. So the family went through some incredible pain with pediatric cancer. Now the purpose behind it has grown from building one play set in 2009 to now we build over 700 play structures a year. So the program that I'm talking about is called Play It Forward. And when kids are first diagnosed, they're not allowed to go to playgrounds. They can't go to daycares and immunocompromise. Chemotherapy is terrible on their body. So being around other kids that are gross in Germany, you've got kids, you know how gross they can be. Yeah. It's just not safe. So how can we allow families to still have fun and be any sense of normalcy while going through what they're going through? And we started hearing horror stories from moms and grandmothers of wiping down play sets in the neighborhood so that the kids could play before the other neighborhood kids woke up. And Eric's like, that's just not right. That's there, there's something that needs to change there. And that's kind of where the program started. And so in 2009, Eric decided let's build some play sets for some kids fighting cancer. We partnered with the local children's hospital in Norfolk, Children's Hospital of the King's Daughter. We know we call it a CHKD. And they introduced us to a little girl, and we sold a bunch of Krispy Kreme donuts to five dollar fundraisers. Yeah, yeah. And they sold a bunch of them to raise the money to pay for the play set. And it took them about three days to build it, but the Play It Forward program jumped off in 2009 with Krispy Kreme donuts on a playset in the kids' backyard. And so you've done over 700 now all in Virginia?

SPEAKER_03

700 a year. This year. Oh, this year. This year.

SPEAKER_04

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

So we built one in 2009, two or three in 2010. We didn't reach double digits until like 11 or 12. But now the program has grown to it's kind of shifted. So one of our values is Mary the Mission, not the model. And the model before had always been we were on site, we led the program. We were kind of the coordinator of everything. We ordered the playset. We got everybody there. We ordered the pizza. We got bubbles and confetti and all that good stuff. Some of our partners started saying, look, we we love this. We've done it six, seven, a dozen times now with you guys. We don't need you to travel to Texas. We don't need you to travel to Illinois. Like we can handle this. So we started to trust our partners. We ended up partnering with the Associated Builders and Contractors, so ABC, and a lot of blue-collar guys that really love their communities wanted to be involved and build play sets for kids at their local children's hospital. So the program kind of shifted to where we still do the original play forward style. We still do it over 150 times a year. But the other 600 times now, it's other groups that are able to reconnect them to a family in their community that's going through some form of pediatric cancer treatment. And they're the ones that go to the family's home. They build the playset there, they get to reveal it to the family. It's such a fun moment when you have this little kid that's gone through so much and then all of a sudden just bright smiles and just happy. Yeah, right. There's a playset and a stackier now. So much fun. And again, to be the connector of all of this, again, I'm not on site building playsets very often. I'll build a couple a year just because it's a partner I need to go see, or they just need to help building it. And but to be the connector, to hear the email back or the phone call back or the text back from you know the partner said, Oh my gosh, this was the most fun team building experience we've ever had. This was the most impactful moment we've ever had as a team together. That's honestly the most cup-filling part of it. That's awesome. That's awesome. What um We were just listening into the sports side of it because you wanted to ask me about Barstool. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, the sport side has definitely allowed me to have these conversations. We've had we've been able to work with some incredible sports organizations. Most recently, as of just a couple of days ago, the Savannah Bananas and the whatever their new team, the coconuts. So they helped us build for a kid in Savannah. They've helped us now fit.

SPEAKER_02

They took the club out there and the whole team went out there.

SPEAKER_04

So yeah, it's all over. Yeah, they took pictures, the team built the playset.

SPEAKER_02

How many people are showing up to build the play set?

SPEAKER_04

Usually it's anywhere between 10 to 20. Most teams are, you know, about that size when they're doing team building events. You know, if you're going bowling or out to dinner, that's about the size of a group. So that's yeah, about how many it takes to build it. But sometimes there's 30, 40 people on some of the bigger projects like that one.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

But we've had we've done projects with Veterans United and they did six playsets all at once. They had 150 people all out there together building six play sets at one time. But when it comes to the sports side of it, it's teams like this of Banana Bananas that have huge social media following. So when they get to be involved, it's just more eyes that get to see what we're doing, which allows us to reach more kids, to bring play to more kids that are going through this. There's 16,000 kids diagnosed each year, and we're building play sets for about six or seven hundred of them each year. Now, granted, some of that has to do with how old they are. If they're 14 years old, they don't need a play set. So we build play sets for any kids under 10. And then if they have the right size backyard to be able to fit it, we'll be able to do it. But some families live in condos and townhouses and stuff like that. So it's not always a fit. But again, the banana bananas are great partners to build with. They again have huge social media followings. World champion, LA Dodgers, Chicago White Sox, Cleveland Cavaliers, uh, a bunch of different minor league baseball.

SPEAKER_03

And that's something you mentioned earlier, is like you guys are not, you're not just in Virginia.

SPEAKER_04

You guys are so the foundation's based in Chesapeake. That's where we're our national headquarters is, I guess you can say. But with the partnerships we have, we have partnerships with over 220 children's hospitals. And the blue backpack that I brought in with me is called a ready bag. And that's our other program. So we do the backyard places, but we also provide ready bags when families are first diagnosed. So at 220 different children's hospitals all across the country here in Richmond, VCU Children's Children's Hospital Richmond, they're partners of ours. So when families first get diagnosed, the child life specialists and the doctors who are going to go diagnose them will bring them one of the ready bags and give it to them right there. And inside of it is so many different things, just kind of like a hospital survival kit. Sure. So it's an adult toiletry kit for mom and dad with soap, shampoos, conditioners, toothbrushes, those kinds of things, hair ties. That's one of the most requested things that's in the ready bag. But it's got like phone chargers, surge protectors, blankets, uh, Amazon gift card. Each ready bag has a note that the volunteer that packed it, they hand write notes to go to each one of the families. So that's how we get connected to the families. Let's do those ready bags. And then as they get them, they register for play. And that's how they get connected to us. But yeah, the partnerships with the hospitals all across the country allow us to meet kids and every state, we can send ready bags to all 50 states, or we can build play sets in the contiguous 48. We've built play sets in, I believe, every state in the U.S. This year we've built in 36 so far.

SPEAKER_01

Wow.

SPEAKER_04

But Alaska and Hawaii, it's just expensive right now.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Understand. Yeah, understood. But no, we're national reach based in Virginia. But with the partnerships we have and the programs that we have, there are teams that can participate literally anywhere in the U.S. There's kids. I have over 520 kids right now on a map that I can see that have requested play through us. So they've already received ready bags. We give out over 7,000 ready bags a year. So these hospitals have them living at the hospitals to give to them. But with the play side, yeah, it's they're all over the country. I have 15 kids in San Antonio, I got 20 kids in Dallas, I got Phoenix, Sacramento. So no, if you're listening and you want to be involved, please let us know.

SPEAKER_03

Awesome. Yeah, no, definitely. That's amazing. But as a firm, how could we get involved? Yeah, we got a we got a little over 20 people.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. It's perfect. Yeah. So no, again, with the relationship we have with VCU and Children's Hospital Richmond, we get connected to about 25 of 30 kids a year in the greater Richmond area. Of that, we usually build 10 to 15 playsets. So we'd love to have you all on site in the backyard with us, you know, building a play set for a kid that's fighting cancer here in Richmond.

SPEAKER_01

Awesome. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

No, we'll definitely uh that's something that we'll talk about afterwards. Like I said, it's it's a lot of fun because it's a team building experience for you all. It's not going bowling or something like that. It's actually literal building, like you're actually putting a playset together.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

But to see the impact right there in front of you is immediate. Yeah, it's immediate. Like, don't get me wrong, I love all the other organizations. Chesterfield Food Bank shout out, but this the families are right there in front of you.

SPEAKER_02

You get to meet the girl. Even if you drive or a canfu drive, and it goes to a donation center, and you're like, oh, we did a great thing. We were, you know, we toys for top. I used to do organized toys for top. I do stuff the bus, those kinds of things. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it was great. We had 1800 toys from our office. That's awesome. And we had to go to the U-Haul to go get it. And it's like, all right, I wish I could see the look on that kid's face when that kid unwraps that on Christmas morning.

SPEAKER_04

That is the absolute best. So our biggest key phrase is we believe play defeats cancer. And it's that moment right there where the family, the mom and dad are together, the kid is just smiling and playing. Yeah. Nobody's thinking about the treatment. Great reference.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. But I mean it's real. It's real. Yeah. That wasn't real. That was a movie.

SPEAKER_03

But based on a true character, but I mean, and especially, you know, for someone, and I'm sure there's probably more than just me and the office alone that have experienced, you know, a loved one going through cancer and all, you know, that that can hit home. Yeah, for sure. So no, that's that's awesome, and and we'll definitely put something together with you all. We'd love to do that. So, overall, what's the best way someone listening can either get in touch with you or your foundation? How can we find you? And yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04

So we are we have a fantastic social media team. The girls on that team are wonderful at what they do. Find us on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, all your major social channels, rock solidfoundation.org is our website. We are rockroc. There's no K. So fun story on that when Eric, our founder, was going through his treatment, he had a little stuffy that said EROC ROCK. And when you're in chemo and in the hospital like that, all of your stuff has to get sterilized every so often so that it stays clean. So every couple of days it had to be run through SANI and the K eventually fell off. So when the foundation started to come together and it started to be named Rock ROCs, that's all that got stuck. So that's a good story. Participate and help out. How can you support kids fighting cancer all across the country? If you do team building experiences, if you have, you know, a company, uh a church group, a biker gang, shout out to uh our biker gangs that build play sets for kids fighting cancer. Let us know. Again, the opportunity is there. There's kids all across the country, and for y'all to do it, it's very simple. Again, the program's right-click, copy, paste for us. You you actually have biker gangs that we do. Yeah. Nice. I my favorite photo from 2025 is this six foot five, three hundred-pound guy in leather vest playing with bubbles right in front of a ball-headed kid, man.

SPEAKER_03

It is incredible.

SPEAKER_04

Oh yeah. Yeah. So no. Some of the some of those guys are like just big bears. Yeah. Yeah. The softest guys in the world. They're the best to though. They're again, they'll show up 30, 40 of them, their bikes all in a row. You hear them three miles away as they're coming. Like the kids start getting excited because you hear all these bikes coming. And no, it we're blessed to have partners that are very committed to loving kids in their community, whether it's biker gangs, baseball teams, sports teams, but a lot of it is just community partners. It's banks, it's mortgage lenders, it's law firms. Law firms, yeah. It's again, we work with anybody that wants to support kids in their community. And the playsets aren't terribly hard to put together. They're already pre-cut, pre-fabricated. Shout out Backyard Discovery, our playset partner. They're easy to put together. If you can build something from IKEA, you can build a playset with us. So it again, you don't have to have a special skill set. You don't have to know the difference between a drill and a hammer. We'll we've got you. We'll walk you through it. Nice. And do we bring tools or two different programs? If we're on site, we'll bring the tools. Yeah. The other one, it's all household tools. It's regular drills and hammers, it's stuff you would traditionally have.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Cool. But no, we again, the support is needed. There's 520 kids waiting for play sets right now. Some of them have been waiting since September of last year. So there is some urgency there. But if you're in the Virginia area, again, we're on the people of Virginia by like there's a big event coming in September that we'd love people to be a part of. So the ready bags that we've been talking about, the blueback packs that we give to families, the program has been continually growing since 2012 when we first started it with CHKD in Norfolk. From there it went to Richmond, from Richmond it went to DC, and now 220 hospital partners across the country. The significance of that is we've been able to reach more and more and more kids and their families at that time because of these partnerships. So where we had been, you know, giving a thousand ready bags, three thousand ready bags, we're at 7,000 ready bags this year. So in September, on September 18th, in celebration of Pediatric Cancer Awareness Month, all of our partners are coming together at Norfolk Scope in in Norfolk to pack 16,000 ready bags in one day. Wow. So that is gonna give us a ready bag.

SPEAKER_02

Where were you guys doing that?

SPEAKER_04

Scope in Norfolk. What what is scope? So scope is a big uh it's a hockey arena. So that Norfolk Admirals. Okay. Okay. So big hockey arena. Yeah. Clearing the ice out, opening the floor up, and we're literally gonna pack 16,000 bags in one day. So we usually do packing events with partners, and you pack anywhere between 50, 100, 300 is like a lot of ready bags. So packing 16,000 in one day is gonna be a huge celebration.

SPEAKER_02

This is like a giant assembly line with taking assembly.

SPEAKER_04

It's 37 assembly lines. Yeah, okay. With we have 40 partners already committed. We're tickets are on sale now. There's VIP tickets available to where you can get all you can eat and drink. It's big party, big celebration. We don't do it little. It's gonna be a ton of fun. We've got live bands, we've got fancy cupcakes and all kinds of stuff. September eighth.

SPEAKER_02

And it's an all-day thing, I'm assuming. I mean, you're doing it.

SPEAKER_04

We'll start at five, so it's a Friday afternoon. So we'll start at five, we'll start packing at six, have everything finished packing by nine, and then from nine to eleven, do a bunch of celebrating. Wow. So this is again, it's our chance to really tell everybody. How many how many people do you think are coming to this thing? 2,500, 2,2500 where we're anticipating. I was like, hold on. Tickets just went on sale a couple weeks.

SPEAKER_02

Three hours, like I'm the operations guy, right? I was like three hours and seventeen.

SPEAKER_04

These groups anticipating packing like 300 ready bags. Oh, yeah. Oh, don't worry. We had a meeting today talking numbers. But no, this event is incredible. It is the most impactful event of our history. And it's that's awesome. And it's the first event in history, not just our history, but all history, to provide direct impact to every single kid in the U.S. fighting cancer. That's amazing. So September 18th, tickets are on sale at readybagrally.org. It'll link you to our website too. But no, please join in.

SPEAKER_02

That's kind of sobering that's a kind of a sobering note. So 17,000, the amount of kids.

SPEAKER_04

16,000 kids are diagnosed each year. That's wow.

SPEAKER_02

That's a sobering number.

SPEAKER_04

It's terrible. That's absolutely terrible.

SPEAKER_02

But you think about you need 2,500 people packing bags for three hours to cover all the time. To cover it. Like that's a lot of cancer.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

So we traditionally do, you know, when we do packing parties, we usually do 50 or 60 bags at once with a group, 20, 30 people, each packing two or three each. 43 kids are diagnosed each day. So when we finish that event, the bags right there in front of them just represent today. Wow. So yeah, 16,000 is a terrible number, but somebody's got to support them.

SPEAKER_02

So that's so my wife's a family nurse practitioner, and we have one kid. We have an infant. And when our daughter was born, I was like, You want to like switch over to like pediatrics? That way, you know, you learn more about like so you can like be like in, you know, I'm always like, yeah, how can we monetize this or at least save money? Like you become a kid expert. And she's like, I mean, her thing was like, I don't ever want to do pediatrics, because then you see sick kids all day, all day. And I was like, Yeah, but it's like sick. It was like, yeah, and then every once in a while it's hey, you have something very bad. And she's like, I don't ever I don't want to see that.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. To go off of that, when I first got asked to come over, well, I asked because he posted to Joff and I was like, I'm your guy. So but before that, I had to put myself kind of in that space. Well, can I live in this? Can I be okay literally seeing this all day, every day, knowing I wanted to start a family, knowing you know right. I mean you're a father now, right? Yeah, you have to be okay with that. And it does hit sometimes during the days, like you get a f you see the wrong photo, and it's just a little ball-headed kid, and you just your heart breaks. But then you get to meet that kid and you get to hug mom and dad, and you get to see that kid's joy. Yeah and then face light up a year and a half later, you're celebrating with Colby because he rang the bell, and there's so you get to become part of their journey and then to follow them and celebrate with them, and then if if they've when they beat the Yeah, it's so much awesome. So no, yeah, I I can see why your wife was like, I don't want to do it, but at the same time, now living in it for three and a half years, almost four years now, it's it's so worth it to have the bad days because the good so far outweighs the bad.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. That's very true. My wife wanted to be a a mortician, and as she's going to school and as she's working at a funeral home, that's when she realized this is not for me for the same exact reasons. She's like, We just had our baby, and and and one of her first calls was unfortunately a a child, and she's like, Yeah, I'm out. I'm yeah, she just could not do that.

SPEAKER_04

He said his first call, he had to cut a kid out, and he's like, I'm done. Yeah, but no, it's again, the other side of it is so worth it. A hug from a mom or dad who's standing there watching their kid play on a playset who haven't been able to for a year.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

The kid's four, hasn't been able to go outside, hasn't been able to slide or swing for a year because the neighborhood playsets is too gross. It just feels different and it's incredible. And I'm so grateful and honored to be in that position to make that happen.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Super important work, and and we're really looking forward to working with you. And I hope that you this message reaches a lot of people and and we're able to to bring you guys a bunch of other partners.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I'm definitely excited to have y'all out and again, very grateful for the platform to be able to share some of this. So, yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, you're our your guest number four, man. Nice. Yeah, we're we're getting there. But hey, Trey, we really appreciate it. Rock Solid Foundation. Uh okay, ROC Solid Foundation.

SPEAKER_04

And people can reach directly through you all if they want to jump on the website. It's very user-friendly. If you want information on, you know, supporting a kid in your community, there's a map right as soon as you get on the home page of all the kids that are waiting. So you can see very quickly if there's a kid close by. And if there's not, there's gonna be a kid eventually. So reach out to either me or the website, and we'll definitely stay in contact with whoever you are involved. Perfect.

SPEAKER_00

Well, this is the people who make Virginia. All right, we're out. Thanks for listening to this episode of The People Who Make Virginia by Gray Broaden Injury Law. If we can ever be of help to you, give us a call at 877 VetsWin. That's 877 V E T S W I N.