If You Build It. The Story of the Pro Athlete Baseball Field.

Our office isn’t located in Dyersville, Iowa and we’re not an office full of farmers, but there are a few parallels to Pro Athlete and the things mentioned above. Ever heard of the classic baseball movie Field of Dreams?

In the movie, an Iowa farmer hears voices from his corn field prompting him to build a baseball field. At Pro Athlete, we also built our own baseball field by our office.

The field was built in 2007 for employees and their families to be able to use for fun at work and practice for the kids’ teams. Instead of having to drive across the city to try and find an available ballfield, you could just walk out the door right after work for practice. So, how do you start building a baseball field at your office?

While we think we know how to sell bats online pretty well, and even some employees think they can still play a little, we know we have no clue how to build a field. So we recruited the Head Groundskeeper for the Kansas City Royals. Trevor Vance and his staff helped build the whole field, which included these features:

• 800 tons of ag lime was used on the field
•  160 ft down the line with a 28 ft high wall that ran to right center
• 300 ft to the street in left
• There was a block wall backstop
• We had the batting practice turtle
• We furnished all the equipment for anyone who used the field
• Center over the roof was our parking lot
• Had to hit one 280 ft - 300 ft to land it in the parking lot
• A former high school baseball coach and then-employee would drag it on days there was practice. He would line it, put the bases in, and make it look perfect.
• A bonus was that it taught the kids to hit opposite field because they all wanted to hit it on the roof.

The field was part of the Pro Athlete family for two seasons before it was taken out. It was removed because we were running out of space in the office and needed to make more room. Supposedly, we needed room to add the Pool, Cardio Room, Contact Center, and, most importantly, the Cafeteria so we could hire a chef.

However, another popular reason for the ballfield being removed is because our owner hit a moon shot over the roof and into the parking lot and dented the receptionist’s car. Take your pick of which of the stories you believe.

If you take a tour of our office, you will see where we sunk the original home plate from the field into what is now concrete with carpet on top of it in our IT Wing. The plate is in the same spot that it was back in 2007, but now it’s just inside our building.

We built it...many people came...many people played...dents were made, but, more importantly, memories were made for everyone who was fortunate enough to step on our field of dreams.