The Soft Pitch

Been gone for 12 days in Chi-town…a great time. Family and friends can be enough to have a good time, but this was a perfect week…here is how it flowed.

On July 19th, my fellow board members of the Chicago 16 Inch Softball Hall of Fame unveiled our new beautiful inductee park which displays over 350 inductees at Forest Park, Il. Our opening ceremony was attended by approx. 1,000 people including a few customers (Insight)…a lot smiles and tears made the long road to do this all worth while. Thanks to March Manufacturing (pumps) for being our largest donor. Oh did I say, two State of Illinois Senator’s committed $500,000 to build our phase two museum. WOW 

The event continued with a wonderful ball game played by celebrities like Mike North and Bob Sirott and hall of fame players (Northside vs Southside) sponsored by Rich Melman from Lettuce Entertain You restuarants. Alot of laughs and good play especially by the ladies. One the da Bears’ our kicker, Robbie Gould was darn good/nice guy too.

The day garnered unprecendented coverage on all TV channels, major radio shows and online, thanks to our superb pr team lead by Kathleen Henson. The Chicago Tribune ran a full page story ! 500 Photos of the event are on 16inchsoftballhof.com.

Thanks to our Chicago brand sponsors, Vienna hot dogs, Affy Tapples, Lettuce and now Old Style beer..4 reasons I’m overweight…and March, any help from my Avnet folks,  and our national brand leader KODAK !

My family and relaxed for 3 days in New Buffalo, Michigan, on the beach,  inland we won $33 in their cool casino; Four Winds after wiping out their buffet.  Then we saw our Cubbies win and go into first place after a lousy start. Singing Go Cubs Go is awesome.

The final good thing is probably the best, our 19th annual Maag Toy Foundation golf outing in OakBrook sponsored by Avnet…our friends, family, Avnet, suppliers like Intel and Molex, customers, and vendors raised over $17,000 for toys for kids…even two competitors were there. Special thanks to Hearst and Electronic Products for donating another full page add that NDK bought.

Coming back to AZ I’m so thankful to so many folks…it was great to touch so many and know we can do so much more both with softball and toys…we are going to add memories for  a lot of people. Now back to reality with my great communication team and helping Avnet beat the bad guys.

We announce our numbers this week for the past Q and year.

It was a good summer vacation, one of my best.

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