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Jimmy Scott's High & Tight: The Craig Paquette Interview Pt. 2

By Jimmy Scott - Posted on 26 January 2010

So, your playing career has ended. You tried the obligatory comeback and realized you weren't 22 years old anymore. Instead, you're 39 (in many cases 29, or even 25). If the life expectancy for someone living in the United States is 77.7 years, that means you've got, at minimum, around 40 years left (going with the 39-year old example). If your playing career was twice its average life expectancy, say 10 years, your post-career is four times as long.

Four times as long.

If you played professional baseball for 10 years, you've got some choices. You can try going into broadcasting - MLB Network, one of your team's cable networks, radio, post-game analysis (radio or TV)... Maybe you can get a two- to four-hour shift on an all-sports radio station in one of the markets where you played, where your name means a little (emphasis on "little") something to the hardest of the hardcore fans. You can try writing for a paper, but you probably can't write and the number of sports writing jobs is shrinking, not expanding, even for a guy who hit a big home run for the hometown team in a meaningless August game back in 2002.

Before thinking about other choices, don't forget you're not the only guy out there. Every October means eight teams go to the playoffs. It also means there is going to be a flood of guys whose careers just ended, and this flood is going to spill into every available opportunity. You know how many ex-players are having their "agents," guys who haven't paid them much heed over the past few years but at one point did represent the now-unemployed ballplayers, approach all of the above choices?

Player: "Get me an audition, man. Just one audition."

Busy Agent: "I'll try."

Player: "What do you mean 'try'? Come on man. It's me. I hit (fill in the blank) home runs for (fiil in the blank city) back in '02. They love me there."

Busy Agent: "How are you on camera?"

Player: "I'm great on camera."

Busy Agent: "No, you're not. Watch that PSA they asked you to do for (fill in the blank MLB charity). You were Pinocchio in that. All wood. That's why they didn't run it. And before you bring up radio, think about how you sounded back in '02 after that home run. They put a mic in front of your face and you're suddenly a politician, filled with cliches but nothing to say."

Player: "Aww, you don't know me."

Busy Agent: "You don't know yourself."

And the conversation ends. And all those choices have suddenly narrowed. You're not getting a gig in front of a camera or even holding a camera, at least where somebody will consider paying you. In fact, anything having to do with recorded sound is out for you. So much for that dream you had when you were 13 of working in a store selling stereo equipment.

You're 39 years old. You're washed up as a baseball player. You're lost. What do you do for the next 40 years?

When you listened to Part 1 of the Jimmy Scott's High & Tight Interview with Craig Paquette, you heard some stories told from the point of view of a guy like the example above. Only Paquette had a little more success than our fantasy ex-ballplayer. He made millions of dollars, so for a typical person in today's workplace to feel sorry for a guy like Paquette post-career isn't going to happen. Paquette, to his credit, isn't asking for pity. Far from it.

In the Jimmy Scott's High & Tight Interview with Craig Paquette, Part 2, you'll hear his post-career story. You'll hear about his comeback attempt. You'll hear about the pressures to stay home with the family. You'll hear about his wife's small business and how it had to close down for the same reasons any small business closes down. And you'll hear about Zrii, the company Paquette began to associate with. You'll hear about Paquette's foray into network marketing, centered around a nutritional drink with a main ingredient of Amalaki. What is Amalaki? You'll hear about that too. And then you'll hear if this nutiritional drink, with all of its benefits, would have helped guys who turned to performance enhancers instead.