HOUSTON, Texas — Some dream of making it to the big leagues—let alone win a world series.
Andrew Ball was an intern with the York Revolution in 2011 before having stints with the Rays, Angels and now the world series champions, the Houston Astros, as their assistant general manager.
There are 30 major league teams—that means there are just 30 general managers in the big leagues.
Ball, a 2007 graduate of Blue Mountain High School, knew he wanted to take a jab working in sports—and more specifically, baseball.
"I just kind of kept coming back to how much I enjoyed being in the field and enjoyed baseball and just trying to figure out, you know, is there a way to turn that into a career," said Ball "For me, it was, you know, hoping to get into scouting or baseball operations in some way but knowing that it was a competitive field."
The Schyukill Haven native played baseball his entire life, and took his talents to play Division III at Gwynedd Mercy University just north of Philadelphia.
During his time with the Griffins, he applied for internships in all levels of the sport, looking for the old cliché of getting the foot in the door.
Well, he did just that at the York Revolution, which began his career in baseball.
"York I initially had applied for a stadium operations internship and I didn't really fit the the timeline they were looking for but they brought me in for an interview and I guess, you know, fortunately liked me enough to to maybe consider me for another position," Ball said.
Ball was hired in 2011 as the baseball operations intern and got to experience an Atlantic League Championship that same season
Knowing it was a competitive field, Ball felt he had an eye-opening experience at the Revs, and joined their front office after graduation.
"It was a really amazing opportunity," Ball said. "I mean, I like to tell people all the time you know all the things that York has to do on the baseball operations side or even on the business side, it's very similar to a lot of things we do here at the major league level, the scale is just a a little bit smaller."
Fast forward a decade and change, Ball has had stints with the Tampa Bay Rays and Los Angeles Angels and now is in his first season working as the assistant general manager for the Houston Astros.
"The road to get to where he's at is incredibly difficult, with, I mean, so many people saying, 'hey, I'd like to be the guy that puts the Yankees and the Phillies together,' but there's only 30 of those people in our country and so he's at the at the brink of being one of those people," John Gibson, York Revolution's general manager, said.
"If you would have told me this when I was working in York or when I was in college, you know, I'd be on cloud nine," Ball said. "I'm still pretty excited about it now, but it's, you know, being able to see the progression, I think, there were times a little bit more recently where I could have believed this was possible or believed, you know, that this might be happening."
Life came full circle, with Ball coming back to Pennsylvania for the World Series in Philadelphia. He has hopes for his first world series ring.
"Where you have Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman and Jordan Alvarez and Justin Verlander, just, you know, just watching these guys on a daily basis a little bit getting the behind the scenes but also just seeing them up close and personal as much as you do every day is really fun and again something that, you know, 15-year-old me, 20-year-old me would have completely geeked out over," Ball said.