51s concessionaire looking for a few good sports fans who need work

It was a little before 2 p.m. Monday at Cashman Field. A man from the grounds crew was spreading fertilizer in the outfield, walking from the Dotty’s casino sign in deepest left-center field to the right-field foul line. Another grounds crew man was working on the pitcher’s mound in the left-field bullpen.

The field was greener than I remember it at this time of year.

There was no baseball, not yet. Pitchers and catchers for the world champion San Francisco Giants — and for the Pirates, Reds, Phillies and Indians — don’t report for spring training until Feb. 19. The batteries for the rest of the teams will report a day or two after that.

Upstairs in the Cashman Field club level restaurant, people were applying for part-time jobs. Summertime jobs. Baseball jobs.

All sorts of people were applying for baseball jobs, but nobody who looked like George Costanza was applying.

Remember in “Seinfeld” when George was looking for work, and he said to Jerry that he liked sports? And that he was always making interesting comments during ballgames, and that maybe he could be an announcer or something?

Well, I spotted Russ Langer, the 51s award-winning broadcaster, on the field level. He was working the phones, or at least his cellphone. He waved hello, and I could tell right away the 51s announcer job was spoken for.

But the Aramark people — Aramark being the 51s concessionaire and the ones who held the job fair at the club level restaurant — said a lot of other summertime baseball jobs were unspoken for.

Catering server, catering runner, culinary line cook, steward, utility worker, concessions stand worker, concessions stand cashier, concessions runner.

Concessions runner is what the Aramark people call a hawker. These are the people who walk around the stands selling beer and peanuts and cotton candy and whatnot. I feel for concessions runners who have to hawk cotton candy on a 110 degree day at Cashman Field.

Peddling beer out of a 50-pound rig of ice and tall-boy aluminum cans isn’t easy work, either. But if you are good at it, and outgoing, you may develop a following like Beer Man Bruce, my favorite among the beer hawkers at Cashman Field.

And when a hot shortstop prospect ventures into short left field to backhand a ground ball, whirling and throwing to first base all in one motion — and he nips the runner by an eyelash — you will get to see it. And you will get paid for having seen it. Unless, of course, your back happens to be to the playing field, which it usually is. In that case, you still get to hear the roar of the crowd, though, and the fans have a way of filling you in on what just happened.

Matt Greene is Aramark’s new general manager at Cashman Field. He’s a young guy with broad shoulders. He used to hawk Smirnoff Ice at Jacksonville Jaguars games, which probably explains how he got the broad shoulders.

“Smirnoff Ice! Get your Smirnoff Ice here! Hey, Jaguars fans, who needs an Ice?”

Greene said Jaguars fans mostly looked at him with blank expressions. This was when Smirnoff Ice had just come out. Nobody really knew what it was.

“Vodka-lemonade!” Vodka-lemonade here! Who needs a vodka-lemonade?

That sales pitch worked better with Jaguars fans, Matt Greene said.

Greene said Aramark provides from 100 to 125 summertime baseball jobs. Around 30 or so new employees would be hired through the job fair.

The concessionaire may pay as well as Donald Trump, but once you hear the crack of the bat, Greene says you’re hooked. And if you are just a kid, and the ballclub is away on one of those 12-game Pacific Coast League road trips, you still will have a lot of time to hang out with your friends.

Sabrina Davis was one of those applying for a summertime baseball job. She wanted to know where the suites were; she recently moved to Las Vegas from Fresno, Calif., where they have a beautiful downtown city-owned ballpark, Chukchansi Park, which seats 12,500 and has 33 suites. She was a caterer in those suites.

Then she went through a divorce, and now she’s living with her father in Las Vegas. She could really use a summertime baseball job to help out with expenses, she said.

I spoke with a young man with a cool name who was going from table to table, speaking with Aramark reps. Prince Allen, 20, said the jobs corp suggested he put in an application at Cashman Field. He seemed like a bright young man, so I was surprised when he said he did not graduate from high school. “Lots of family issues, sir,” he said.

His plan is to join the Navy in two years and work on airplanes. This is probably why he calls everybody “sir.”

He said he lives with a bunch of brothers and sisters at Washington Avenue and Martin Luther King, which is walking distance from the ballpark. He doesn’t own a car. He said he would do anything, just about anything at all, at Cashman Field.

“I like sports,” he said, sounding a bit like George Costanza.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.