It’s a sunny Monday in Lansing, Michigan. Hayden Stamm walks out on a third-floor balcony and puts his hands on the railing and looks down at the Lansing Lugnuts’ home ballpark at Jackson Field. To the right is a view of downtown Lansing, Michigan’s capital city.
“It’s a really cool view of the field below,” Stamm said of the minor league venue. “It’s why I came here.”
Stamm is not on vacation and standing outside a well-situated hotel room at a swanky address in the Stadium District ahead of a Lugnuts baseball game.
The 21-year-old former Ludlow High School baseball player is at home. He lives at Outfield Ball Park Lofts, mere footsteps from his place of employment at Jackson Field, home of the Oakland A’s High-A affiliate in Lansing.
Stamm is the Lansing Lugnuts’ clubhouse manager. The 2021 Ludlow graduate is in his second season with the team. He lives in a nearby apartment he found after landing the job with the Lugnuts last year.
“I’m really lucky,” Stamm said. “It was one of the last apartments available in the building. I didn’t expect to be able to live so close to work, but here I am.”
His family drove up from Ludlow and helped him move in and make a home.
“My first apartment was on the fourth floor facing away from the ballpark, but I found out about this one and moved down one floor,” Stamm said. “Now I have a ballpark view.”
It is a dream that came true.
“I remember him telling some friends when he was little that he wanted to go to the pros and play in the majors one day,” said his father Aaron Stamm, Ludlow’s baseball coach. “Everybody laughed at him. He just turned 21 and he’s already in the pros and he’s not far from the majors.”
Just a few steps away, in fact.
There is only Double-A and Triple-A baseball between High-A and the majors. Hayden Stamm is one of the youngest clubhouse managers in the minors. He interviewed with the Lugnuts when he was 19. He’s been on the fast track since starting as a bat boy as a 16-year-old for the Florence Freedom, the local Frontier League baseball team now dubbed the Y’alls.
“I realized that I was not going to be playing in the majors,” he said. “But I love baseball and I always want to be in it.”
Hayden Stamm grew up around the game while tagging along with his father during coach Stamm’s first stint as head of the Ludlow baseball program. The younger Stamm played baseball at Ludlow for head coach Woody McMillen, his godfather.
“Not too many kids get to learn about baseball from two guys like that,” Hayden Stamm said. “My dad’s been coaching baseball and basketball a long time. I went everywhere with him when I was a kid. I grew up in a gym and on the field. Sports is my life.”
Stamm didn’t see significant playing time for McMillen until his senior season and finished with fewer than 70 career at-bats for the Ludlow baseball team. It was a fun yet humbling experience and one that only deepened his respect for the game.
“I coached him in baseball when I came back to Ludlow,” said McMillen, a teacher in the Ludlow school district. “He was one of those guys who had that passion. His dad is a coach so he was always around sports and his mom supports athletics. His grandfather was an assistant principal at Ludlow and his grandmother taught at the elementary school so he comes from a good family.”
Hayden Stamm knows a lot of folks in Ludlow and he has many associations in the Northern Kentucky sports community. Even so, his career path is the result of his own initiative. While tagging along with his dad at a basketball game one day, he ran into someone from the Florence baseball team’s front office and took advantage of the opportunity.
“I told him if he ever needed a bat boy that I was interested,” Stamm said. “But he told me it might be better if I waited until I was 16 so I could work later in the day and stay for a whole game. I ran into him again a year later and said I was going to be 16 before opening day and got an interview.”
Stamm got the job. He was so good the team gave him the additional title of Florence assistant clubhouse manager before he graduated from Ludlow. Stamm handled the visiting clubhouse and helped with the home side and the umpire room. He did game-day laundry for both teams and assisted with food setup for both squads and the umpires. He even traveled with the team on several road trips.
Stamm earned a promotion to Florence clubhouse manager soon after graduating from Ludlow. He added additional duties including the home clubhouse, equipment setup and teardown for batting practice plus the gathering of game balls. Stamm began working more closely with the front office and traveled with the team on all road trips. He did that for two seasons.
Near the end of his stay with Florence, he was hired to work as a clubhouse manager in the nine-team, six week California Winter League based in Palm Springs, California. He applied for Major League Baseball jobs and landed an opportunity to meet the Oakland A’s minor league brass last year. The A’s hired him and took him to Arizona for spring training after which he reported to the Lugnuts to be their clubhouse manager.
“He’s organized and he’s got the perfect personality for that job,” coach Stamm said. “He loves baseball. He respects the players and he does really well with people.”
The younger Stamm is one of 12 clubhouse managers in the Midwest League.
“It’s really a lot of different things from your basic equipment manager duties to ordering food that the players eat both when at home and on the road trip which is definitely not an easy task,” Stamm said. “I’m in charge of keeping a very accurate inventory on all equipment and apparel that we have. There’s a lot of packing and unpacking. I oversee the Lansing bat boys which is how I got my start.”
The Lugnuts play six games a week with Monday an off day.
“It’s a blast. I’m living out a dream. The people are great. The players are great and it’s a lot of work,” Stamm said. “When I think I’m getting close to getting everything done, there’s more. And I’ll take care of it so the only thing the players have to worry about is baseball.”
