08/26/2020
Long Post alert....
I thought this day would never come, but it has arrived. I have closed QAB Baseball Academy’s Indoor Facility. I had the most incredible time getting to know parents, players, and coaches. I have worked alongside some of the greatest people and enjoyed every minute of it. I have had the pleasure of working with players and helping them pursue their goals of playing post-secondary baseball. I am not 100% responsible for their success, but I feel like I have had a small part in it. Over the last 20 years I have helped more than 40 guys reach their goal of playing collegiate baseball. I look at the senior class this year and see dozens of former players that will continue their baseball career in the college ranks. I look at the younger players that I have worked with and can see them excelling in the years to come.
I have always taught that baseball teaches young men on how to handle failure. It teaches them how to handle adversity. Unfortunately, adversity in life comes in many forms. It may be the parent that is disappointed because his/her son did not get enough playing time and does not understand that playing time is earned. Those conversations are tough. I believe they are tougher for me than those parents. Adversity may come in the form of losing a player in a house fire. Getting that call at 7 AM ranks as one of my most difficult moments. Adversity may come in the form of a neighboring organization recruiting players and coaches to play somewhere else. Adversity may come from the burnout of tirelessly working on an indoor hitting facility for over 400 days without a day off. Adversity may come in the form of complaints from parents because I chose to watch my oldest son pitch in a tournament at Hawkins Field (Vanderbilt) in Nashville instead of attending a scheduled practice that a former college player was running. Adversity may come in the form of parents saying they are committed to a team only for me to learn that they have committed to another team. Adversity may come in the form of Covid-19 and the Cooperstown tournament getting canceled and parents complaining about not getting their money back until we received the refund from Cooperstown. Adversity may come in the form of a player trying out in the fall for a spring team, committing to the team and paying the non-refundable deposit, then calling to say there has been a change of heart and they would like their money back. Adversity comes in many forms. How we handle those adversities shows our integrity and character. I know I am not perfect, but in each of those examples I always tried to do what was right. Even if it cost me.
Closing the facility was not something that I wanted to do. I feel I have let so many people down. The last 2 years, I have really struggled. When the nation shut down in March, I had the opportunity to spend more time with my 3 sons. We purchased a fixer-upper boat and spent countless hours each evening working on it. We even got to check off a bucket list item of mine and floated down 40 miles of a Tennessee river for 5 days. I had an epiphany during this trip. I had spent the last 6 years building a business that was causing me severe stress while taking away from my participation and interaction with my family. Not to mention that my poor wife, that I love so much was alongside of me during the entire time- sacrificing along the way stepping in to take my children to their games while I coached other teams. We often joked that it was like she was a single mom.
In closing I want to say this… I am not the kind of person that will recruit coaches, players, and teams away from other organizations. I believe that if a player, coach, or team wanted to come play with my organization, that they would contact me. Building something instead of stealing something is the only way I know how to operate. It might not be the correct way to stay in business, but if I must be shady in any capacity, I am not sure I would want to stay in business. It would have been extremely easy to file for bankruptcy protection and keep everyone’s money. Instead, I stepped up and wrote refund checks to parents that exceeded $30,000 in total. This was to compensate for commitments that I made that we could not fulfill because of Covid-19.
I am extremely upset about closing my business, but I look forward to spending more quality time with my family. This is in no way meant to target anyone or any group. It is just some observations and thoughts along my 6-year journey that ended different than expected. I look forward to putting God first and family second.
Brandon Miller
