Building a platform taller than 10 inches

A conversation with Jeremy Affeldt on his “transition” from the game he loved to his ultimate calling.

Let’s be abundantly clear. Jeremy Affeldt is not your typical retiree. He’s 40 years old, has 3 kids under the age of 13, and he believes his journey is just beginning. “I have to consider this my career” he explains. “I’m fortunate to have the ability to choose what I want to do… and I want to have purpose.” It’s clear from our conversation that Jeremy’s passion lies in helping others succeed. “Nothing gives me more life right now than public speaking. I flat out love speaking. I feel like I’m doing something worthwhile and impactful. I feel like I’m bringing something to the table where people can go home and say ‘man, he’s really giving me something to think about…’ But even then I don’t want to be known as a good speaker” (which he absolutely is), “I want to be known because I helped somebody.”

How did Jeremy get to this point in his life? According to Jeremy, this calling always existed, but a run-in with a girl in Denver gave him a hearty shove down this path.

“I hated the game of baseball after being in Kansas City for four years because we lost all the time and being a professional athlete had run its course. You’re going to work all the time and you’re losing. I wasn’t having any fun. Well, I got traded to Colorado and that wasn’t any fun because I felt like I just got traded to the moon. Like there was no gravity…

“The second night after being traded, I was walking to Starbucks, and I looked over and there was a girl sitting on the street outside of a Rite Aid. Torn jeans, black eye, just rocking back and forth. I touched her on the shoulder and she jumped away from me. I said ‘No, no, no, I don’t want anything from you, I just want to know if you want anything to eat… So I went into Starbucks and asked them for the green sludgey drink back there and the most sugary food they had. So they gave me a blueberry muffin…

“She took them from my hands and she said ‘Thank you.’ And for that moment, man, it might have been 5 seconds, it felt like 30 minutes. My heart stopped and I just stared at her, because here’s the thing: I was scared to tell anybody that I didn’t like the game of baseball… Everybody’s gonna be like ‘what are you complaining about?’ So I was scared, I was lonely, and I didn’t know who I was. When I looked at her I saw the same thing. She was scared. She was lonely. She didn’t know who she was. But she wasn’t saying ‘thank you for the food,’ she was saying ‘thank you for letting me know I exist.’ And I needed someone who could let me know I existed. But I went to the ballpark that day and I felt so good… And after that day I had the best years of my career, because I had a reason for playing, and it wasn’t for myself. It was for other people.”

It’s absolutely true. Looking back at his numbers, Jeremy had the best years of his career after the golden ages of most player’s athletic prime. I can feel in his passion that none of this success was personally motivated. Yes, he used his accolades to negotiate higher contracts, but money alone was not the driving force behind his phenomenal play.

“I wanted to be successful on the field so that I could use my platform as an athlete to bring other people success in a similar way. And that’s why I became a philanthropist. What I did on the field was because of who I was off the field. Not what I did off the field was because of who I was on the field.”

One of Jeremy’s biggest challenges is not spreading himself too thin. He’s involved in multiple non-profits that he’s founded using his platform. These organizations have events all over the country. In fact, these non-profits are based in San Francisco while he is based in San Antonio. Jeremy is passionate about giving kids the opportunity for scholastic success, providing meals for all who need them, eliminating slave trafficking, leadership, the gospel, and education. I had to know how he focuses his efforts and how he chooses what ventures to pursue.

“One thing I’ve had to learn is to delegate.” He elaborates that his mentor, Bill Thrall, explained to him that he will be drawn to a lot of projects. If he doesn’t delegate, he will be spread too thin, and will start to burn out. “And in the last couple of years I have started to burn out” he admits. “So with my organization, Generation Alive, I’m not there. I have a CEO, I have a chief of staff and great support… I do the fundraising.”

However, there’s one other minor reason to delegate responsibility and consolidate his personal operations. They are Jeremy’s other driving force – his 3 boys. “I want my boys to know me as more than say – a superstar. I’m actually glad that they don’t know me like that. They know that I played baseball, but they know me better because of my heart and what I stand for. I tell my boys all the time that being of strong integrity is more important than anything else, because in order to have honor, you have to be humble, and in order to be humble, you have to have good integrity.”

Not only is Jeremy of strong integrity, but he works hard. His kids need to see that Dad works. “My boys are my why” he elaborates. “I retired because of my boys and I want to spend as much time with them as I can.” His next steps will be closer to home in San Antonio – including plans to open a brewery in the near future. (But more on that in a bit.)

Jeremy’s humility and that integrity lead to one the skills he learned during his career transition that I want to highlight. Jeremy understands his limitations. “It’s really hard to sit there and say, we’re going to end poverty. No we’re not. But what we can do is help alleviate the pain that poverty causes.”

“If you think about culture… whatever culture it is – let’s just take fashion. The fashion designer is not designing clothes for the adults. There’s no market there. That’s not where the market’s at. Clothes designers are developing trends for the teenagers most of the time. If they think that kids can impact culture, then we can all think that way.” He continues that “if you can get a youth culture to want to act with compassion, then you can actually move cities. And if you move cities, you move states. If you move states, you move nations.”

Jeremy has whole-heartedly embraced this mindset with one of the programs that’s a part of Generation Alive. This program is called Something to Eat, and the idea behind it is to empower the youth of the country to act with compassion and be a part of the solution to food insecurity. Jeremy and the foundation engage students of all ages to create meals for those with food insecurity. They do this by encouraging students to identify the number of others that they want to feed, and then multiply that number by 25 cents. In order to feed that many people, the student has to fundraise the calculated amount of money. Then, at a big event, the students and some adult volunteers gather to package the meals, and each package contains six servings.

“Our biggest event was in East Palo Alto – which is just a few miles away from one of the richest areas in the country, yet has a huge population of people who struggle with food insecurity – and at this event we were able to create 100,000 meals in one day.”

I’ll just let that sink in for a moment. 100,000 meals. I personally believe this is a feat great enough to skip the city level altogether and immediately start moving states. The fact that this was all accomplished via the compassion of students is just icing, sprinkles, chocolate drizzle and whipped cream on the proverbial cake. Jeremy makes a point that the students involved in this program are showing compassion, not just sympathy. “Sympathy is just feeling bad about something, but compassion is empathy, but putting action to it.” His goal is to change cities, states, and nations on the compassion of the youth.

So what are Jeremy’s plans for the future? “Starting a brewery. But that brewery is going to be more of an impact brewery.” By impact, he means impactful for the community. “I want to have live podcasts in the brewery. I’ll be able to bring in athletes or leaders and have live interviews there… And then the beer goes to a cause. 10% of the cost will make an impact with the brewery.” Give back consumerism is a huge part of his game plan. “If people see one water for $2 and another next to it for $2.50 (but $2.50 feeds people) if I have a compassionate bone in my body, I’m spending the 50 cents.” He elaborates that this is especially true for people who don’t know where they can make an impact with their money. Strong marketing is a mandatory facet of this endeavor.

Enterprising is another mandatory facet, and Jeremy builds enterprises through relationships. For instance, one idea he has for a beer came out of the relationship he has with a minister in his area. “He wants me to create a beer called the Porn-Free IPA. That would sell on the name alone.” By engaging the community and investing in programs, he is plugged into the pulse of the community that he feels called to support. He may be a retired baseball player, but the way he thinks about engaging the community and building his brand are the marks of a true social entrepreneur.

Social progress can be notoriously hard to measure. Sure, he can create 100,000 meals in a day, and that is an objective accomplishment, but Jeremy defines his success differently. “I know that I’ve been successful when I can put people in a position so that they can succeed.”

That is Jeremy Affeldt in a nutshell. He wants to be a positive impact in this world. He wants to be a positive impact for his kids, for his community, and for communities all over the country. And he’s just getting started.

Jeremy considers himself blessed to have the ability to do what he wants, and he wants to be a positive impact in other’s lives. He knows that countless others don’t have the resources that he has, and that even those who do don’t always know what to do with it. But Jeremy knows exactly what he’s doing. Jeremy is building off the platform he built as a professional baseball player.

If I take a step back and think about it, it’s actually very humbling, because I’m like ‘Man, I would have never known going into baseball that’s what would have happened. I knew I wanted to be an impactful person, but most players want to be impactful person in the game… But to be able to say that I was able to bring impact off the field, it means a lot to me.”

If Jeremy continues like he has to this point, I believe he’ll be better known for his impact off the field than his impact on it – and he’d be damn proud of that.