Heather Mills discovered an affection for baseball at her very first game.
“I was on a Girl Scout trip to Chicago in 1998 and Sammy Sosa hit two home runs,” she said. “That game, I just fell in love with the game of baseball.”
Mills took that passion and eventually turned it into a front office career in minor league baseball. The 28-year-old native of downstate St. Elmo recently took another step when she was named general manager of the Joliet Slammers.
“It’s the goal I’ve always been working toward,” she said of becoming a general manager.
More Top Picks Best Alienware Laptops
In independent baseball, it’s often not a glamorous job.
“Sometimes, it’s washing the mascot suit,” Mills said. “It’s doing what needs to be done, running this place as a business.”
Mills replaces Chris Franklin, who left after three seasons with Joliet’s Frontier League team to become director of corporate sales for the Tennessee Smokies, the Cubs’ Class AA affiliate.
Mills is starting her fourth season with the Slammers. She was the team’s box office manager for two years before being named assistant general manager in 2015.
“She is an incredibly smart young woman,” Slammers owner Nick Semaca said. “I like people who are sharp on their toes.”
Mills began her professional career with the Kane County Cougars and advanced from the ticket office to promotions coordinator after two seasons.
“I love her experience in minor league baseball,” Semaca said. “Nobody else we considered came close to her skills.”
The belief by Mills that her future was in baseball solidified in sophomore civics class at St. Elmo High School. Students were assigned to spend a day with someone in a career they wanted to pursue.
“I wrote the Cubs,” Mills said. “In 2003, I got to spend a day job shadowing in the Cubs front office, learning what went into the business side.
“It was very cool. From there, I knew that’s exactly what I wanted to do.”
The sport management program at Southeast Missouri State led to an internship for Mills with the Memphis Redbirds, the Cardinals Class AAA team.
“When I did my internship at Memphis, I kind of fell in love with minor league baseball and decided I’d stay on that route,” she said. “If the Cubs come calling some day for a position, I might have to reconsider. For now, I’m very happy working in minor league baseball.”
Besides making sure players’ contracts are delivered to the league office, confirming team travel plans and managing the budget, Mills has other work to do.
That’s where her previous duties with the Cougars come in handy.
“Our on-field promotions have been a little lacking the last couple of years,” she said. “We hear lots of great things about the early years of the JackHammers. We’d love to get back to that point of people talking about, ‘Oh, did you hear what the Slammers did with their contest in the fourth inning last night?’
“We want to bring that back. So there’s improvement to be made there. And just getting more people in the stadium.”
Mills has already begun working on building attendance.
“It’s building the relationships,” Mills said. “We met with people in the community who have lived in Joliet and know a lot of people in Joliet, to try and work the relationships they might have. Bring in more corporate partners.
“You bring more people in, the corporate partners follow. But also if you bring heavy hitter corporate partners in, people see these legitimate companies are spending. ‘Hey, it must be a good thing. Maybe we should go check it out.”’
Tim Tierney is a freelance writer for the Daily Southtown.