Inside the Diamond with Art Silber

For 21 years, Art Silber, Chairman and CEO of the Potomac Nationals, has planned his weekends around baseball. If his team is on the road for the weekend, he is not far from game updates. But, if it is a home game weekend he will be on the field, sporting a P-Nats number 42 uniform.

At home games, Silber dons a number 42 uniform and jogs out to first base, while tipping his cap to the applauding audience as the announcer playfully, but honestly, declares him the oldest first base coach in minor league baseball.

As the only minor league baseball team owner who doubles as a first base coach, Silber takes a much more active role in the day-to-day operation of the team -- more than any other owner he knows -- and loves every minute of it.

"At the beginning of every season when I come out of the dugout in my uniform I always bend down, touch the grass, look around and just smile," said Silber. "I have to pinch myself just to remind me that it is real, that this is my life and has been for 21 wonderful years. It has been a gift to me always."

After this weekend's Mills Cup Championship win for the P-Nats, Silber now has two division championships under his belt, which he has commemorated in his home library with photos of the team holding the trophy, pictures of the championship ring the team received and the winning game ball from two years ago.

"This year's ball club had a great bunch of guys who played at a level that exceeded their talent level," said the very excited Silber. "Even though we had Tyler Moore, the Carolina League Player of the Year, the player effort and level of coaching exceeded anything that I've seen in 21 seasons. When you win the league championship, it's just more special because everyone worked so hard and it meant so much to them."

For Silber, owning the team was never really a business decision, but a long-awaited following of a passion. He attributed the unique relationship he has with his players and the inordinate amount of time he spends in the clubhouse to the fact that for him, it was always so much more than business.

"My life was very different than the lives of the young  men I get to spend time with every year," Silber said as he reflected. "My parents lived in the Great Depression era and my father had survived and escaped the Holocaust. I was brought up to survive and make a career for myself and being happy wasn't necessarily the most important thing."

Silber's love for baseball endured throughout his life, despite a few speedbumps along the way.

"I played baseball my entire life and was even offered a contract with a minor league team. But, my father was an immigrant who didn't really understand what that meant and I knew he would have shot me if I left college to play a game, so I didn't and I have always regretted it a little," said Silber. "I didn't play baseball because it wasn't right at that time to follow a passion. It was right to be safe. But younger people today are different. They want a richness and fullness from life. They have passions and follow them and I deeply respect that."

This understanding of the younger generation and their dreams is the greatest lesson Silber said he has learned in his 21 years with the team.

When Silber talks it is clear that he has a genuine love for his players and is deeply invested in their futures.

"I think the guys talk to me differently than they do with the coaches because they think I might give them a more honest assessment on their ability and shot at making it, and they are right," said Silber.  

Silber said he will be out in the field taking batting practice or catching fly balls with the players and will speak to an unprepared player asking him if he "has what it takes." 

"I will ask him if he has thought about what he wants to do when he isn't playing anymore, and just subtly convey the message that he needs another plan," said Silber.

Silber said that the hardest thing about this "gig" is when he knows that a player is going to get cut and he walks into the manager's office and comes out with a look on his face that suggests "his world has just ended."

"It is awful seeing someone's hopes and dreams vanish," said Silber.

The players have such a good relationship with their owner that they had no problem spraying Silber with champagne and dumping a huge Gatorade cooler on his head after the division win, which the good-natured Silber said he thought was "awesome."

Silber says he has never truly thought about not coming back year after year to the field and occupation that he loves.

"At some point, age may prevent me from doing what I am doing, since it does require a lot of flying," Silber said. "But I will be here as long as I physically can. Plus, I think my kids might disown me if I sold this team."

Silber's daughter, Lani Weiss, is the president of the team and runs the daily business while his son is a lawyer in Washington; both have practically grown up around this area.

The almost 70-year-old Silber also has a bit of a personal goal that keeps him coming back to the ballpark.

"I am one of the last two people in all of baseball to wear the number 42 jersey of my childhood hero, Jackie Robinson which was retired on April 15, 1997 50 years after Robinson played his first major league game," said a very proud Silber. "I was at that first game with my father in Brooklyn and now I am hoping to be the last number 42 ever in professional baseball."

Whether or not Silber is the last number 42 standing, he will always have his title of oldest first base coach in minor league baseball and a slew of appreciative players who had the shot to pursue their passions under Silber's grandfatherly eye.