Joey James dean
By Terry Mosher
Editor, Sports Paper
It does pay to be honest and morally correct, as local singer/entertainer Joey James Dean found out years ago when he first got the gig to perform as an entertainer at the annual MLB All-Stat FanFest.
Dean just recently got back from working the FanFest in New York and he says he might not be still doing the big event if he hadn’t done the right thing in 2001 when the All-Star Game was held at Safeco Field in Seattle.
“The back story is when I first auditioned – and I want to say it was May of 2001 – Amber Rae, who was the boss and actually now a close friend, called me back two days later and said I had the gig and that all we had to do was negotiate money,” says Dean. “Some of my pals wanted me to see if I could get (free) tickets to the game. So the first thing I asked was if I could get tickets. She told me she wasn’t associated with MLB or the game (Rae has her own production company ‑ Lighthouse Productions in Centennial, Colo. – and can’t get tickets.
“At the end of FanFest we had a meeting in the green room office and had a celebratory toast and Amber had a check for everybody involved. In my envelope with my check was one ticket to the game. I had already made plans to take the boat (ferry) back home. I’m not a big baseball fan. It crossed my mind I could go out on the street and maybe sell the ticket for $500. But that didn’t seem like the right thing to do. So I told Amber I couldn’t use it and gave it back to her.”
That little gesture, Dean believes, is one of the main reasons he continues to work FanFest, and why he and Amber came friends.
And he’s probably right. As greedy as the world seems to be today, nobody would have blamed him if he had sold it. But Dean did the right thing and has been rewarded since for it.
He continued to be hired as a singer/entertainer right up until the floor went out from under the economy in 2008 and sponsors pulled out of FanFest, necessitating some changes, including not hiring Dean to perform.
But because he made a good impression on Rae, she continues to hire him as a “Coach” for events that go on with FanFest. And this year in New York (The Mets were the host team) at the Jacob Javits Center he worked the Diamond, putting on clinics for kids ages 4-16, doing such things as getting the kids to do exercise drills, hitting a ball against a wall, sliding on a pad and soft-tossing a ball.
And celebrity players would come by at appointed times – guys like Fred Lynn and Hall of Famer Lou Brock – and current New York Mets’ player David Wright, who made a big impression on Dean.
“Wright came by on Monday, the day of the Home Run Derby,” Dean said. “He is a really, really good kid – a great role model. He really interacted with the kids.”
A student at the University of Oregon, Justin Chavarria of Eugene, Ore, won the $250,000 grand prize during the FanFest video game competition in the MLB2K13 Perfect Game Challenge.
“I congratulated him, but I told him I hate the Ducks,” laughed Dean, who likely will be at the 2014 FanFest that will be held at Target Field in Minneapolis.
In the meantime, you can find Dean on Wednesday nights singing at Tommy C’s in Port Orchard and on Thursdays on the deck at the Boat Shed in Bremerton.
And you can bet Dean will give you an honest and straightforward night of entertainment.