{"id":588,"date":"2013-07-31T22:00:01","date_gmt":"2013-07-31T22:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=588"},"modified":"2013-07-31T22:19:11","modified_gmt":"2013-07-31T22:19:11","slug":"singer-joey-james-dean-did-the-right-thing-and-continues-to-work-mlb-fanfest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=588","title":{"rendered":"Singer Joey James Dean did the right thing, and continues to work MLB FanFest"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Joey<\/a><\/p>\n

Joey James dean<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

By Terry Mosher<\/p>\n

Editor, Sports Paper<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t done the right thing in 2001 when the All-Star Game was held at Safeco Field in Seattle.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe back story is when I first auditioned \u2013 and I want to say it was May of 2001 \u2013 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,\u201d says Dean. \u201cSome 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\u2019t associated with MLB or the game (Rae has her own production company\u00a0 \u2011 Lighthouse Productions in Centennial, Colo. \u2013 and can\u2019t get tickets.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt 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\u2019m 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\u2019t seem like the right thing to do. So I told Amber I couldn\u2019t use it and gave it back to her.\u201d<\/p>\n

That little gesture, Dean believes, is one of the main reasons he continues to work FanFest, and why he and Amber came friends.<\/p>\n

And he\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But because he made a good impression on Rae, she continues to hire him as a \u201cCoach\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

And celebrity players would come by at appointed times \u2013 guys like Fred Lynn and Hall of Famer Lou Brock \u2013 and current New York Mets\u2019 player David Wright, who made a big impression on Dean.<\/p>\n

\u201cWright came by on Monday, the day of the Home Run Derby,\u201d Dean said. \u201cHe is a really, really good kid \u2013 a great role model. He really interacted with the kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI congratulated him, but I told him I hate the Ducks,\u201d laughed Dean, who likely will be at the 2014 FanFest that will be held at Target Field in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, you can find Dean on Wednesday nights singing at Tommy C\u2019s in Port Orchard and on Thursdays on the deck at the Boat Shed in Bremerton.<\/p>\n

And you can bet Dean will give you an honest and straightforward night of entertainment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joey James dean   By Terry Mosher Editor, Sports Paper   It does pay to be honest and morally correct,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":591,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=588"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":590,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588\/revisions\/590"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}