Take me out to the ball game is something that Sheila Stella has heard for more than three decades.
“I love every moment. I never say to myself that I want to leave here, ever,” said Sheila Stella, director of executive and promoter ticketing for the Toronto Blue Jays.
“It’s a dream job, if you can call it a job.”
She got her start working in the box office. Stella remembers her salary back then was $12,000, yet it didn’t matter to Sheila because in her words, “I was just so excited about it.”
“I started back at Exhibition Stadium. We didn’t have any computers so I was probably one of the fastest typists. I had to type all the letters to the season’s ticket holders. I had a Rolodex every time we had a new season ticket holder come in and I had to fill it out,” said Stella.
Whether you’re a baseball lover or not – who could forget that moment back in 1993 during Game 6 of the World Series when Joe Carter hit a walk off home run to win the championship for the Toronto Blue Jays.
“It felt like everything was in slow motion so it was hard to take in everything,” Stella recalled.
“I went up to the office and people were crying. But the best thing was my friend Tom Cheek was saying, ‘Touch ‘em all Joe, you’ll never hit a bigger home run in your life,’ and now I can hear that always. They always play it before the home openers.”