I grew up in Arizona playing baseball. It was the only thing I knew how to do, and by the time I got to Trinity University I was good enough to lead the country in doubles, hit over .400 as a senior, and walk off the field as a Division III national champion (Go Tigers!). Two weeks later the Mets called my name in the 31st round of the draft. The signing bonus was $5,000, and getting my equipment for pro ball cost most of it.

That summer I made less than $800 a month. We shared hotel rooms, slept on floors, and ate what we could afford. The official line is that minor league baseball is a meritocracy — play well, you move up. The actual line is that you can be one of the best athletes in the country in May and out of a job by October. My back gave out in 2017, and they released me a few weeks after the season ended.

Nobody tells you what to do next. You walk out of a clubhouse where you’ve spent every waking hour for a decade and you don’t know what you are anymore. I had a degree in Communications and a story most people didn’t want to hear. My teammates were the same — smart, disciplined, broke, invisible. Half of them were back home in a month, working entry-level jobs, wondering what happened and what to do next.

I needed a reset, so I joined a national team and became an Olympic athlete. We played in Bulgaria, then Lithuania, Germany, and Italy, and qualified for the Tokyo Olympics. I moved abroad to coach and train. For the first time since I was eighteen I had time to think.

What I kept coming back to was “the system.” The reason my teammates were struggling wasn’t character, it was structure. Minor leaguers had no advocacy, no organized voice, no infrastructure. So I started one. More Than Baseball was a Twitter account and a link to donate — cleats for guys who couldn’t afford them, food for guys who couldn’t afford that either. Within a few years it had become the foundation of the Minor League Baseball Players Association, today the largest union in professional sports.

But the pattern didn’t end at the minor leagues. College athletes were getting NIL deals with no representation and scores of people taking advantage of them. Olympic athletes were going broke between cycles. Retired pros were losing their identity, their money, and their network all at once — and the only people getting rich off any of it were the agencies and platforms built around the athlete, not for the athlete.

Open Athletes is my attempt to fix the whole thing. A daily live show to set our terms of the conversation and build the community we’ve needed for decades. A network to build the next generation of athlete-founders through collective action and mentorship — and Athletes Fund to back them when they raise. An agency to take care of the players still in the game and prepare them for what’s next.

I’m doing it because I watched too many teammates retire with nothing and no idea what to do next. I knew exactly what they needed — I lived it myself. This is what it looks like when you build it, and we’re gonna do it together.