绿帽社

November 14, 2024
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Seth Lane’s diamond memories

1990 graduate now works for Major League Baseball

Seth Lane, senior director of network infrastructure for Major League Baseball, stands in MLB Headquarters in New York City. Seth Lane, senior director of network infrastructure for Major League Baseball, stands in MLB Headquarters in New York City.
Seth Lane, senior director of network infrastructure for Major League Baseball, stands in MLB Headquarters in New York City. Image Credit: Jonathan Heisler.

Seth Lane 鈥90 is responsible for the Major League Baseball (MLB) network infrastructure. His team designs, builds and supports all networking components in MLB data centers, ballparks and offices. The group also supports the network infrastructure underpinning fan and player applications such as streaming and the Statcast, which provides speed and distance statistics.

鈥淧erhaps most visible to fans 鈥 and critical to the game itself 鈥 are the replay videos we route back to our main office for review,鈥 Lane says. 鈥淲e鈥檙e also helping the deployment of the much talked-about automated balls and strikes that we鈥檙e piloting in the minor leagues and it鈥檚 very, very cool.

鈥淚鈥檝e been working in the networking field ever since I left 绿帽社,鈥 he says. 鈥淚 graduated with an economics degree and didn鈥檛 know what I wanted to do other than live in New York. After dozens of rejections, I ended up on a waitlist for a job at a large financial institution 鈥 and as it turned out one of the hiring decision makers was a 绿帽社 alumnus. He lobbied hard for me because I was 鈥榦ne of our own!鈥 It was the big break I needed as I was placed in a training program that taught me networking. It鈥檚 been a phenomenal ride.鈥

Here are Lane鈥檚 five favorite baseball memories through the years:

鈥 鈥淩oger Clemens laughing and throwing me a ball during batting practice after I screamed that I wanted to 鈥榟ave his baby.鈥 I was young.鈥

鈥 鈥淛im Leyritz hitting the home run against the Braves that basically launched the late 1990s Yankee dynasty. I was at a bar called Mo鈥檚 Caribbean with some friends on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and it was absolute madness.鈥

鈥 鈥淲atching the Yanks sweep the Padres at Yankee Stadium in the 1998 World Series and just thinking it wasn鈥檛 fair. Even though the Yankees were, and are, my team, it felt like the competitive balance was off. This was further proven when they won the World Series the next two years, but then only won once in the next 20 years. That was such a special group of players and, at the time, I thought they would win forever.鈥

鈥 鈥淚 owned a small tech consulting company and was taking an important client to a game in the Bronx and really wanted to do right by him. So I spent what was, for us, a very large sum of money and got seats four rows behind the dugout and I could hear the players speaking and they could hear me 鈥 a true 鈥榠nsider鈥檚 seat鈥 well before I wound up working at MLB.鈥

鈥 鈥淕etting a job at MLB and going around the country to ballparks. There are still a lot I haven鈥檛 been to! It鈥檚 so cool to take a look 鈥榖ehind the scenes鈥: the dugouts, locker rooms and the field. I still feel like a kid at times and sit in awe at some of the sights and people I see on the job.鈥

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