🏟️ You Can Live Next to Lambeau Field for Free During the NFL Season, Here’s How

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As a working creator, the hardest thing to do is try something new.

Given how fragile our success can often feel, it seems like any potential misstep could be the thing that sinks you. Not to mention, failing in public is humiliating.

But I really resonated with a quote I recently heard from Austin Butler of all people. He says, “Embarrassment is an underexplored emotion… everything you want is on the other side of that feeling.”

So, was it embarrassing to potentially waste an entire day and a bunch of money to follow around a professional grounds crew to make a YouTube video that could have gotten 700 views?

In the moment, yes. But I’m sure glad I did it.

In today’s newsletter:

🗞 The Big Story: You Can Live Next to Lambeau Field for Free During the NFL Season, Here’s How

📉 Biggest Loser: The Truth Behind the Chair that J.J. McCarthy Brings to Every Game

🏆 Winner’s Circle: The Most Important Piece of Baseball Equipment You’ve Never Heard Of

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🗞 The Big Story

You could live in this house for free during the NFL season. Let me explain.

Background: Earlier this year, this house right next to Lambeau Field went viral for being listed at just $749,900, and I’m about to prove why that might be the greatest deal of all time.

Green Bay Gameday: Lambeau Field has a capacity of over 81,000 fans, which means more than 20,000 cars need parking every game day. However, the stadium itself only has enough space for around 3,000 cars.

Luckily for the Packers, their stadium is located in the middle of a regular-looking neighborhood, and since the stadium was built in 1957, residents in the area have allowed fans to park on their lawns for a fee.

It’s why you’ll often see local home owners shoveling their front yards every Sunday, so that they can make room for 5, 10, or even 20 cars every game day.

And depending on how close you live to the stadium, you could charge anywhere from $10 to $100, but if you go back to this house that’s currently for sale, it’s clear whoever owns it could charge as much as they want.

Potential Earnings: Let’s assume you bought this place and charged $75 per car; it seems like you could fit around 30 cars between your driveway and your yard:

• $75 per car x 30 cars = $2,250 per gameday

But if you do that for:

• (2 preseason games + 8 home games + 1 playoff game) x $2,250 = $24,750 in revenue between August and January

And if we assume you could get a mortgage with a monthly payment around $4,000/mo, that means you basically get to live for free right next to Lambeau Field between August and January just by charging for parking.

This might be my new dream.

📉 Biggest Loser

What the hell is in this giant bag that JJ McCarthy carries into every game?

Well, it’s actually one of the most important parts of his pre-game routine that no one seems to know anything about. Let me explain.

JJ McCarthy Pre-Game Routine: Since playing at Michigan, McCarthy has been obsessive about his mental preparation before a game, which starts with an extended meditation while listening to what one ESPN article described as “a collection of audio tones called ‘963HZ’” or some Bob Marley.

But according to McCarthy himself, that’s even close to the craziest part of his pre-game routine.

Because when asked about what keeps him grounded, McCarthy responded by describing his practice of “hopping on the Shiftwave Chair,” and smiled when he said, “We don’t have to get into that, it’s a little deep.”

But what does this “Shiftwave” actually do?

Ultimate Balance: Evidently, McCarthy was first introduced to this device during his final season at Michigan and fell in love with it so much that he later invested in the company, which was founded by a former Discovery Channel host and mechanical engineer named Mike North, who was looking for ways to “heal a broken leg and balance his mental health.”

According to Shiftwave’s website, the goal of this zero-gravity chair is to rebalance your nervous system between its ‘fight-or-flight’ and its ‘rest-and-repair’ modes. To achieve this, each chair uses 18 transducers that vibrate your entire body to synchronize your breathing and heart rate, all while playing guided meditations or soothing sounds.

Live tracking of your vitals allows the chair to adjust the frequency of these vibrations, helping guide your body to an even calmer state, theoretically enhancing performance on the field.

McCarthy claims that doing this before starts or even at halftime helps to clear his mind and reduce his pre-game jitters. Meanwhile, Michael Penix, another regular user of the product, says that he feels like using the chair helps him remember players better and react faster on the field.

Which I guess makes the $10,500 price tag worth it (assuming it actually works).

🏆 Winner’s Circle

This is the most important piece of baseball equipment that you’ve probably never heard of.

Let’s break it down.

Background: It’s no secret that playing the infield in baseball is one of the toughest positions in all of sports. Balls are often hit at well over 100 miles per hour with spin that can be unpredictable. And while the grass in the infield is meant to slow these balls down, once the ball hits the dirt, a lot can go wrong.

Now, if you’ve ever been to a professional baseball game, you’ve probably seen one of these guys. In between innings, they’re responsible for making sure the dirt is smooth and even to try and prevent any unpredictable bounces; however, what you may not know is that their job is actually a lot more complex than it looks.

Science of Groundskeeping: That’s because the entire day leading up to a game, they’re constantly checking and adjusting the moisture levels across the entire infield. In fact, most professional groundskeepers actually go to college for four years to study turf management, just to learn all of the science, technology, and logistics that go into maintaining a baseball field.

And after spending a full 13-hour game day on a grounds crew myself, I learned that there’s no tool more important in making sure the infield is playable than the Moisture Meter.

Now, during my time with the grounds crew, I learned about the “Key Method.” Simply put, if you stick a key in the dirt and it comes out clean, the moisture is just right, but if there’s dirt that sticks to it or it doesn’t even go in at all, then the dirt is either too wet or too dry to play on.

However, to obtain an even more accurate reading of the dirt’s moisture, grounds crews will use a $1,000+ device called a Moisture Meter.

Moisture Meter: To use it, you simply stick the two 4-inch probes into the ground, aiming for:

• 25%-30% moisture below the surface

• 20% moisture on top

This ensures that the dirt is soft enough to slow balls traveling up to 100 MPH, but not so soft that a player’s cleat might get stuck, potentially injuring them.

But that’s not even close to the coolest thing I learned while spending the day on a professional grounds crew. To see my full experience, go check out my latest video:

⏱️ In Other News

• Yes, I actually worked a 13-hour shift on a professional grounds crew

• NFL rigged confirmed?

• Finally, football weather

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👋🏻 Happy Friday!

A little peek behind the curtain on my grounds crew video. I was first approached about working with the Saint Paul Saints in March. At the time, the team’s PR Agency was interested in working with me on a piece of short-form content; however, it wasn’t clear what it would be about.

So I took the opening to pitch them on an idea had been thinking about for a while: Dirty Jobs x Sports.

Truthfully, they were hesitant at first, and it wasn’t until June that I finally got on the phone with them to explain my idea. But even that was difficult, because I didn’t actually have anything to show them.

Still, they took my concept back to the team, and the Saints saw the vision. Then, after another few weeks of scheduling, we finally got a date on the books: the second-to-last home game of the year.

(I’ve always been a procrastinator.)

A huge thank you to the team at Mike World Wide, Diamond Baseball Holdings, and the St. Paul Saints for the incredible access. And a specific thank you to Cody and Marcus, who answered every single one of my dumb questions, even with a camera in their face.

I’m hoping this is just the first in a long series of videos showcasing the people behind the scenes who make the sports we love possible! Now, time to become an NHL chef!