Success story: Sette completes internship at MLB
Success Stories | Aug 17, 2015 | Gabelli School of Business
Having an internship in Major League Baseball’s Office of the Commissioner really is as cool as it sounds.
Nicholas Sette, a rising senior at the Gabelli School of Business, just completed his summer as a baseball operations intern there. A lifelong New York Yankees fan, Sette “did a little bit of almost everything” while he was there.
He helped with the annual player draft, kept track of umpire injuries, wrote up notices of disciplinary actions and entered data on instant replays. And in the meantime, he was able to have conversations with childhood heroes such as John Smoltz and Ken Griffey Jr.
The job, Sette said, was a fantastic experience.
“I felt valued enough that I woke up every day and I was impacting the game of baseball, even in a miniscule way,” Sette said. “The work that I did every day had something to do with the game.”
Sette got the job after a Fordham Business of Sports Society visit to the MLB headquarters. Fordham graduate Michael Sansarran, who works for MLB now, told Sette about an internship opening. Sette immediately applied and was contacted two days later about the position.
“Just like that, within two weeks, I went from having nothing in the summer to the best internship I’ve had in my career thus far.”
Sette, who will be the president of the Business of Sports Society in the upcoming academic year, credits the society with providing contacts necessary for a career in sports.
His education at Fordham has provided him with the needed tools and drive as well. Sette said his financial modeling class, for example, saved him at least eight hours of work on a project he was given during his internship.
And that liberal arts core? That’s worth the effort, too.
Many first-year business students might think, “What’s the core ever really going to do for me when I go moving forward?” Sette said. “But I would think that it’s that hard work, that attitude that’s put in and the desire for perfection which most professors really embed in you once you get to Fordham.”