During his four years in the minor leagues, Weber bounced around to five different cities within the Tigers\u2019 farm system, with two years of Venezuelan winter ball mixed in.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to have the belief that you\u2019re going to play in the major leagues, whether it\u2019s a 1% chance or a 75% chance,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
His big league debut in 2012 did not go as planned. Weber came in as a relief pitcher in an extra-inning game against the Texas Rangers,gave up the go-ahead run and got tagged with the loss. The Tigers ended up releasing him, and he bounced from San Diego to Toronto, where his big league career came to an end. His career record in the majors: 0-2.<\/p>\n
Megan Weber, now a paraprofessional at the\u00a0 Exeter-Milligan-Friend elementary school, got a crash course on the circuitous life in baseball with a growing family.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always look back and think, \u2018All these things prepared me for where we are now. He\u2019s still traveling. I\u2019m just so used to it I don\u2019t think twice,\u201d she said. \u201cMy kids are so used to it. It\u2019s all they\u2019ve ever known.\u201d<\/p>\n
But she did make one request when Thad\u2019s playing career ended: She wanted to live in their hometown. It didn\u2019t take much convincing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the job was right, and we had to go, we would go,\u201d Megan Weber said. \u201cWould it be hard to leave? Yes, that would be absolutely hard. It\u2019s just worked out in such a way that we\u2019ve always been able to stay here, which has been great for our family.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
People skills<\/p>\n
While growing up, Thad Weber\u2019s family owned a 2,500-acre farm less than a mile from town until his grandfather retired in 1996. But Thad was a town kid. His father, Les Weber, made the transition from working the farm to becoming a loan officer at the local bank in Friend.<\/p>\n
From working at the bank, Les Weber recalled, \u201cEverybody talks to you all the time. Everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
The elder Weber believes that his people skills rubbed off on Thad \u2014 and enhanced his acumen for interaction with people of all cultures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During his four years in the minor leagues, Weber bounced around to five different cities within the Tigers\u2019…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189567,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":["post-189566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}