Where Are They Now - Kasey Olenberger

A free agent who pitched professionally in Italy, Olenberger was signed by the Angels in 2004 and joined the Bees in 2006 for the first of three seasons in a Salt Lake uniform. Primarily a starter, Olenberger went 21-18 in his Salt Lake career, including a 10-7 record in 2007. The former Long Beach State Dirtbag ranks fifth in franchise history with 269 strikeouts and holds the team's single season record with 180 innings pitched in 2007.

The 2010 season was Olenberger's final season as a professional player and he last played for Salt Lake in 2008. Slbees.com caught up with Kasey a few days ago in an effort to update fans on what he's currently doing while sharing a few great memories from his time in Salt Lake.

What is your most memorable playing experience as a Salt Lake Bee?
"After Adam Pavkovich falling on his face during a walk-off celebration in 2007, it has to be our 21-1 start in 2008. That was pretty cool. We would walk on the field and no matter how many runs the opponent would score; we knew we were going to win no matter what. That was a pretty cool first month of a season. Seeing guys get called up... you know, I was lucky to see a lot of guys get called up. It was pretty special. I can go through and every guy that got called up (during my three years with the Angels), I can tell you where we were at, where I was at, when they got called up."  

What about the Bees/Salt Lake City do you miss the most? 
"Salt Lake City... I would have to say would be The Bayou, postgame dinner at The Bayou with the crew. And then about the Bees, I would say, during my three years there, you could get to the ballpark at noon, one o'clock or two o'clock and you were never going to be the first one there, if that was even possible. You always wanted to be there early to hang out in the clubhouse. The clubhouse camaraderie was like no other team that I've been a part of and that's the truth. I've played on a lot of teams and it was hands down the best. It was a good group of guys. I only got there in 2005, but the crew that was there in 2005, everyone deserved to be up moved up to Triple-A and we all stayed together pretty much for the whole three years. All four years that I was with the Angels, we were all pretty much there together which was cool, it was pretty special for me. The clubhouse, the staff, the front office, everybody was really accommodating. It made it fun coming to the clubhouse because you knew something was going to happen, someone was going to be playing a joke or doing this or doing that. That was pretty cool." 

What was your favorite restaurant while living in Salt Lake? 
"The Bayou. Turkey sandwich and sweet potato fries. Red Rock had a really good caprese sandwich that I really liked. There's a Mexican restaurant that had like a 15-lb. burrito and if you ate it, it was on the house. It's downtown somewhere. It's huge, it's like a foot-long burrito, maybe a foot and a half. You had to eat it all yourself. I ordered it once thinking I can do this, then I saw it and I was like 'Yeah, right! No shot.'"

What have you been doing since you retired from playing?
"First off, I never tell anybody that I retired because I think when you retire from baseball you have to set a record, become an All-Star, be in the big leagues, stuff like that. That's my own little personal thing. So, I stepped away from the game. That's how I like to put it."

"I've been doing a lot of lessons. I've been working at a facility here in Santa Rosa, in northern California, called Beyond the Bat. I've been doing lessons, clinics, doing that since I stopped playing. My day job is actually as a sales rep for a production company. We do apparel screen-printing, embroidery and promotional items for about 400 wineries in Napa Valley and Sonoma Valley. We have a pretty good little niche up here. It's a good size company. I've been doing that for a better part of six months now."

"I stopped playing in September 2010. I said no to winter ball and I was looking for a job in January. I think it was April when I finally committed and said let's do this. There was a good bit of time between. I started doing a lot of lessons, staying above water. My wife was working but we decided we wanted to move out and get our own place finally. We were staying at my mother-in-law's in the offseason, just because there's no sense in renting a place when I wasn't home. Jobs aren't easy to come by, which I found out when I was out looking for one. I felt pretty fortunate to get it. But I get to do lessons and camps, and I'm coaching my first team next year, a 12-and-under team. It should be pretty fun, a travel-ball team. That starts up in December and I think we play in February. I'm really looking forward to it, the challenge. I'm trying to stay involved as much as possible. Sleep when you're dead, right?"

What do you do to still keep connected to former teammates as well as stay connected to baseball?
"I'm in contact with D-Mo quite a bit, Dustin Moseley. He has come out and vacationed out here the last three years. We put this year on hold, but we're going to go out to his place next year. If he signs with the Padres, we're going to take a trip down to San Diego and watch him play a couple days. I talk to Casey Smith every couple months. I talk to Matt Wilhite via Facebook. This morning I put something on about Long Beach State and he was the first one to pop off about it. That was pretty funny. Other than that, everyone's kind of doing their own thing, but I try to touch base with as many guys as possible. I talk to Jason Bulger a little bit; I talked to Henry Bonilla the other night. He was in Italy the last two years playing."

What do you take away from the game that helps you in your post-baseball life? 
"You appreciate how much you played even more, for me anyway. I got to play the game for 10 years, four years in college. I appreciate it a lot more now that I'm done because you talk to people that are like 'that's so awesome, I can't believe you got to do that' and while you're playing you hear people, the fans are there, you hear them and to take nothing away from them... I appreciated every day that I signed autographs and I'd say this is so much fun. You really get an understanding of where the fans are coming from when you're done. I just sat through my first full season of not playing and I'm really glad, fortunate and lucky that I got to play ball for as long as I did and with such a good group of guys. Throughout my career, I've met a lot of good people, a lot of good people. Looking back, it was a great time. I don't regret it, I'm glad I did it. I miss it of course. I try to apply that in my lessons with the kids. Tell them a little story here and there. That would be the biggest thing, the appreciation for it."

What's the best practical joke that you played on a Bees teammate or was played on you by a Bees teammate?
"They got me pretty subtle one night. We had gone through a stretch and we weren't hitting all that great and a bunch of the guys stayed late hitting one night. Come to find out the next day, they played pranks on about 12 guys on the team. They cut my shoelaces so when I went to lace them up, my shoelaces just came out. That was pretty good."

"In 2005, they took all my clothes, my shoes, my gloves and taped them together. They taped it with a bunch of different pieces of tape. So you found one end and you'd undo it and then you'd have to find another end and undo it. It took me about 20 minutes to get it undone. Then in 2007, they did it again, but they just used one continuous piece of tape so that was easier to unravel."

"We're in Colorado Springs for a series and Brian Specht was from Colorado Springs. He was done playing because he had back problems, so everyone had gone to his house for a barbeque after one of the games. A couple other guys and I took off early to go back the hotel. Casey Smith and Jeff Mathis were rooming together. So I went up to Matty and told him we're going to play a joke on Casey and got his room key. So, we go back into the room, Casey's wife had just bought him two brand new pairs of jeans, like a $150 a piece. We took his jeans, all his clothes, his bed and everything, except for the frame, we put the box spring and the bed outside on the deck and closed the blinds. All we left was a t-shirt, a pair of pants, a belt and a pair of shoes on the floor in the middle of the frame. It looked like it was him, an outline of his body laying there. All his clothes were hidden throughout the room. They called us on their way home. There were about six guys with them because Matty told them. Casey said, 'What the heck is going on in here?' They fell on the ground laughing. It was me and Bonilla and somebody else that did it. I remember looking out the peephole in our door, we were a couple rooms down, and Casey was pacing up and down the hallway talking to his wife, telling her that somebody broke into his room and stole all of his clothes, the new jeans that she got for him. He went knocking on everybody's door trying to find out who did it or if anybody knew what happened. That was funny. We came out of the room and laughed for an hour. It was hilarious."

What was the best Kangaroo court fine given while you were in Salt Lake?
"It was Nate Bland. After a start, he went four, five, six innings and threw pretty good. He was caught over in the corner of the dugout figuring out his ERA on his hand, doing the math on his hand. Someone came up to him and asked him what he was doing and he put his hand down. They called him out for that in kangaroo court. His face was stark white. He had a locker next to me. This was my first year. The place just erupted in laughter for that when they caught him. There were about six witnesses. They made him stand up. They started talking and he said 'guilty.' That's all he said and he sat down. It was bad. You don't want to get caught for that."

What was your favorite walk-up song that you used in Salt Lake?
"El senor de la noche, that's a given. Man of the night. I play that probably once a week now, before I go on a run. That gets me going. I did play Justin Timberlake's 'Bringin' Sexy Back' for my last start of the season in 2006. I saw visiting players in their dugout dancing to it, so that was successful."