Sam Bernabe, the president and general manager of the Iowa Cubs, considers himself a lucky man when he makes his morning commute to work knowing that he will spend the day at the ballpark. The West Des Moines native said he “was in the right place at the right time” when he started an internship for the Iowa Cubs in 1983. Six months later, he was working full time in sales for the triple-A affiliate of the Chicago Cubs, and a year later, he was director of operations. By age 26, he had become general manager, and he has since added president and part owner to his responsibilities. In his 23rd season with the Iowa Cubs, Bernabe expects record-breaking attendance of 550,000 for 2006 on the heels of a $6.8 million renovation of Principal Park.

Has baseball always been a big part of your life?  When I was a kid in grade school, when the teacher asked us to write essays about what we wanted to be when we grew up, I had friends that wrote about being a police officer, an astronaut or an architect. I always wrote about being the commissioner of baseball. I thought running the game would be a fun thing to do.

How did the sport get so ingrained in you?  I played Little League baseball and sandlot baseball growing up, and I played at the University of Iowa before I got hurt and had to quit. My dad was a district administrator for Little League for 25 years, well beyond the time that I played. I’ve just been around it all my life.

What did you study at the U of I?  I studied education with the intention of teaching and coaching. Coaching was the only way I knew to stay involved with the game of baseball. But when I did my student teaching, I decided that teaching wasn’t going to be my cup of tea. A friend of mine and I decided to go on to graduate school at Western Illinois University, which had a new curriculum in athletic administration and sports management. After three semesters, I started my internship with the Iowa Cubs.

Did you ever think you would end up back in Des Moines for a career?  I had several offers to do internships at other ball clubs. At that time, there were literally hundreds of jobs open for interns and only a handful of us looking for internships because there were only about four programs in the country at the time. I had my opportunities to go other places, but the timing here was great. The team didn’t have a general manager, so as an intern, I was able to learn the business directly from the guys who owned the team, Ken Grandquist, Dick Easter and Don Silverman. Everything that I do today is directly related to the things I learned about the business from them.

When were you hired to work here full time?  It was six months before they hired me in a salary position. It was a big day. I made $300 a month as an intern, and in my salaried position as a salesman, I made $600 a month. Then the following year, I was promoted to director of operations. When Mr. Silverman died over Thanksgiving of 1986, that’s when they made me general manager.

Was it rare for a 26-year-old to have that title?  At the time, I was the youngest general manager at the AAA level, and if not the youngest, one of the youngest in minor-league baseball.

Was it overwhelming to have that much responsibility at that age?  Being the general manager was a little bit different under the ownership scheme at the time because Ken and Dick had so much to do with the ball club. It wasn’t so much a matter of being so much in the decision-making role as the execution of the decisions. While it was a general manager’s position, it was still on-the-job training for a while. They certainly knew everything that was going on, as do Mike (Gartner, chairman of the Iowa Cubs) and my partners now.

Are you in the baseball business or the entertainment business?  We’re here to have people have a good time, as affordably as we possibly can. Baseball happens to be a sideline of what we do. It’s my job to make sure that everybody on my staff works to make sure the ballpark is safe, clean and fun, and if it’s not the first two, the third doesn’t matter. If we can do all that, and there’s a baseball game going on top of that, we’ve accomplished what we intended to do.

What do you enjoy the most about this job?  It’s pretty tough to complain about anything when you’re driving down the freeway in the morning and you know you’re going to the ballpark to go to your office. There are lots of nights when it’s the end of a long day and everybody’s tired; the day starts at 8:30 in the morning on game day and usually goes until 10 or 11 at night. But when midnight rolls around and the bookwork is all done, the stadium is quiet, it’s kind of nice to come out and grab an adult beverage and sit in the stadium and listen to nothing. The ballpark and the field are a special place for me.