Building a Career on Baseball and Belonging

Chelsey Falzone ’14 grew up playing baseball with the boys. When she wasn’t on the field, she was researching Major League Baseball players, comparing their statistics, and hunting down black-and-white films about the 1930s New York Yankees. 

“It didn’t matter to me that I was the only girl doing that kind of stuff,” Falzone says. “At an early age, I just fell in love with the game, and I wanted to stay involved with it for as long as I could.”

Now, her childhood dreams have become reality. As the senior community relations coordinator for the Minnesota Twins, Falzone works to serve the communities that surround Target Field and introduce the next generation to what she calls “the magic of baseball.” In addition to hosting community events, Falzone organizes youth leadership academies, staffs free baseball clinics, fields partnership requests from nonprofit organizations, provides ballpark tours, and awards scholarships to high school students through the Minnesota Twins Community Fund.

“We don’t always have the resources people need, but we do have a brand that cares about the community,” Falzone says. “As a Christian, I believe that every person—regardless of where they come from—is worthy of respect, honor, and love, and I find it really empowering that we’re in a position to provide that.”

It’s fitting, then, that Falzone’s role also has a strong focus on diversity and inclusion—principles that have always been personal to her. While she wouldn’t have traded her own youth baseball experience for anything, she remembers working twice as hard as everyone else just to prove herself. “I always wanted to feel like I belonged,” she says. “Now that I have the opportunity to speak to girls like me, I want them to know that I believe in them, the Twins believe in them, and they belong on a baseball field.”

Those values—compassion, community, and belonging—are part of the reason Falzone feels at home in the Twins organization. They’re also part of the reason she felt at home at Bethel, where she majored in journalism and communication studies. While she initially planned to be a sports reporter, a mission trip to Myanmar with Bethel’s softball team helped her realize she wanted to do more than tell important stories—she wanted to help shape the narrative. 

When she returned to the United States, Falzone began looking for an opportunity to merge her passions for sports, storytelling, and service—and she found it when she landed an internship in the Twins’ game presentation department. From February to October of her senior year, she used her reporting, editing, and communication skills to create in-game entertainment, write player biographies, design graphics, and edit video features for Major League Baseball. 

While the internship was demanding, Falzone credits her professors for helping her balance the hands-on learning experience with her coursework. “Their support speaks to the character of the institution,” she says. “Bethel attracts good people and makes good people. It’s always impressive when employers see Bethel on a resume, because they know that person will have high character.”

The Twins formally recognized Falzone’s own character in 2019, when she won the Twins Tradition Award for embodying the organization’s guiding principles of passion, hustle, heart, and fun. By that time, Falzone had spent five years in the ballpark operations department, where the work was often more grit than glamor. She recalls spending some evenings alone in a quiet stadium, methodically fixing seatback cupholders and clearing trash from the aisles. “When I won that award, it felt like people had seen my dedication and my heart,” she says. “I’m such a believer in dedicated, faithful labor and doing the right thing—all the time.”

That ethos has helped Falzone continue to advance in the organization. Over the years, she’s had the opportunity to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with some of her childhood heroes at the midsummer All-Star Game, teach hitting mechanics with Twins legend and Hall-of-Famer Rod Carew, and unveil catcher Joe Mauer’s retired number seven for an emotional hometown crowd. But she says it’s the culmination of little moments—like watching a young ballplayer learn to swing a bat or seeing a fan’s face light up when they experience Target Field for the first time—that makes her feel most alive.

“Our lives are not defined by what we accomplish in one day,” she says. “They’re defined by what we accomplish throughout all our days. Some days we might be transferring a spreadsheet to a Word document, and other days we might be changing the world very tangibly. All of it’s important, as long as we work with integrity, honor our callings, and stay open to where God leads.”