Many people are raised around a baseball diamond and want to be involved with baseball their whole life. Unfortunately, few ever get the chance to play professionally and are forced to go on different career paths. However, some people who want to take the extra step to go there get that chance to play and be involved with the sport of baseball their entire life. Carroll Barber is living the life of baseball that most people don’t get the chance to.
      Carroll Barber lived in northern Idaho in the early years of his life. He really had a really strong passion for the game of baseball, back long ago when there wasn’t any organized baseball leagues in Idaho or any Little League World Series games. So, he chose to spend his younger days playing sandlot baseball with a group of his friends and city boys. Eventually, Carroll moved to Fairbanks, Alaska. There, he decided to start coaching young athletes about his knowledge of the game of baseball. He coached four different baseball teams with age groups ranging from 9 years old to 12 years old. In the end, Carroll ended up coaching these teams for 45 years, which means that he has been coaching before many coaches at the time were even born. In the span of his coaching career, he went to a tournament in San Bernardino seven times and once finished is fourth out of fourteen incredibly tough teams. His baseball teams qualified as one of the toughest baseball teams in the state of Alaska, and although his teams have never qualified for the Little League World Series, he has been able to see the Little League World Series five different times.
      After his 45 years of incredible coaching, he decided to quit and started working at the same stadium that the Alaska Gold Panners play minor league baseball in, at Fairbanks, Alaska. There, Carroll mowed and watered the beautiful outfield grass on the field. He also stamps tickets at the entryway of the stadium and he hands out tickets for re-entry. He usually gets to watch only the last half-inning of the games because he is busy doing his job stamping the tickets to give other people the opportunity to watch the Gold Panners play. He was able to watch the end of this year’s Midnight Sun Baseball Game, which was won by the Panners in a dramatic base hit to center field. Carroll has been busy working on mowing and watering the outfield grass and stamping the entry tickets for a long 30 years. He chose to continue to work in an area that he loved.
      Carroll Barber is a lucky man to be able to live out the dream of baseball that most people don’t get the opportunity to. He took that extra step to have baseball the main priority in his life and to be able to coach and teach young athletes the sport. Carroll is a man who saw what he wanted to do in life, and he went for it. He had a dream about working around baseball, and now he is living that dream.