Sioux City North graduate Kyle Thousand leads Roc Nation’s baseball department
Even in the middle of a pandemic, North High School graduate Kyle Thousand was still hard at work, making sure his clients were ready for the upcoming Major League Baseball season.
Thousand is a 1999 grad from North and earned all-state pitching accolades while playing for the Stars.
Currently, Thousand is the managing director of baseball at Roc Nation, an entertainment agency founded in 2008 by Shawn Carter, better known as the artist Jay-Z.
As the managing director of Roc Nation’s baseball division, Thousand represents 25 professional baseball players, ranging from New York Mets outfielder Yoenis Céspedes to Minnesota Twins left fielder Eddie Rosario.
That allows Thousand to attend several ballgames, including when former New York Yankees pitcher C.C. Sabathia recorded his 3,000th career strikeout last summer.
However, this spring and summer he’s been limited to phone calls and texts instead of flights and face-to-face interactions.
“It has been just staying in touch with them, and making sure they had everything they needed to stay in shape,” said Thousand in a phone interview last week. “Just a place to work out for pitchers to throw and hitters to hit. It was just making sure they were well taken care of during this time.”
Thousand acknowledged that the players are facing a bit of an unknown, as they’ve started formal workouts and intrasquad games in preparation for the July 23 MLB start of the regular season.
“And, for my guys in particular, over the course of these last few months, it’s just making sure everybody’s ready to go whenever a season started,” Thousand said.
In terms of how Thousand handled the pandemic, he stayed home with his fiancee, Charissa Thompson, who works for Fox Sports, and read as much as he could to keep his mind fresh.
“It’s been a great time for me to make sure that I’m doing whatever I can to better myself, both as a person and as an agent,” Thousand said. “So overall, despite everything else, can’t really complain, given the circumstances. I’ve been an agent for 10 years, and it’s certainly a life that I’m accustomed to on the road, but it’s given me an opportunity, like I said, to focus on myself, but also have the time with my fiancee, that I wouldn’t otherwise have.”
With the Stars, Thousand was a two-time All-Stater.
View the full article by Zach James on the Sioux City Journal.