Creighton Gubanich is Selling Hats for the Brotherhood Of Ballplayers
- Jeff Perro
- May 14
- 5 min read
To purchase a hat, your name must first be run through Baseball-Reference.com by Creighton Gubanich.
Creighton Gubanich was drafted by the Oakland A's in the 6th round of the 1990 MLB draft out of Phoenixville High School in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. His road to the big leagues took him through the A's, Brewers, Rockies, and Padres minor league systems over eight seasons before being called up by the Boston Red Sox. On April 16th, 1999, he became the 17,431st player in the history of Major League Baseball.
1999 would be Gubanich's first and last season in the big leagues. In 47 at bats, he hit .277 with one big historic home run. On May 4th, he became ONLY THE FOURTH player in the history of the game to hit a grand slam as their first Major League hit.
He would play professionally through 2003.
After playing his last game, Creighton went to work with the All-Star Sports Academy. All-Star has seven locations along both sides of the Pennsylvania-New Jersey border, all pretty close to his hometown of Phoenixville. While he did take a year and a half away to test other avenues, he continues to work there today.
He's held different titles for the company, but since 2023, he has been the Tournament Director. He describes it as, "I run the tournament division of the all the facilities. I work at a corporate office. My division is the tournament division. It basically is open to anybody who has a travel team, anywhere. I run tournaments from the ages of nine all the way to 18."
The academy is a very time consuming career for Creighton. He says, "I'm running four to five tournaments every weekend throughout the course of the summertime and then take a little bit time off and then start the fall. But I'll be swamped basically now [May] through November."
Creighton Gubanich's high school best friend is Chad Sindaco.
"My buddy and I, best friend from high school, he [Chad] is a teacher, and he's in his like his 24th or 25th year," Gubanich says. "He's counting down the number of years he's got to go. In the summertime, he needs something to do. His kids are getting older, he's got two in college, one more as a junior in high school, and he's got to do something. He got a 3D printer just to mess around with and then he's decided he could do laser also after making some wood Christmas ornaments. Eventually this all turned into creating custom hats.
The two decided to make a few mountain biking-related hats to hand out to their mountain biking friends. More people saw them and asked the duo to make them custom hats as well. He remembers, "Then all of a sudden one woman came in and says, 'I'm starting this mountain bike group.' And then it was turns into, well, we can do some hats and then it's like, 'I really like these. I'd like to do this for this.' And then that turns into 20 hats. And then now it's turned into beanies. And then it turns into, 'we got some t-shirts and sweatshirts.'"
Gubanich says to his buddy, "Chad, what the hell are we doing?'"
And that was their start to custom merchandising. With that, Grand Slam Ideas was created.
Creighton would soon be inspired to make baseball related hats. His idea was to make special hats for the "<1% of 1%."
"We know what percentage of baseball players stop playing at the age of 13," Gubanich explains. "We know what percentage of baseball players play after high school. We know the percentages that play after that., and then ultimately we know what percentage of guys that actually make the big leagues. I'm like, man, this would be a neat little hat."
"So I came up with, the 'Less than 1 % of 1 %,' and that goes perfectly onto a hat. Then I just kind of posted it. Kelly Stinnett and some guys were posting some stuff. He posted something about his debut number."
"Then Jeff Grotewold posted something like, 'Oh, isn't this neat that I'm number X ?' and Kelly said 'Hey, man, can you put my debut number on this?' Gubanich originally thought he meant the date he was drafted which would have been April 5th, 1996.
"I realized he's talking about the debut number. And then I looked at him, 'Wait a second, everybody has a unique number. Man, you can really make this as a very custom hat because there's only one person with that number.'"
Much like their mountain biking hats, fueled by word of mouth, the demand for these hats took off.
They started with a website [www.probaseballclubhouse.com]. The two hustled to get things up and running by creating a makeshift store, threw some pictures up, and put together a google form and there was a sudden influx of "I'll have one. I'll take one.'"
Creighton continues, "The first week it was like 20 something hats. I'm like, all right, you know, no big deal. And then over the weekend it was like 27. And then the next week it was like 30 something hats. I must be up to about 80 or 85 hats right now. I've got six boxes in the car."
He's now expanded the line to include players who played professional baseball but did reach the Major Leagues.
Gubanich talked about how he received messages showing interest in the hat, but some players only had minor league pages on Baseball-Reference. Players from the minor leagues don't have a number associated with a call up. and aren't, mathematically, the less than 1% of 1%. The player really wanted a hat for the draft, so the team knew the brand had to expand. A couple of different versions were developed to reach other players. The inquiring player got his custom hat. "We put the year he got drafted, which was 1990 and it was by Baltimore." explains Gubanich.
It's obvious he want to produce hats for the brotherhood of pro ballplayers, but the company has to maintain integrity for the "< 1% of 1%ers," as well as the "1%ers."
Pro Baseball Clubhouse will likely soon be working with longtime Major League infielder Kurt Bevacqua, who leads an organization of former professional baseball players. Bevacqua expressed how he really liked this hat with the player's debut number on in it. He wants everybody who comes in and pays their dues to have their own custom hat. Gubanich asked Bevacqua, "How many guys are in this union right now?" Kurt replied, "You know, we have anywhere from five to 600."
Creighton finishes, "Oh shit. Chad, we're going to need help. We're going to have to hire help."
Writer's note: I planned to have a 15-20 minute phone conversation with Creighton Gubanich about his career at All-Star Sports Academy and his new custom hat project at Pro Baseball Clubhouse. We ended up talking for 52 minutes about a wide variety of topics including, but not limited to, youth baseball, the state of the professional game, phantom Major Leaguers, and the mid-90's Huntsville Stars. Look for more of our conversation on our YouTube Shorts page.
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