Peach Belt Conference Commissioner Dave Brunk learned about managing the business of athletics from his days in the bush leagues. He wasn’t a .300 hitter, a 20-game winner or a base-stealing threat, but he could multi-task well enough to make a good utility infielder jealous.

That little-of-everything mentality would come in handy for a man who career-pathed his way through the NCAA national office, the Morehead State athletics department and the Northeast-10 Conference office before becoming the 11-member Peach Belt boss last summer.

Before all of that, though, Brunk was a stereotypical kid who imagined playing professional baseball. A summer-league injury would soil that field of dreams, but he still had the front office to chase. By the time he awoke, he owned a front office.

In 1972, the wide-eyed West Lafayette, Indiana, native tossed his Ball State mortarboard in the air and did what college graduates do – went looking for work. Rather than query businesses and corporations, Brunk broached ballclubs for a break. His networking paid off when the Cleveland AAA affiliate in Oklahoma City called Brunk about being an administrative assistant. It was a Thursday – they wanted him Monday.

“I asked about the salary,” Brunk said. “They said $100 per week. I thought it was all the money in the world, though I called my dad about it afterward and he was kind of quiet on the other end.”

Brunk would improve his business acumen in short order. He and fiancé Brenda moved to Oklahoma City, where he did everything from pregame hot dog grilling to postgame stadium scrubbing. He sold his first program ad to Bobby Murcer’s dad (a local jeweler) and his first season-ticket package to another former Yankee great, pitcher Allie Reynolds. For lifelong pinstripe fan Brunk, life was good.

Right after the season, though, the newlywed Brunk was assigned to Cleveland’s AA affiliate in San Antonio as a business manager. Those plans were pre-empted four months later when the Kansas City Royals called Brunk’s boss looking for a general manager for their Class A franchise in Waterloo, Iowa. The choice was Brunk, who suddenly had made the unlikely transition from unemployed college graduate to a baseball GM in 12 months.

After two years in Waterloo, Brunk was promoted to GM of the Royals’ AA affiliate in Jacksonville, Florida. “Brenda teared up when we drove the U-Haul from San Antonio to Waterloo in the dead of winter,” Brunk recalled. “But she wasn’t crying when we moved to Florida.”

In Jacksonville, Brunk chummed with John Schuerholz, who built the Royals into a power and would continue that primacy with the Atlanta Braves. By the end of the 1977 season, Brunk knew – and Schuerholz knew Brunk knew – that he wanted to be more than a GM.

Schuerholz offered Brunk the Daytona Beach team as long as he moved it to Kansas City’s spring training home in Fort Myers. “Before he could get the last word out, I said yes,” Brunk said.

Like potato chips, though, Brunk couldn’t own just one. In 1980, he began scouring towns with baseball pasts but no present. On a return flight from Gloversville, New York, the passenger next to him suggested Watertown, an old Dodgers haunt two hours north of Syracuse near the Canadian border. Brunk bit and called the local newspaper publisher. The next day he met with the mayor. The community rallied to build a stadium through donated labor and materials, and Brunk engineered an affiliation with the Pittsburgh Pirates through Branch Rickey III.

“The lights were still being hooked up when the teams were taking batting practice on opening night,” Brunk said.

Just one dream remained – player development. Owning franchises was fun, but boys who dream about playing baseball have other itches to scratch. Good-paying jobs in that realm were tough to come by, though, since there was an abundance of dreamers to satisfy the demand. The real money was being a major-league team president or GM, which was out of reach for Brunk.

But another “out of the blue” call directed his path in 1984. This time it was a Canadian businessman who wanted to buy the Fort Myers franchise. Brunk said “no sale” at first, then offered an exorbitant price two months later when the fellow persisted. To Brunk’s seller’s remorse, the man signed then and there.

Brunk would sell Watertown, too, a couple years later when he became the director of athletics fund-raising at Morehead State. How did he get that, you ask? Longtime Brunk family friend and Purdue AD George King nagged him about being in college sports and kept sending classified ads from The NCAA News.

“The sheer number and diversity of people I worked with while in minor-league baseball administration served as the ideal preparation for a career in college sports,” Brunk said.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

In the '70s and '80s, Dave Brunk covered the minor-league waterfront from Waterloo, Iowa, to Watertown, New York. Ken Gerlinger, Peach Belt Conference