Never Can Say Goodbye
After 21 years of writing a monthly enewsletter and sharing many aspects of my life….including the birth of my Daughter who turns 19 this year….the death of my Mother…and the joy of writing about being a Grandfather…it has come time to write a newsletter that I know is going to take me hours to write due to sadness of which I write it all for you…….
With a broken heart and a sadness I have never experienced before, I am leaving California with my family and moving to Tega Cay, South Carolina…sometime within the next 5-6 weeks.
Now before I go any further to explain my circumstances, I need you to know that Throwzone Academy is going to continue to operate as it has for the past 25+ years, with your captain still running the operations from afar. More to follow on this…..
I am born and raised a SoCal kid and will ALWAYS be a kid from Southern California…raised in Burbank…went to the University of Arizona…moved back ‘home’ and lived in Northridge before getting married and moving to Santa Clarita in 1988.
I have never left Santa Clarita; however, after visiting the Carolinas over 9 years ago….this all started the wheels spinning after flying out to Asheville, NC for a cousin’s wedding, and it ended meeting up with my college teammate and roommate for lunch before heading back to So Cal. But he told me how much he loved being there….I saw how beautiful the state is, and then my jaw dropped when he told me how much, or little, his property taxes were.
That lunch got the wheels spinning and convinced my wife to fly out to where Gary lived and meet up with his wife, Andrea, and their 2 boys living in a beautiful home on a lake…I just thought it was an ideal place to live. Sondra and Lauren fell in love with it right away, and I believe in 2021-2024 we went out to South Carolina to stay with Gary and his family, all the while visiting the many wonderful aspects of the immediate area and then going to Charleston and spending time at the beach at Pawley’s Island about 15 miles from Myrtle Beach.
On New Year’s Eve night at an early dinner at The Cheesecake Factory next to the Mall…on December 31, 2023, Sondra and I talked out everything and set a date for summer of 2026.
And here we are….
Going forward, I will be here at the facility through July 10 for both summer camp and classes. After that, I know I will be back here for the last week of July and then probably the first week of school starting when our 7:30 p.m. classes start up.
However, I have a huge silver lining with my Operations Manager and long-time client/student, Ryan Kysar, who has turned himself into a phenomenal pitching and throwing trainer. Ryan is going to add new and fresh blood into Throwzone Academy, which I have known needs to happen for a while.
I started this business in 2001, starting at Meadows Park, to work with the first client who said ‘Yes’ to beginning pitching work for a 10 yo, Trevor Bauer, who was a dream student for his undying attention to detail and setting goals and dreams. I came to realize that not everyone is built like Trevor, but the experience of working with more and more players was life-changing for me as I understood players better…what their wants and needs are…what buttons to push and so on. All this training for me led me to more parks where I finally settled on everyone coming to Santa Clarita Park (Robot Park!). After that I moved into an indoor facility where I leased mound space to an owner who was certified crazy… and I had to leave that environment…..then to the old Line Drive facility where the owner, Steve McAfee, was such a wonderful owner and human being who taught me so much about running a business that it led me to spread my wings in 2013 and move into our current location on Oak Ave and Jim Wagner’s Throwzone Academy.
It’s been an amazing time to learn and grow….deal with a worldwide pandemic in 2020….and also be a pitching coach for West Ranch HS where we won a CIF Southern Section championship in 2025 and worked with some amazing baseball players who have gone onto wonderful things in life…..be a college player..get married…have babies and all that life gives us. I hope that I have been a small part of the player’s life that I have come into contact with. My goal is to always make that player feel as special as they are and to give them hope that they can succeed at the next level.
The cool thing about this is I will still be a part of that development; however, I will be behind the scenes doing marketing, accounting, player communication, and also being a part of ownership, where I will have 2 other owners who plan on building the Throwzone brand to even greater heights than where we are. New equipment, like a Trackman, will be utilized during sessions. Trackman gives us usable data of a pitch thrown where someone like Ryan…who is an expert on running this very expensive device…will help dictate pitch location, spin rate, and spin direction. This will give players even greater insight into what their pitches are doing and will improve their skill on the mound, coupled with developing and training agility and gaining “throwing strength “. Ryan is the perfect person to lead Throwzone into the next levels of the game, whether a player is 8 years old or 18 years old…and all ages in between….Ryan will be a younger version of me and has great ideas and new training methodologies that will be of great benefit to your son and his baseball training.
I don’t really look at this as a goodbye as much as a hello to new beginnings for Throwzone Academy. I have given a great amount of my life and time to growing this business, and I don’t think for one minute that my stepping back will hurt Throwzone Academy whatsoever. In fact, I am ecstatic about what is going to occur in terms of growing the business. There is no doubt in my mind that this is a very necessary step to push Throwzone to levels that it has never reached before. Ryan will do amazing work with this growth, and he is the perfect person to take this to new levels. The 2 partners also agree that Ryan is the right person to do this and are the reasons why they are going ahead and investing in Throwzone Academy and what it offers.
The most difficult part of all of this is my saying goodbye to so many parents and players who become such an important part of my life. I plan to be out here in Santa Clarita once every 3 weeks initially and make sure that Ryan is feeling comfortable. Then after that, probably every 2-3 months. So you will not be able to get rid of me that easily……however, as I said earlier…my heart is breaking as so many of the parents have become good friends and reliable cohorts who I will miss the weekly interaction of each other’s lives.
I am an emotional person as it is. The last few years, in moving into the world of being 60 yo, I have found myself tearing up at a much more at the smallest things and at emotional videos on social media. Anything involving a soldier coming home to his family has me crying because our families are what is most important in this world. Just this past weekend, I went for about 48 hours to visit Josh and his family, including my grandson and granddaughter. It was an amazing visit, and when I got my car ready to drive to the airport and said my goodbyes, Josh and I just stood in an embrace in the street and were crying and sobbing because it is so hard for him to live so far away from his family. It was touching but difficult because in your own maturation you realize what is most important….and that is my wife, children, grandchildren as well as my 2 daughters-in-law.
I will make it a point to reach out to many of you as I can to thank you for everything. I still haven’t gotten over my goodbyes to West Ranch, but life moves on…and I know that it will be that way with y’all too…(I am finding myself stating over and over he last year with Southern wording like Y’all).
I am trying to not think too much ahead about moving. I need to focus on the present moment, and that is continuing to always be friends with you as well as making your son improve in ways that they never thought they could. That is my total focus over the next 5-6 weeks…if only for the fact that crying every day is not good for me emotionally and physically…but I know it’s coming.
Just not right now…..
Thank you for everything you have done to be a big part of my life. I could never thank you enough for allowing me to live a dream revolving in the world of baseball….but know that Ryan will work with you for the day-to-day operations…and you can still reach out to me to text, chat, or talk…I will always do that for each of you.
Until next time…
Jim
Jim Wagner's ThrowZone Academy 