Mantorville native plays on big stage

Gary Glawe likes to joke that he grew up in Mantorville, which was a town of 874 people during his youth, but now he manages a building that seats close to 40,000.
The 1995 Kasson-Mantorville High School graduate said he has his dream job as senior director of facilities for the Minnesota Twins at Target Field.
“Boy, it would be tough to beat,” he said. “I’m very happy.”
Glawe was actually searching for job candidates as a hiring manager at another company when he came across the job posting for the Twins. He figured since he was born in Minnesota and had grown up in Minnesota, he should apply.
He put together his resume and cover letter and “I got a call back the same day,” he said. As interview talks progressed, he realized this wasn’t a routine day job working from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. “It’s really more of a lifestyle than a job,” he said.
“You really need to work around our core business, which is professional baseball,” Glawe said. “There are 162 games in a season and 81 of those are home games. They happen on holidays and weekends. We live in Minnesota so we can enjoy our spring, summer and fall seasons, and baseball takes up the majority of that nice time.”
Glawe is happy to make the sacrifice of the state’s warmer seasons. He attends 90 percent of the team’s home games, and sometimes works from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. so he can overlap with marketing, human resources and the finance groups by day but be in the stadium for the game by night. Target Field also plays host to one or two concerts each year, and those require a lot of work from Glawe’s team.
He remembers starting with the Twins in October of 2008, when the team was still playing at the Metrodome. As Target Field was under construction, Glawe spent all the time he could at the site. In January of 2010 the Twins moved into Target Field.
It’s now his job to make sure everything runs smoothly at the stadium.
“At first it was a lot of sleepless nights,” Glawe said. “To think that this entire facility was my responsibility to make sure we’ve got the programs and procedures in place to be successful and continue to maintain this ballpark in a world-class fashion.”
“I put a lot of time and energy into hiring my staff and I have a lot of confidence that I hired the right people. Over the years of developing my team and hiring the right people, I am happy to say I can now sleep at night. I know we have a solid foundation in place to make sure this building runs successfully.”
Glawe lives with his wife, child and two step-children in Albertville, Minn., which is a 40-minute drive from Target Field. He visits Mantorville about six times a year, and still has relatives in town, including his dad, brother, sister and four nieces.
He said he “absolutely loved growing up in the area.” Being in a small town, living near the park, having good friends and being able to play any sport you wanted without having to go through a try-out process, are all nostalgic memories for him.
During high school at Kasson-Mantorville, Glawe played baseball and football. After high school he went on to major in facilities management at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, graduating in December of 2000.
 
He’s never missed a Marigold Days, until this year. The fall community extravaganza is canceled because of COVID-19. Glawe said the pandemic has brought many facets of life to “a screeching halt” for people, including for those in professional baseball.
“It’s changed the world,” he said. “We’ve all seen it. There are a lot of people affected in various ways. If we are going to be specific about baseball, not only was the season delayed, we weren’t allowed to gather and do business as normal. That affects major league baseball as a whole. It affects the players, it affects all the behind-the-scenes workers. There are so many facets that came to a screeching halt for people. You could say that about any business, realistically.”
Glawe said work sometimes becomes work, and feels like a job some days. But he often reminds himself to take a step back and appreciate where he’s at: Target Field.
“I really need to put it into perspective at times,” he said. “Just to sit back once in a while and say ‘I come to a major league baseball park every day for my job.’ It’s just really trying to take a step back and realize there are a lot of people who would love to report to Target Field every day for work.”