Top pick, top prospect, top ... gum seller? Bazzana talks unique side hustle

GOODYEAR, Ariz. -- Everyone can relate to the thrill of earning a bit of money as a kid. Maybe you shoveled snow off the sidewalk, raked leaves in the yard, did various household chores or something similar that taught you the value of work from a young age.

Travis Bazzana was no exception to this while growing up, but there are levels to everything. His lesson in what (and where) working hard can get you came from an atypical side hustle that earned him more than a few bucks: importing American bubble gum to Australia and selling it.

¡°I did that for a little bit,¡± Bazzana said of the side hustle. ¡°And then I made my first trip to the U.S., partly funded by that, so that was cool.¡±

No kidding. Bazzana holds a lot of unique titles -- College World Series champion, first overall pick in the 2024 MLB Draft and MLB Pipeline's No. 10 prospect in the Majors -- but maybe we¡¯ve undersold ¡°expert bubble gum seller¡± in our consideration for best of the bunch.

It¡¯s at least a perfect fun fact to display on the video boards at Progressive Field when Bazzana (the Guardians¡¯ No. 1 prospect) reaches the Majors.

How does a kid get into the bubble gum sales game, you¡¯re wondering? As Bazzana explains it, there were only a couple of baseball supply stores nearby where he grew up in Sydney. They sold Big League Chew bubble gum, sunflower seeds and other favorite dugout snacks. But the prices were steep for small packs.

Bazzana estimated the gum went for as much as $5 per pack, and the seeds for $7 per pack. (Consider this was over 10 years ago, and you can imagine what those prices look like today.) So Bazzana and his dad got creative. They began to buy Big League Chew from the U.S. in bulk to sell it at home in Australia. They turned a profit along the way.

¡°I guess my dad and I saw an opportunity to bring the price down for my teammates and other players at different tournaments and stuff, but also fundraise some money for me to go play in the U.S. for a tournament,¡± Bazzana said. ¡°Essentially, I started going to my baseball games, and maybe before and after the games, I'd walk around to the fields and sell Big League Chew that we would import from the U.S. Big League Chew and some sunflower seeds.¡±

How much can one earn just from selling Big League Chew and sunflower seeds? If you do it long enough (and well enough), a lot. Bazzana estimated he made a couple thousand dollars in total over a year to a year and a half. His sales expanded from tournaments to friends at school.

In all, those profits helped Bazzana fund a big portion of his first trip to the U.S., when he went for two weeks.

¡°I was definitely slightly embarrassed selling some stuff at times at tournaments, just because being a salesperson is not an easy task,¡± Bazzana said. ¡°You have to approach people and speak to people, so that was somewhat of a challenge. But in terms of my close friends, they thought it was cool, and they loved Big League Chew a lot. So they were excited to have that.¡±

And looking back on it, Bazzana has fond memories of the experience. Making that much money as a kid was a thrill, but just as important are the life lessons he took from the experience.

¡°Probably the biggest lesson it taught me is just how to communicate with people, and also [how to] approach people face to face and be able to have a conversation you might not want to have,¡± Bazzana said. ¡°I think learning [while] young to be able to walk up to someone and be like, ¡®Hey, I'm selling Big League Chew. Would you like to buy some?¡¯ can be scary as a kid.

¡°So it teaches you that sometimes you might not want to go tell someone something or ask something of someone. But you learn that if you just face it, that challenge is OK. You just have to do it. So I think it helps with general social interaction and also doing hard things at a young age.¡±