The owner of the Iowa Cubs minor league baseball team surprises staff with bonus checks following the sale of the franchise. Michael Gartner has been the majority owner of the Iowa Cubs for 22 years, but at 83-years-old, he decided it was time to sell. He gathered his employees at the team’s stadium in Des Moines, Iowa, for a meeting after Christmas and told them he wanted to give them their new business cards. But instead of business cards, the envelopes contained checks worth $2-thousand for every year each of the employees had worked for the organization.
Gartner handed out checks that ranged from $4-thousand to $70-thousand totalling $600-thousand to the 23 full time workers. "A lot of those people have worked for us for over 20 years, and they've helped us build a successful team," Gartner says. "They're just fantastic people." He follows up by saying that sharing the proceeds from the sale "was the right thing to do."
The employees were surprised by the checks, but not by Gartner’s generosity. The team’s vice president and assistant general manager Randy Wehofer says that’s just how Gartner operates. "That's always been his way, as long as I've been part of the organization," Wehofer says. The team’s radio broadcaster Alex Cohen says the checks are "a life-changing gesture" for some of the staff. "Seeing all the people who had been there for two decades, three decades, tears streaming down their faces, it was a very special, emotional day," he says.
Source: Star Tribune