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Anyone who has walked through a baseball dugout after a game has heard the unmistakable sound of cleats hitting the strewn shells from sunflower seeds.
Ballplayers have long devoured and expectorated them, but where some see only the God-awful mess and hear crunching and crackling, UConns Oliver Pudvar and his old high school teammate, Chase Chip Whitman , saw the mother of invention and heard a different sound: Cha ching.
My buddy Chip, who wasnt playing much, was sitting on the bench spitting sunflower seeds and he was kind of upset with the flavors that were available and the ingredients that were in sunflower seeds on the market, Pudvar said.
Im a big seed guy, but my mouth would be on fire from all the salt.
In their business class at Champlain Valley Union High in Hinesburg, Vt., they worked together on an assignment to come up with a business idea.
Just an idea.
Instead, they put together their love for baseball and one of its most prevalent, sloppier customs with their disdain for conventional sunflower seeds and took the assignment to another level.
They were determined to start their own business, learning on the fly about all the complexities and paperwork that would go with it.
Chips family owns a small sugaring business, Pudvar continued.
And we were like, Okay, how do we combine these two things, maple syrup and sunflower seeds.
The result is Chips Seeds , all natural, available in several varieties, online and in a gradually growing number of stores in New England, including Cape Cod, where Pudvar is pitching this summer.
Dom Amore: To Japan and back, this former UConn star has helped spur dramatic MLB turnaround It was like a perfect storm, Whitman said.
No one was really focused on that in Vermont.
You see all these maple products, but no one had gotten to sunflower seeds yet, and that was all we ate while we were playing baseball, because those games were so long.
They were super high in sodium, and I would go through a bag and feel terrible about it.
And there were all the artificial flavors.
Nothing in baseball is without historical precedent, you know.
J im Bouton, author of the famous baseball diary Ball Four, teamed with a minor league teammate and bat boy to create Big League Chew, shredded bubble gum successfully marketed as a harmless way for kids to mimic their tobacco-chewing idols.
Debra Jane Sivyer, a young ball girl manning the foul lines for the Oakland As in the 1970s, went on to create Mrs.
Fields Cookies.
And here, in 2022, were Pudvar, a bespectacled lefty pitcher with Division I aspirations, and Whitman mixing sunflower seeds and maple syrup in plastic bags in their moms kitchen, shaking them up and coming up with, at first, a sticky mess.
It was trial and error, Pudvar said.
What we found was there is a point where you can boil syrup and it will crystalize around something, similar to honey-roasted peanuts.
Instead of being sticky, it crystalizes and sticks to the seeds pretty well.
Whitmans ballplaying days ended after high school, but he went on to Bryant University and began gathering funding, though grants and other avenues.
Pudvars fastball hits 92 MPH, but his business pitch is a spitter, and when he went to Manhattan College he two made successful presentations in business competitions in New York, gaining more capital.
Its fully funded right now, said Whitman, economics and finance major.
Were making enough sales to cover our costs and continue our growth.
By the time Pudvar hit the transfer portal and visited UConn, where he is studying for an MBA, he brought a sample of his seeds to coach Jim Penders.
They start out deceivingly sweet, Penders said, but have a mean, salty kick.
Kind of like Pud.
Hes got these rosy cheeks and thick spectacles on, wont light up a radar gun, looks like the traveling secretary, but sends you back to the dugout with a nasty strike three.
Yes, Pudvar can pitch.
In two seasons since recovering from Tommy John surgery, he is 12-5 for the Huskies, with a 3.80 ERA and 108 strikeouts in 132 2/3 innings.
He pitched last summer with Vermont in the Futures Collegiate Baseball League.
That he is on the Cape this summer, the premier summer league, with the Chatham Anglers (1-1, 4.00 ERA in two starts) indicates hes a serious prospect, so he is all that and, wait for it ..
a bag of Chips.
The prospects for Chips Seeds continue to be bright, too.
Last year, they were able to get out of their moms kitchens and into a shared kitchen facility in Rhode Island, where Pudvar and Whitman would meet on Sunday nights during the school year and go to work, boiling and roasting and bagging until 2 a.m., producing up to 300 bags in an eight- hour shift.
They are planning to move into a larger co-packing facility in Vermont where the production will be handled, allowing the entrepreneurs to focus on marketing.
The seeds are purchased from a farm in Illinois, but they hope to get locally grown seeds to go with the pure maple syrup in Vermont, the ingredient that is non-negotiable, even if its pricier than imitations.
Its liquid gold, Pudvar said.
Most of their business has been online, direct to consumer at $15.99 per 3.7-ounce bag.
They are getting their seeds in mom-and-pop stores in Vermont, Rhode Island and Connecticut, and they hope to get into bigger outlets, more gas stations and go nationwide sooner than later.
Maple Mania is their flagship flavor, but there is also Coffee Maple Chaos, Spicy Maple Madness and other varieties, including shelled seeds for use on salads, ice cream and such.
Theyve found that, outside the baseball community, the maple flavored seeds are a hit with truckers, oddly enough.
The craziest thing to me, Whitman said, is people are actually enjoying them.
They look for them, and try to buy them, so its not like we have a product no one wants.
It was exciting to get in our first stores.
People were actually buying them as Christmas presents, and thats a crazy feeling, that they can see your product as a gift.
So yeah, thats really cool.
So now its Pudvars and Whitmans creation the clean-up crews at UConns Elliot Ballpark and on The Cape are regularly sweeping away, and as long as Pudvar is pitching theres a natural tie-in to get Chips Seeds in the right mouths and a little free media exposure.
(Youre welcome, guys.) Thats our advantage right now, Whitman said, that hes playing baseball and knows the market and has all these connections.
Ollie is the driving force, I feel like.
They havent taken on investors yet, but if these kids dont show up on Shark Tank soon , Mark Cuban, Kevin OLeary and the rest will be missing a chance to get in on the dugout floor of quite a venture.
And if this isnt a Yard Goats concession offering waiting to happen, what is? More for the Sunday Read: Dom Amore: How Jack Cochran started Dwight Freeney on the road from Bloomfield to the Pro Football Hall of Fame Guess whos back? ..
Jack Jack Cochran, one of the most successful football coaches in Connecticut high school annals, is back, r eturning to New London High, his alma mater, this week.
Cochran, 60, won state championships at Bloomfield, where he helped develop Dwight Freeney, New Britain and New London, going 163-31-2 in an often controversial career.
He left his last head coaching job at Harding-Bridgeport in 2012, and has since owned a restaurant and launched a marijuana delivery business in 2023.
His new challenge: Bring glory days back to New London.
Summer Reading Knicker Bonkers, 1 28 pages featuring the New York Posts coverage in words including Mike Vaccaros virtuoso writing performances and pictures of the Knicks run to the NBA Championship, will be released Tuesday by Triumph Books.
The title mirrors the tabloids back page headline after the 29-point comeback in Game 4 of the finals.
It wont be the last book on this topic, but it serves, as they say, as the first draft of history.
Sunday short takes *Putnam Science Academy, which has been a stop on the journeys of a number of basketball standouts over the last 20 or so years, has lost its accreditation due to financial turmoil and closed its doors, it was learned this week.
Akok Akok, Mamadou and Hassan Diarra are among the UConn players who came through there, as did eventual NBA vets like Hamidou Diallo, Tyson Etienne and Vladislav Goldin.
*UConns David Benedict, named AD of the year by the National Association of Collegiate Athletic Directors, is No.7 on their list of department win performance.
Silver Waves Media included Benedict on its list of top ADs in the country, a group of 70 that included his predecessor, Warde Manuel at Michigan, and one of his former assistants, Beth Goetz, now at Iowa.
*Former Xavier High and UConn quarterback Tim Boyle is launching T he Boyle Family Foundation, a nonprofit focused on youth development, adaptive sports programming, mentorship, scholarships, and community impact.
Two upcoming events are coming up at Xavier in Middletown, an adaptive football clinic July 10 and QB/WR Elite Camp July 11, which will include Boyle and other NFL players.
*East Havens Jules Constantinople, who starred at Boston College, was picked No.
25 overall by Vancouver i n the PWHL Draft last week.
*On a drive from New York to Boston, injured Yankee stars Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton stopped in New Haven for an Italian Bomb at Modern Apizza.
Solid choice, though ordering a pie with too many toppings is a tourist move.
If the other great New Haven area spots are still on their bucket list, those 841 home runs should not get them in off the sidewalk any faster than the rest of us.
Ill have spies on the case.
*Not sure I get this Fairfield move to the Coastal Athltic Association.
Obviously there must be more money involved, but the added expenses of traveling in that league compared to the Metro (formerly the MAAC) has to be significant, too.
Also, consider the loss of neighborhood rivals Sacred Heart and Quinnipiac sure to pack the gym.
*So Will Ferrell spent a few hours at the Travelers clowning around, staying strictly in character as delusional Lonnie Hawkins from his Netflix comedy The Hawk.
Ferrell was funny enough, but why didnt anybody think of this when Rodney Dangerfield was alive and plugging Caddyshack? *Very kind gesture by the Travelers folks, remembering former Courant golf writer Bruce Berlet, and photographer John Long , both of whom were lost to us during the past year.
A table with photos and flowers are set up in their memory in the media center, and it is much appreciated.
Last word Becky Hammon is hardly the first, a nd will not be the last, sports analyst to offer an opinion that does not age well.
Hey, in 44 years Ive had a few myself, like when I wrote in 1992 that the 49ers were crazy to start Steve Young and trade Steve Bono.
These things happen, and are normally long forgotten before they are proven wrong.
So why are so many people, three years later, so determined to keep piling on Hammon since Jalen Brunson, who she said was too small to be the 1-A player on a championship team, led the Knicks to the title? In fact, Hammon fell into traps that snare nearly all talking heads, talking in absolutes when its not necessary to sound authoritative while buying into a false narrative that one player wins championships.
Pros should know better.
The lesson here is any great player can be a 1-A on a championship team it depends on the quality of the surrounding talent.
Having said that, the dunking on Hammon shouldve been a one-day thing.
Trust me, there were Hall of Fame-level basketball minds that did not see the Knicks championship coming even a few weeks ago, let alone three years ago.
Enough already.