Orlando Dreamers Support Local Businesses

The send-off

This past July, the Dr. Phillips girls’ softball team was getting ready to travel to Tennessee to represent Florida in a tournament, and the Orlando Dreamers wanted to send them off with something they could keep long after the trip was over. They reached out to us to make it, and we were thrilled to be asked.

What we made

The order was twenty mini wooden baseball bats, one for every player and every coach on the team. On one side of each bat, “Dream Big” sits right next to the Orlando Baseball logo. When you flip it over, you’ll find the name of a player or coach from the team. Every bat carries the same message, but no two are exactly alike.

How they came together

We ran the entire order on our UV laser, and each bat took about two minutes to finish, with the logo on one side and the name on the other. On a piece of wood that small there is nowhere to hide a mistake, so we took our time with every one. Twenty bats with two sides each adds up quickly, and by the time the last one came off the bed, a full roster’s worth of names was lined up on the table and the whole shop smelled like a campfire.

Why this one mattered to us

Lasertorch is a local business in the plainest sense of the word. We’re based in Orlando, and we love working with Orlando teams, schools and organizations, especially people who feel strongly about where they live. That’s exactly what we saw in the Dreamers. They’re chasing something enormous, and they still made time to put their name behind a group of local girls on their way to a tournament. Community first, then baseball. We think that’s the right order, and it’s also how we try to run our own business, so when they called there was nothing to talk ourselves into.

Who the Orlando Dreamers are

The Dreamers started in late 2019, when Orlando Magic co-founder Pat Williams announced an effort to bring Major League Baseball to Orlando. The name is a nod to the dreamers who built modern Central Florida, including Walt Disney and Arnold Palmer. Williams had seen this kind of thing work before, since the Magic began with thousands of fans putting their names down before there was even a team to cheer for.

The Dreamers aren’t a team yet, and they’re upfront about that. They’re a group of local business people, former players and fans who believe Orlando is ready, and anyone who agrees can sign on as a supporter at OrlandoDreamers.com.

Why Orlando, and why baseball

By the Dreamers’ own count, Orlando is one of the fastest-growing metro areas in the country and the largest market in the U.S. without a Major League team. Just as important, this is a city with real baseball roots, from Little League diamonds to travel-ball fields that fill up every weekend. Kids here grow up playing, and plenty of them grow up playing softball, so a team of those kids heading out of state to represent Florida is exactly the kind of thing a city that wants big league baseball should be cheering on.

What comes next

Nobody can say yet whether Major League Baseball is coming to Orlando, or when it might happen. What we can say is that the people pushing for it are doing it the right way, by showing up in the community and inviting the whole city to show up with them. We’re rooting for them, and we hope you are too.

If your team, school or business is working on something big of its own, we’d love to hear about it.

About the Orlando Dreamers

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The Orlando Dreamers are working to bring Major League Baseball to Orlando. Learn more, or sign on as a supporter, at OrlandoDreamers.com.