Ashur Tolliver: From Diamond to Dive Bomb

June 12, 2020

In the famous baseball movie “The Bad News Bears”, Coach Morris Buttermaker makes a remark to one of his unruly players, saying “only a few thousand people can say they’ve ever stepped foot on a major league mound, and I’m one of ‘em. What have you done with your life, smartass?”. Ashur Tolliver, though much more humble than the fictional Coach Buttermaker, is one of those few thousand people who can say he stepped foot on a big-league mound. What’s even more impressive, he’s a part of an even smaller and more elite category of athletes who owns a world series ring! Ashur Tolliver was drafted in 2009 by the Baltimore Orioles and has now found himself working as the Vice President for Dive Bomb Industries. So how does someone go from facing batters like Mookie Betts, and Hanley Ramirez, to helping run the most successful silhouette decoy company in the business? Split Reed was lucky enough to have a conversation with the former big-league reliever, and Dive Bomb Industries VP, to get a glimpse into the life of Ashur Tolliver.

“There’s a lot of downtime in baseball”, says Tolliver, “you show up at noon for a 7:05 or 6:35 start time, and there’s just a ton of time between when pitchers show up, to batting practice, and obviously when the game is over at night. Especially when you would travel on these long, 10-hour bus rides, so in my downtime, I started an Instagram page with all my friends back when it had first really started in like 2012, just as a place to post all our hunting pictures. Just so we wouldn’t blow up our own personal feeds with a bunch of dead animals. So we put this page together, grew it, and I just kinda stuck with it and some other people liked what I was doing so I started running some other pages.” Ashur continues on to talk about his involvement in running social media accounts for outdoor companies. Companies like Fort Thompson Sporting Goods, Seelite LEDs, and Natural Gear Camo. Making it clear that Tolliver had a talent for making posts appealing to these company’s followers, also allowing him to get a little bit of money on the side. “Playing minor league baseball, you don’t make very much money, so I was always looking for different side hustles. I was really good at Facebook and Instagram, and I knew how to relate to people and how to post things that were relevant to people’s interests.” At that time Ashur had started making trips to Canada, however, the Arkansas native found himself with more duck decoys than Canada goose decoys (and rightfully so). “We really wanted to increase our spread for geese but we didn’t really have the budget for it, then I found this guy from Dive Bomb Industries. They were really small, like 1200 followers or something like that. They didn’t have a lot of products, but I saw these silhouettes and thought ‘maybe I can work out a trade or something’ I figured that maybe I could help him with some social media stuff and maybe he would send me some decoys,” and so started the relationship between Dive Bomb Industries, and Ashur Tolliver, who, at the time, was still working his way through the minor leagues. Making deals back and forth for decoys to help grow their social media accounts, the position was eventually offered to Tolliver as a full-time position.

However, while running the Dive Bomb accounts and helping grow that business had become a part of Tolliver’s life, he still had a major league baseball career to focus on. When asked what it was like to play in the major leagues, Ashur responded, “it was a dream come true. I think when every little kid gets asked in child care or kindergarten or sometime in elementary school what they want to be when they grow up, I bet 90% of the boys said that they wanted to be a professional athlete of some kind and to be able to make it of the pinnacle of your sport, that was pretty cool,” but it didn’t come easy. Tolliver makes mention that he didn’t throw the hardest or have the most power, and he was lucky enough to have some ball clubs that stuck with him through some hard times and some injuries, “I can’t take all the credit, but I can say that through a lot of hard work, I was able to make it to the pinnacle of the sport, which is what I had dreamed about for my entire life” Tolliver does make mention that while getting the call-up to the major leagues was a surreal feeling, he never did feel overwhelmed. He notes that these were all players that he had been playing against for his entire career. Throughout his entire span of the minor league, he had faced these players and pitched against these hitters. He had worked for it, and while he was grateful for the chance to play in the big show, he didn’t feel out of place. “Sometimes you’d get done facing Mookie Betts, Hanley Ramirez, or Jackie Bradley Jr. or whoever, and then you’d get done and sit on the bench and watch your guys out there facing Craig Kimbrell or David Price and you’d kinda have to pinch yourself like ‘man I’m in the dugout right now, I’m apart of this’ those parts were pretty surreal, but the same time it was like ‘hell yeah, I belong here! I’m the right guy for the job’” says Tolliver’

It’s not lost on Ashur that some might think that his life is a little too good to be true. 10 years of professional baseball, world series champion, and now he gets to hunt, travel, and work in the decoy industry for a living- not a bad way to enter retirement from your baseball career. “I give all thanks and glory to God for where I am today,” Ashur says, “but He gave me that enthusiasm to stick with everything. While I was working with Dive Bomb and running those accounts, I was doing that for no pay, while I was grinding in the minor leagues for 5 or 6 years in the minor leagues for nothing. So it’s not like this just popped up and I just got offered this awesome job. All of this stuff went on behind the scenes and after hours. A lot of grinding and hard work went into where I am today”. He makes it clear that nothing came by accident. Making it to the majors wasn’t an accident, coming into Dive Bomb wasn’t an accident. There were years and years of hard work and dedication that led to all of the circumstances that Tolliver finds himself in today. “On the surface, it looks like I’m a lucky guy, and I am, I’ve been very blessed to connect with the right people at the right times, while also putting in my own work below the surface. Kinda like a duck. You look cool and calm on the surface, but underneath you’re paddling hard, working hard- not making shit in the minor leagues, pulling at strings, trying to get Instagram jobs, just to try to help supplement your crappy minor league income. None of this happened by accident,” Tolliver states, making it clear that this didn’t just fall into his lap. It was worked for, and earned over years of effort and dedication. After getting drafted, working through a myriad of different injuries, the road wasn’t easy for Tolliver, but he stuck with it, giving credit and thanks to God along the way, and saw it through to his big league debut in 2016. “A lot of this stuff didn’t work out the way I thought it would work out, or even how I wanted it to work out, but I wouldn’t change it. If it didn’t work out the way it did I wouldn’t be with Dive Bomb, and I wouldn’t have had all these amazing experiences along the way”.

When asked about his fondest memory of the big leagues, Tolliver recounted his first big league win. He was brought in against the Tampa Bay Rays to face a string of left-handed hitters. After doing his job, the Orioles hitters gave him the run support he needed, and Ashur was able to notch his first win into his belt. “When you get your first big league win they put you in this laundry cart sort of thing, turn the showers on cold, and throw anything and everything on you that you can imagine. Things such as baby powder, ketchup, mustard, honey, protein powder, strawberries, bananas, chocolate; anything they can get from the kitchen. And they just cover you until everyone’s out of stuff and it’s freezing cold and terrible, but at the same time it’s a great time,” says Tolliver. He also makes mention of his big league debut. “That’s just something you never forget,” he says.

As could be expected, there was not any hunting to be had during baseball season. Spring turkey hunts weren’t an option, and the early season Canada trips were a no-go as well. When baseball season was on, hunting was off for Tolliver. Lucky enough for him, baseball is a sport that partners well with waterfowl hunting. With baseball season being over by the end of September (sometimes even sooner in the minor leagues), it leaves plenty of time to get out and chase ducks. A big deal for someone who grew up hunting ducks in Arkansas. However, with the offseason allowing him to hunt, it didn’t mean it was all fun and games. “Just because I had the freedom to hunt during the offseason, you still better be responsible and be accountable to stay in shape and throw, and lift and do all the things you need to,” says Tolliver about his offseason regiment. “You can duck hunt all you want, but you can’t let that carry over into affecting your offseason training,” he says.

Needless to say, between the funny stories and memories made in the minor leagues, to winning a world series with the 2017 Houston Astros, to all his years spent with Orioles and other organizations, Tolliver has had quite the baseball career. Since announcing his retirement in March of this year, he now has time to focus on his real passion. Hunting. Even though baseball played a huge role in his life, Ashur’s real pride and joy is that of early mornings setting up decoys, and waiting for ducks and geese to come circling the spread. He also enjoys fishing as well. With his major league baseball career now sitting on the shelf, along with his world series ring, and a myriad of other championship trophies, he now has the time to focus on getting out on the water for spring fishing and has time to prepare like the rest of us for the early season molt migration hunts, the Canada trips, and the September teal hunts. While his employment at Dive Bomb helps him feed into his competitive nature. “Working at Dive Bomb helps me fill that competitive desire. Whether it’s trying to look for a new product, or trying to fill a new hole in the market. It just helps me make that transition,” says Tolliver. “The transition out of baseball hasn’t been that bad really. Dive Bomb has really helped ease me into it, and it’s really helped me with that transition and it’s helped me to keep me focused on being competitive and keeping me engaged in something. I’m welcoming the transition. I love my wife, I love my family, I love Dive Bomb, and I’m excited about the future”.

“I love hunting more than I love playing professional baseball. Whenever you start doing something professionally, it becomes a job, and that may happen with Dive Bomb, but we’ll have to see. I mean it took 28 years for that to happen with baseball” says Ashur, who’s going from doing something he loves as a career, to something he loves even more as a career. Either way, from the diamond to Dive Bomb, it can be expected that Tolliver will put his heart and soul into what he’s doing, giving thanks to God and making sure he finds time to pile up the ducks and geese while he’s at it.