For some St. Louis athletes, retirement isn’t the end of the career game
By Thomas Crone
Marshall Faulk may have gone under the knife this summer for surgery that could force him to hang up his cleats for good, but he’s got a backup gig: hawking his eponymous line of healthy sausage.
This city has long been friendly to its professional athletes, and though some of these ex-players wind up in professions that one could consider typical—restaurateurs like Mike Shannon and Ozzie Smith, broadcasters such as Bernie Federko and, again, Shannon—others find themselves in new and unique jobs ... like donning a toque and selling meat. Here are a few of our other favorites.
Mark Arneson
St. Louis Cardinals (football)
Soon after retiring from a nine-year career with the Cardinals, this hard-hitting linebacker founded a family-run company focusing on residential and commercial construction, with special emphasis on fire-restoration projects. Arneson also runs an affiliated business in carpet sales and installation.
Erwin Claggett
Saint Louis University Billikens, St. Louis Swarm
From 1991 until 1995, Claggett, the “Venice Menace,” was a star shooting guard for the Billikens. After leaving the school, Claggett played overseas and with the minor-league Swarm. For the past three seasons, though, the former sharpshooter’s been holding the clipboard for the McCluer High School team, coaching the school’s varsity squad and, off the court, teaching social studies.
Scott Cooper
St. Louis Cardinals (football)
Cooper only played one season with the Cardinals, 1995, before moving on to stints with Kansas City, Texas and the Japanese major league, but he came back and bought a Balls-N-Strikes franchise in Maryland Heights. He stays busy, teaching baseball and softball to players ranging in age from 5 to 18. It’s given him a chance, he says, “to give back to the game in my hometown.”
Blake Dunlop
St. Louis Blues
For four-plus seasons in the early 1980s, Dunlop was a high-scoring forward for the St. Louis Blues. After ending his career in Detroit, he returned to the St. Louis area and found himself an increasingly active role in the local financial community. Today he runs the Clayton branch of A.G. Edwards, a firm with several prominent former athletes in its ranks.
Mark Moser
St. Louis Storm, Ambush and Steamers
In the 1980s and ’90s, Moser was one of the great goal scorers in indoor soccer, a crafty finisher who played for three different St. Louis indoor squads. Not only is he now a lead sales rep for KTRS (550 AM), but Moser’s also doing a little shilling on the side: Famously known to smoke in the tunnel between shifts during his playing days, he can be heard hawking an anti-smoking product on KTRS.
