Covering Little League Opening Day

Sorry if this has already been posted...

Will be covering the opening ceremonies of the local little league this weekend. Just checking to see if anyone had any advice. Been a while since I've done a general assignment like this.


I've e-mailed some of the contacts to let them know I'm coming, and maybe even get some of the reporting out of the way beforehand. My editor said I should be out in a little over an hour.

 

My advice to you is to begin drinking heavily.

 

No matter what they say, it's going to be longer than just an hour, much longer. I guess I don't know what your editor is after, but we usually just took a shit load of photos. Beyond following what your editor said, there really isn't any trick about it beyond finding some way to not go insane.

 

Not bad, really. Yeah you can get a lot of the reporting done early. Talk to coaches, maybe a parent or two. Get a feel for the atmosphere, get some schedules, et cetera. Photos are often the nuts and bolts of little league, as well as of course getting as many names in the paper as possible.

It's not bad at all. Annoying, maybe. An hour seems about right, though if you get nothing done beforehand it can be a lot longer. I'd arrive 90 minutes to two hours before and just start talking to people, gathering info and stuff.

And budget for lots of photos. That's more than half of the trouble if done right.

 

Not sure how many towns you cover, but the day after that runs (or maybe that afternoon) expect to hear from Little League parents from all of them asking for equal coverage.

 

This.

I covered one league's hall of fame ceremony -- that's all I was there for -- and got emails asking me to cover two or three other league's opening day stuff.

 

And not just baseball but softball, soccer and every other sport that has youth teams... it's Pandora's box...

 

If you're going to cover Opening Day and just Opening Day, you might want to see if the news department can handle it instead. Honestly, it is more of a news / community news thing; I run a Patch site and I'm sending a couple photogs, no reporters, because at least in my past experience people mostly just want to see lots and lots of photos.

As others have noted, if you cover it, do expect to hear back from every lacrosse, hop-scotch and tiddlewinks league in existence asking why they don't get that coverage.

 

This. Send the photogs out to get the mayor tossing out the first pitch, the parade of teams, ect. If there's something special going on, then it might be worth staffing.

Only got one request to cover an opening day this year, in a neighboring community where they were dedicating the fields to a local who was killed at the Pentagon on 9/11. Passed it on to the newsies since they're always looking for news for that community's dedicated pages and it was more than a sports story.

 

Thanks for the advice. It actually is for Patch, and I was a little hesitant to pick it up at first. But they are sending a photog, and the editor seems to understand it is what it is.

So I go out, get some quotes about how this is the greatest opening day in the history of the league, throw it together and get my fifty bones.

And as someone mentioned, I'll be out in time to drink, especially since my buddy bartends the Saturday happy hour shift.

 

Photo slideshow of the moms who wear the tightest shorts and the lowest-cut tank tops. You'll get thousands of page views. Some of the moms will pay for reprints.

 

Make sure Buttermaker buys the first round.