'I Covered the Braves for a newspaper that didn't exist'

Indifference?

 

No. Not a big-name guy and it was a smaller IE paper. But, to be honest, nobody wanted to be in the food line behind Big Joe (RIP).

 

Just like their fans!

 

The guy who took my place in the press box went six months without writing a word, posting a status, tweeting jack.

Our editor contacted me since I am in the same city to find out what was going on.

I asked him if he was going to the games. Nope. I checked some of the twitter accounts of other people on the same row in the press box. There he was, often close to front and center of the group pics.

Editor, who was in Montreal, wanted me to go make him write.

 

This legitmately made me laugh out loud. Thank you.

 

Yeah, honest. I'd much rather be in the stands right behind the plate or on the 50-yard line or courtside than with a bunch of stuffy sports writers telling me to keep it quiet and no cheering. And postgame pressers are the worst. Why would a fan want to watch or listen to that shit? As a younger fan, I always wanted to read the stories the next day in the paper or the next week in sports illustrated, and I wanted see the local and ESPN TV reports but I couldn't give a shit about how they were obtained or delivered and I sure didn't want to sit on it when I had better things to do.

Now, to have met some of the players would have been cool ... but basically it would only have been to get their autograph, which I did a couple of times. But as far as talking to them and trying to be their best friend, like I see some of these 40-50 year-old media fanboys, why the fuck would I want to do that?

I mean at 10 years old, what the hell would I have to talk to Willie McGee or Ozzie Smith about? Now at 50, I couldn't give a shit about talking to them other than to get what I need for my story. It's not like I need their friendship to validate my self-esteem.

 

I wonder how many of us got our "start" in a similar manner. Not at the major-league level (that's balls) but I did in the minors 21 years ago.

One night, I decided that I wanted to be a sports writer. I only had 30 credits left before my degree so I chose to load up on journalism classes. Had no-bylines (not even the student paper) but a friend of mine was the SE there and I had a car -- rare at where I went to college. The SE rigged up a fake press pass for me and I went to opening night for a Northern League team. Once the game ended, I did the locker room interviews and drove to the library to write a "fake gamer" -- that would never see the light of day. Game ended at 10, I set a midnight deadline to crank out copy.

The second night, the PR person comes over. "Who do you write for?"

I mumbled the student paper.

"But do they even print in the summer?"

I stammered around without a good answer. Kept my head down, wrote another gamer by midnight. The third night, I show up again. Turns out I am the only media person there.

PR guy: "It's clear that you're not on any real deadline. But you're the only person here. Here's a season credential." Within 30 days, I had about 14 games and some feature stories, all printed out. I had interviews with Jack Morris and Darryl Strawberry (on his redemption tour).

A week later, one of the other newspaper guys told me he was getting moved to another beat. His SE hired me - on the spot - off the stack of fake stories that I had written. That was in July. By September, I had a freelance empire brewing -- paid $75 a story for HS soccer beat Monday/Tuesday/Thursday plus notes, college volleyball on Wednesdays/Saturdays, HS football on Fridays. Fall state soccer/football tournaments brought endless cash from out-of-market newspapers on freelance jobs, AP spotting gigs.

By the winter, I had all of the HS hockey beats. For the state hockey tournament quarterfinals one glorious Friday, my girlfriend (now Mrs. Ex) and I sat in press row as I cashed in freelance articles for my paper, the paper of every opponent (anywhere from $100-$150 per), plus $50 for each three-paragraph AP story (no quotes!). Made damn near $1,000 in one day in freelance fees. Four games and wrote eight stories. Mrs. Ex was in charge of transcribing quotes and then calling the SEs and telling them when the stories were coming before deadline.

My SE at the original paper that hired me encouraged me to make as much money as I could.

Ah, if those days would have lasted forever...

By then I had already caught the TV bug and was also working as a sports reporter for the CBS station in town as the spring prep season was ending. First job in TV... $7.00 an hour...dumb ass.

 

I don't get it. He took your job and got the same seat in the press box?

He lied and said he wasn't going to games but actually was?

I assume covering that team was not a normal part of his dutie, but if he was taking up a spot, he was expected to do some work other than shoveling food?

 

I moved once because of my wife's training and was without full-time work for close to two years. Freelancing alone at the local paper (mostly high school but a decent amount of the local D-I and D-II colleges around) and the AP and a couple of others when out of town teams came to bigger games, etc., I virtually made a real living. Not quite, but close. It was actually a quite nice gig not being tied to anything and just getting to cover stuff. Tried to see if there was anything like that around when we moved to our current location, close to a decade after that good freelance days, and pretty much got laughed at.

 

You might not get it, but most people who aren't in the business don't feel the same way. I know almost every time I tell someone at my real job that I'm freelancing an NFL game -- or even that I'm going to work the locker room and coach's press conference after a practice -- they'll ask, "Do you need an assistant?" Or, "Can you get me in?" In fact, it just happened a couple hours ago.

 

This weekend at an SEC game, there was someone with a credential standing in an odd spot during the game. An SID asked to see the credential and then told the secruity guys to check out the person. Turned out to be a fan. I wonder if this Deadspin story (which was terrific) gave some people the idea to give it a shot.

Kudos to anyone who pulls it off. After all, one of the biggest rules in the press box is pretending like you belong until you eventually do.