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Minor league baseball beat writer

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Brookerton, Sep 9, 2008.

  1. awriter

    awriter Active Member

    Attack that beat as if you were covering a major league team. Seriously. Get to know everyone from the team employees to the manager, coaches and players to the parent club's minor league director and roving instructors. There are great opportunities for features, of course, but you also have a chance to break news. Besides writing about the top prospects and who may be getting called up in the next few days (pay attention to what goes on at the higher levels), stay in tune to what's going on behind the scenes with the local team. Are they drawing good crowds, or are they bleeding money while considering a move? How's the stadium? Is it new or does it need work? And if so, how would it be funded? Are the owners local or from out of town (perhaps one that would like a minor league team)?
     
  2. mike311gd

    mike311gd Active Member

    The first minor league game I covered, I went to interview some 19-year-old player from the Dominican who was 4-for-5 with the go-ahead double or something. He didn't know a word of English. Thankfully, one of the other guys said, "Yo, Rodriguez, go help him out with the reporter."

    I knew three years of Italian wouldn't get me anything but Bs.
     
  3. But with translators you get a cleaned-up version of it. Either the guy talks for 2 minutes and you get a three-word answer, or he gives a one-word answer and the translator waxes philosophic for a while. It gets what you need, but it's hardly genuine.
     
  4. mike311gd

    mike311gd Active Member

    Oh, totally. I asked him two questions and basically got the same answer. So that was the end of the interview.

    “You want to start good and finish good,” Rodriguez said. “So I feel good.”

    That's all I used.
     
  5. forever_town

    forever_town Well-Known Member

    The first time I covered a game involving my local Class AA team, I went to interview the guy who hit a three-run homer and led the team to a win over the B-Mets.

    Guy starts speaking in Spanish, saying "no hablo inglés." I'm thinking "fuck!" and trying to stumble with the best of my declining Spanish. Until he suddenly goes, "I'm just fucking with you." And we conducted the interview in English.

    I had a student reporter doing a season-ending piece and heard him interviewing one of the players in Spanish. I was worried my CEO and publisher would give me shit about doing that story and putting it on the front of our free section. Instead, the only thing I hear from the CEO is excited bragging about having someone interviewing a person in Spanish.

    The biggest drawback I saw with trying to cover the games was the home and visiting clubhouses were so far away from each other that I couldn't get to both clubhouses to talk to enough players and coaches.

    And as for the translator thing, I might use one but I'd know enough Spanish to know when I'm getting snowed by the translator.
     
  6. Cosmo

    Cosmo Well-Known Member

    Just to dredge this back up ...

    We kind of went in a different direction with our minor-league beat coverage this year, going with mostly feature-based stuff instead of straight gamers because, well, player development is much more important at the high-A level than who wins and loses games. Sometimes, I'll go in with the thought of writing something off the game, but not necessarily a game story.

    Mind you, we run a summary of each game -- how they scored, player of the game, quoteable, some extra notes, etc. So we still tell readers what the heck happened.

    Last night, I decided to write something about how the big club's top prospect was dealing with some early-season adversity. He's the one really recognizable name on the roster and the one guy who people continually ask about. Spoke with the player and the hitting coach before the game, wrote something up and used that as the main.

    Now the team goes out and wins both ends of a doubleheader with late-inning rallies, and apparently the assistant GM of the team was losing his shit this morning, ranting about how we didn't write a story about the glorious comeback. Mind you, the only folks left at the end were extremely drunk (dollar beer night), kind of cementing my theory that people go to minor-league games simply for the promotions. Also, I wouldn't have gotten clubhouse access until close to 11 to write a quoted-up gamer, and our desk is way to short-staffed to have me sending in minor-league stories at freaking 11:30.

    Not really complaining. I understand where the GM is coming from. Just thought it was a pretty good representation of what we were talking about earlier in the thread.
     
  7. mediaguy

    mediaguy Well-Known Member

    I did one summer covering two minor-league teams and was amazed three years later at how many big-leaguers I'd covered. Not to name-drop, but ... Mr. Trey Beamon, yes, indeed.

    If you get to know the teams you cover well, and pay close attention to the rest of the league, you'll be very well-connected at a major-league level after a year or two. It's the kind of thing that could help get on a major-league beat for a small paper that staffs the parent team.

    That's all providing newspapers, at some point, start hiring people again. Strictly hypothetical.
     
  8. Precious Roy

    Precious Roy Active Member

    I loved it for the aspect that mediaguy stated, where you will see a lot of prospects and a couple of years from there think back to when they were studs at the AA level or struggled or were horrible babies after a bad pitching outing (cough... Scott Olsen... cough).
    A great thing to do for a young guy to cut some teeth, I loved every minute of it.
     
  9. WriteThinking

    WriteThinking Well-Known Member

    If this involves coverage of a higher-level beat than you would normally be handling, if it will take more regular, consistent work on your part, with more demands, responsibilities and higher standards placed on you, and will require you to learn to manage time, and something other than, or in addition to, an ordinary prep beat, and if this is all something you want, or think you may want at an even higher level in the future, then yes.

    Of course it's worth pursuing. It's an opportunity -- a good one.

    It could even be a great one, if you commit yourself to it, think outside the box (I know, cliche, but applicable) and work hard to build sources and relationships, learn the game and the systems at that level, and get behind the scenes, so that, eventually, you own the beat, whether there is any outside competition, or not.

    Of course, the other sometimes-key factor in whether a beat can be a great one, or can be elevated to become a great one through the efforts of a reporter who tries to raise its profile with his/her work on it, is the commitment of the paper/web site to treating it as such.

    When reporter and paper are on the same page as far as how the beat should be handled, developed and treated, then that's when the opportunity is greatest.
     
  10. GlenQuagmire

    GlenQuagmire Active Member


    At a couple of my previous stops, the local college guys would split up the beat during the summer.

    At one place, the minor league beat was a revolving door. It was one of the first things to go when you're covering pro, college and preps hard.

    For a youngster, the minor league beat can be eye-opening and worth every second. You have to work with older managers who in many cases played in the majors and find a way to develop a working relationship.

    If you're covering Double-A, the roster will likely change every week. It's kind of cool to think of the guys I got to know before they made it to the Big Leagues.

    Make the beat as important as you can. Yeah, you probably won't travel, but the grind of covering minor league baseball can help you become a better writer and reporter.
     
  11. Mark2010

    Mark2010 Active Member

    Like most anything else, it is what you make of it.

    Hopefully, you are in a town that is not in the shadow of a major-league market, where your team can be the big dog during the summer months when school is out.

    If so, regardless of whether the team is AAA or short-season A, there are a lot of the same opportunities that come with any other beat. Game stories are game stories. Get to know the players and seek out the interesting feature stories. Find and report trends: who is hot, who is not. Keep in touch with the major league affiliate's player development guru. Don't ignore off the field issues such as club financing, ticket sales, and anything and everything to do with money. Convince your SE that people will care about the team if you give them something worth reading.

    The fact that you probably won't travel on the road is a blessing. I did minor league PBP years ago and when the team was on the road (we took the feed of the other team's broadcast), it gave me a chance to actually have a night off. So you don't get burned out as fast.

    It beats spending the summer covering junior golf and triathlons.
     
  12. Mark2010

    Mark2010 Active Member

    The Spanish thing is a real issue in baseball. I knew a radio guy who basically stop covering a big league team because too many of the guys didn't speak fluent English. Not fluent enough for soundbites or a decent interview.

    It's something Major League Baseball and its teams need to seriously address. Some, like the Dodgers, have done so. (Read a fascinating story a few years ago as part of a contest entry on how the Dodgers had a place set up at one of their minor league posts where they had a full-time ESL teacher teaching the players from Latin America to speak, read and write English.)

    Seems more of the Swedes, Czechs and Russians who come to play hockey learn English faster than the Latinos who come to play baseball.
     
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