Minor league baseball beat writer

The short version: Covering minor league baseball was a great training ground for to start covering major league baseball, or any beat, for that matter.

The long version: I was about 26 years old and had been covering preps and a D-I college no one cared about for the LA Times Valley edition (now defunct). Lancaster, in the Antelope Valley, 45 minutes north of the Valley, got the Lancaster JetHawks of the Cal League. My boss knew I wanted to be a baseball writer, so I immediately volunteered to cover the team. There wasn't much else for me to do in the summer. I actually covered about 110 of the 140 games, any game I could get to within a 2-hour drive. I often commuted back and forth from home (at least 90 mins each way) to the ballpark for the road games. I pretty much covered the team like a major league team, doing notes and a gamer each night. It wasn't because the interest warranted it, but because I wanted to do it and my bosses, who had nothing else to put in the paper over the summer, were happy to let me do it, pretty much to amuse myself.

It helped me learn about covering baseball on deadline, about working a beat and developing a rapport with the players, manager, coaches, etc., about finding news each day for a notebook. It also got my foot in the door to the world of professional baseball. To this day, I still run into people who I first met while covering that beat. Some are now big league coaches and one is even a big league GM.

Professional baseball is a different animal than anything else. Prep and college sports and even pro football and basketball seem to have a similar pace and routine to them, because of the frequency of the games, but there is nothing else like pro baseball.

The second year I covered the team I did it in a more reasonable fashion. Home games only. No notebooks. Short gamers. But I'd gotten the experience, and by the middle of season two, I got a job covering major league baseball.

 

I was a AA-level beat writer for a year.

It's better than you'd expect. I enjoyed it. It beats the shit out of high school that's for sure and they allowed good access to players, much more than I'd expect in the Majors.

 

Oh God, are you bringing back some bad memories. Yeah, there's plenty of fun to be had on an independent ball beat, especially if the team's game day staff has a sense of humor.

But it's some of the most excruciatingly bad baseball I've ever had to sit through. When you've got pitchers who can't find the strike zone with a map and a compass, it's VERY common for 3 1/2- to 4-hour games. Made things REAL fun on deadline for night games (most of them). Feh!!!!!

 

Eh, I always had fun. There were bad nights, sure, but when you play 50-something games or whatever in any sport at any level, there are bound to be some stinkers.

The baseball was what it was. There was a reason these guys weren't in the show. But the games could be competitive, and interesting at times.

 

I was never a what you would call a beat guy, but I covered a lot of minor-league games while breaking in and always enjoyed it.

1. Take the assignment and 2. Take to heart the story ideas, on and off the field, you've gotten on this thread. You'll have to be creative at times, but the player features shouldn't totally go dry because the roster will likely change so much.

There should be opportunities when the other teams come in as well. Perhaps there is a major-leaguer on rehab assignment, a local boy making it big on another team, or a Matt Wieters or David Price visiting. The home team might not be crazy about it, but your readers would be served well by a feature-gamer on one of those guys to go with the notebook (if you have a regular one).

Covered a Phoenix-Tacoma AAA game in the early '90s when Scott Lydy, an outfielder for Tacoma, left the game because he'd been called up by Oakland. Made for an easy story that night.

 

We're trying to do one of these a series, usually in the middle, so people can come out and be aware of the prospects the other team is bringing in. A lot of fast-tracked guys and high draft picks come through high-A.