So you want to be a beat writer . . .

baseball is just about every freakin' day for 6-7 months (if you include spring training). I realize most beats have a relief guy, but that's still an awful lot of games and all that goes with it. You gotta really love it to do anything that frequently.

 

I wasn't referring to the beat itself, but the travel. It just seemed to me that visiting a different city 42 times in the winter would be harder than visiting 26 times in the summer.

Just curious, how often in the NBA or NHL do you have more than one consecutive non-game day in ine city? Like game in Miami on Thursday and next game in New York on Sunday.

Also, do you have to hurry to a new city if there's no game just to be there for shoot around or morning skate? Or do you basically have the whole day at your leisure to get from A to B?

 

As someone who's done both, I'd say each has its own advantages and disadvantages. When I was on NBA, the toughest thing was always the back-to-backs. It is rare that a team plays home games on back-to-back nights, so back-to-backs almost always means a game one night, followed by a very early wake-up and flight, followed by another game that night. If the first game of the back-to-back is on the road, you're usually flying in the night before, so that's two nights away from home.

When I was on the baseball beat, I liked the idea of at least being able to settle in to your hotel room for a couple of days and having the chance to see a little bit of the city I was in for a couple hours late-morning/early afternoon. It's easy to fall into the sleep-till-noon mode, though.

With the NBA beat, you get almost all of your down time during the nice-weather months, plus you travel to Miami, Orlando, San Antonio, LA, Phoenix, etc., during the winter.

With the baseball beat, you get away from the shitty weather for spring training, and you're also free to take a warm-weather vacation in the dead of winter. A January cruise or trip to an all-inclusive gives you something to look forward to in December and makes the weeks between the vacation and spring training not seem so bad.

On both beats, make sure you accumulate frequent flyer and Marriott points.

 

Baseball beat writing is the hardest job in sports journalism, by far, and was even before new media made it infinitely harder. There is no offseason now. You start the season with six weeks away from home. Yeah, it's somewhere warm, but it's still not home. Family life (if married)? Relations with the opposite sex (if not)? Difficult to impossible to maintain.
I used to tell people "yes, I have a great job. But it IS a job." That's all the understanding I wanted.

 

Nah, I want to be a cowboy.

 

Let's face it, there are parts of the job that are absolutely great. The camaraderie with colleagues in the press box or press room, including going out for a drink or two when all the game stories and notebooks are filed.

To do the job well, though, you do put in long, grinding hours. You have to sometimes piss people off. And people at times can really piss you off.

So it can really be frustrating when you leave for work and someone says "Have fun!" as though you're going to be sitting in the stands having beers with buddies.

 

That grates on you whether you're going to Camden Yards or going to cover a first-round district field hockey match.

 

Reading the article and the posts, traveling a lot has been mentioned by pretty much everyone. I guess it's expected with the territory.

So I'm guessing that most of the airfares and hotels are paid for by the writer, correct? Does it ever get to the point where the amount of $$$ you dish out for travel and hotel fare doesn't make the job worth doing?

Sorry if it's a dumb question, still young in the game and have no idea about these things yet.

 

The air fare and hotel expenses are paid by the newspaper, not by the writer. For baseball -- with a six-week spring training away from home, travel every other week during the regular season and possible postseason coverage -- it is possible for annual travel costs to approach or exceed the annual salary of the writer.

 

Oh, nice. Thanks for the reply, Screw. Appreciate it.

 

The most common comment I get before road trips is, "Have fun!"

The most common question I get afterwards is, "Did you have fun?"

Sometimes I want to strangle people when I hear that.

When I patiently try to explain the travel, the 15-hour days, crazy deadlines, etc., what I almost always get back is, "Oh, yeah, you're working. Right. But have fun!"

I'm trying to learn how to ignore these folks, because educating them is a lost cause.

 

I say that all the time to our writers, usually, "Try to have some fun out there." It doesn't mean "don't work hard."
How many coaches have you heard tell their players in their pregame psyche sessions ... "and have fun."