Britt's 2018 article

[SteveA]

Britt's article about her 2018 season on the beat hit the Athletic.   Some highlights:

   -- Manny was really affected by the constant trade talk.   He would come up to Britt and other reporters begging them to find out if they knew anything about his destination.

   -- Britton was in tears when he was traded, he managed to keep it in check through the press conference but broke down as soon as it was over.

   -- The Orioles were "privately furious" that Adam Jones wouldn't waive his 10-5 rights.  The decision to stop playing him every day after that did not come from Buck, it was "an edict from above".   She said she didn't write that at the time because she doubted it would "get approved" by her employer.   The team was so bad, her job became finding something positive.  

   -- She talks about what a great guy Adam Jones was.  When her father died she got a lot of texts, but he called and talked to her, and even followed up the next Father's Day to talk to her.  She said beyond his work with the Boys and Girls Clubs, he and his wife did tons of charitable things that never made it to the press.   They would "pay for all kinds of things, including tuition for underprivileged kids, with the only caveat that it wasn't made public".   When a mutual friend of Britt and Adam's lost a son to suicide in November 2018, Adam flew to Florida for the funeral and wait in a very long line just so he could personally pay his respects.

   -- Britt said at the end of 2018 losing so many people on the Orioles she had worked with all those years (Jones, the players traded away, Buck, Duquette, Eduardo Encina announcing the last week of the season he was leaving for a job in Tampa the next year), was emotionally difficult.   The amount of time she spent with all those people at ballparks and on flights, she thinks was more time than she actually spent with her fiance.

   -- All this change was part of what led her to her decision to quit what had been her dream job (MLB beat writer) and join The Athletic in Nov 2018.   She said that change is inevitable.   The Orioles realized that too late (i.e. delaying a rebuild) and she decided not to make that same mistake.

 

It was a great series.   Most of the excerpts on here focused on the revelations about players and management that popped out at various points, but the series was as much about the experience of being a MLB beat writer as they were about the team specifics.   Trying to keep up with deadlines in the Twitter era (she would set her alarm once every hour the night before the trade deadline to wake up, quickly check Twitter to see if there was anything about her team she needed to get out there so she wouldn't commit the cardinal sin of being hours behind on a story, then go back to sleep for another hour).   Burnout she experienced in 2017 when her father was sick and eventually died.   Relationships and friendships with fellow beat writers like Roch, Encina, Connelly even though they were ostensibly rivals (once when Connelly was really sick and didn't want to be contagious around the players, they interviewed players for him and texted him stuff he could write about even though they were rivals).     Every one of the articles was a good read.

[now]

5 hours ago, SteveA said:

It was a great series.   Most of the excerpts on here focused on the revelations about players and management that popped out at various points, but the series was as much about the experience of being a MLB beat writer as they were about the team specifics.   Trying to keep up with deadlines in the Twitter era (she would set her alarm once every hour the night before the trade deadline to wake up, quickly check Twitter to see if there was anything about her team she needed to get out there so she wouldn't commit the cardinal sin of being hours behind on a story, then go back to sleep for another hour).   Burnout she experienced in 2017 when her father was sick and eventually died.   Relationships and friendships with fellow beat writers like Roch, Encina, Connelly even though they were ostensibly rivals (once when Connelly was really sick and didn't want to be contagious around the players, they interviewed players for him and texted him stuff he could write about even though they were rivals).     Every one of the articles was a good read.

She was the best. Wish the whole series could be available for a read somehow, lacking a subscription to the A. So I hope she compiles them into some kind of ebook. That's priceless stuff.

[weams]

 

[Can_of_corn]

Shame she couldn't trust MLB to not censor her work.  I still think she should have tried to write it but I can see why she wouldn't.

[now]

1 hour ago, weams said:

 

Thanks for the link. It motivated me to sign up for the free month so I can catch up with her whole series.

 

[Woody Held]

I subscribe and it’s actually worth the cost.  Brit’s Series on the Orioles was incredible.

 

[waroriole]

Warms my heart to hear the things she said about Adam. I’ve never heard anyone say a bad word about him. Seems like just a great person.