Covering my first Major League Baseball game was an experience I will never forget and it gave me a great insight on how to cover an event from press row. While I have covered numerous college sporting events from press row, covering a MLB game was a completely different experience.
The day started with our SJI class hitting the field to interview the Tampa Bay Rays’ manager Joe Maddon. He was a great person to interview, because it felt like he actually wanted to talk to the media and gave great in-depth responses to all of our questions.
After the interview with Maddon, we headed back up to the media area to prepare even more to cover the Rays’ game against the Chicago White Sox. While most of us made a plan at the start of the game on how we were going to write our stories, at the end of the game those plans did not come out exactly the way we thought.
As we were only allowed to talk to the manager before the game, many of the quotes we got from him didn’t lend themselves to be put in our stories once they were done. It was a great way to see how everything can change in a matter of hours. As I began writing my story during the game, the focus of the story shifted from the Rays’ stellar pitching staff to the horrible day James Shields was having for them on the mound.
In the end, I am pleased with how my story turned out and even more pleased that I was able to write it with such a short deadline.
In the three days we have been here, I have learned more than I every thought I would and I know that in the remaining six days here at SJI I will learn a lot more.
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