Empire State of Mind

What's going on SJI fam??? It's great to hear about some of your updates about your adventures in your new spots. Unlike all of you, I'm working an hour away from home in NYC. But I decided to live in the city anyway because I wanted to be flexible for my internship and really get the experience of living in the fast-paced environment of the Big Apple.

So far, it's been a great experience. The MLB offices are only a 30 minute subway ride from my apartment, so that's been convenient. As for my assignments, I've had some success and some failure with those.

On my second day there, my editors assigned me to cover this gala where Bill Walton, Dick Enberg, and Eddie Einhorn (chairman of the White Sox) were supposed to be in attendance. All of them had ties to John Wooden, so my job was to interview them and write a story about Wooden's legacy in baseball.

Looking my freshest, I went to the gala and immediately ran to some problems. The media relations person told me that Dick Enberg and Eddie Einhorn weren't in attendance and, in fact, weren't actually invited. Unfortunately, my editors received the wrong information on that one, so they told me just to rely on Walton. The problem, however, was that MLB learned about the gala late and requested Walton the night before the event, so we were denied by media relations because he was apparently "booked for the night". At the gala, I still approached him to try to do a quick interview, but he politely declined because he wanted to interact with the kids at the event. I managed to interview other sources, but my editors decided to axe the story because they knew the situation was out of our control.

The one success was that I volunteered to go to an all-Spanish press conference for Yankees catcher Francisco Cervelli and write a story about his development during Jorge Posada's time on the DL. I'm currently working on it, but I definitely enjoyed doing my first interview in Spanish.

So that's all for me right now. Good luck to everyone and I want to keep hearing about your adventures!