Farewell after 10 wonderful years

I wish I could say this is the first time I’ve written one of these columns. But I’ve been a professional sportswriter for 27 years now. It’s part of the job description.

You get hired by one outlet, you hope to do your best work and survive there as long as possible, then inevitably one day you write your farewell column after getting laid off. I did it in 2009. I did it in 2015. And I’m doing it again today, my last day working for MASN.

You might think I’d be bitter and cynical at this point about a profession that keeps squeezing me through the ringer like this, but you’d be wrong. It’s a privilege to do this for a living, and there’s no profession I’d rather call mine.

I try to remind myself of this every time I meet someone who enthusiastically wants to know what the job is like. I could tell them about the long hours and the delayed flights and the family events missed and everything else that makes this life far less glamorous than most imagine. But I don’t. Because in spite of all that, it still is the coolest job in the world. And I know others would give anything to have this job.

I worked a couple weeks shy of 10 years for MASN, and wow what a roller coaster this last decade has been for the Nationals. When I started here in February 2016, Dusty Baker had just taken over as manager. His immediate tasks: Try to get Jonathan Papelbon and Bryce Harper to coexist, try to overcome the losses of Ian Desmond, Denard Span, Jordan Zimmermann and Doug Fister to free agency and try to lead this franchise back to the postseason after a hugely disappointing 2015.

That was the Nats’ final spring training in Viera. A year later, they and the Astros would open a sprawling new complex in West Palm Beach that was barely completed in time for the Grapefruit League opener. Baker would oversee his second consecutive division championship, then his second consecutive heartbreaking loss in Game 5 of the National League Division Series, costing him his job.

Enter Davey Martinez, who immediately put his personal stamp on things when he brought camels to one of his first full-squad workouts in February 2018. The Nationals didn’t get over the hump that season, and Martinez’s dromedary stunt loomed over him and the team all year. And it got so bad come May 23, 2019, I actually pre-wrote an article on the train ride home from New York saying he had been fired … just in case.

That article, thankfully, never saw the light of day. The Nats resurrected their season in historic fashion, turning a 19-31 start into a 93-win campaign and a wild card berth. And thus began the greatest month in franchise history, with one dramatic postseason game followed by another. Juan Soto’s bases-loaded hit in the wild card game. Howie Kendrick’s 10th inning grand slam in the NLDS. Anibal Sanchez’s no-hit bid, Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg’s dominant starts and a four-game sweep of the NLCS. An emphatic 2-0 lead in the World Series, only to lose three straight games at home before bouncing back yet again thanks to Strasburg and Anthony Rendon’s heroics in Game 6 and Scherzer and Patrick Corbin’s guts and Kendrick’s clang hear round the world in Game 7.

The celebration. The parade. The White House visit. It’s still hard sometimes to believe all that actually happened. Especially given the events of the last six years.

Spring training 2020 was supposed to be a joyous occasion, the start of the victory lap. Instead, it turned into the strangest event any of us has ever experienced: a global shutdown that brought everything to a screeching halt and forced us to reconsider how we would eventually resume regular daily activities. Of course it paled in comparison to the very real (and in too many cases tragic) problems many in the world faced that year, but covering games in an empty ballpark with piped-in crowd noise, all interviews confined to Zoom, was a pretty miserable endeavor. When crowds (still restricted in numbers) finally returned on Opening Day 2021, I vowed never to take that for granted again.

And I haven’t, no matter how dreary these last five seasons were. The Nationals may have lost a bunch of games and lost a bunch of prominent players, but I never lost sight of the fact so many of you continue to follow this team day in and day out. You learn who the real diehards are during the worst seasons, and there are so many of you I’ve interacted with in person and online through this stretch. You may be frustrated. You may be exasperated. But you care. And that’s what makes sports great.

Washington, D.C., too often gets a bad rap as a sports town. Truth is, this is a great sports town given the lack of overall success the city has experienced the last three decades. We’ve seen the way everyone bands together when the Nats, Capitals and Commanders go on a playoff run. The Mystics, United, Spirit and Defenders, too. (I’ll have to assume the same would hold true if the Wizards ever actually go on a playoff run of their own, but I’ve yet to experience it since moving here in 2001.)

That’s why it’s especially disheartening to see what is happening to the local media landscape, with the Washington Post apparently the latest and most extreme example of high-ranking executives believing there isn’t enough interest in sports here to warrant full coverage. I truly hope someone figures out just how many of you out there are being underserved and finds a way to offer you the kind of sports journalism you deserve.

I’m fortunate to never have had that problem working for MASN. Whether it was me or my friends Bobby Blanco, Byron Kerr or Pete Kerzel, we staffed every single day of spring training and every single game for the last 10 years. We did so not with bare minimum coverage but with the most extensive coverage of any outlet in town. Multiple articles (usually three or four) every day during the season. And something new on the site every single day of the offseason, as well. We were proud to offer that to you, and we were proud you kept coming back every single morning in anticipation of the latest piece.

I can’t stress how well everyone at MASN treated me, from day one through today. My bosses, Greg Bader and Adam Martiyan, have been especially gracious over these last few weeks as it became clear the Nationals were going to leave the network, prompting the end of my employment. The people I worked with most recently on the digital staff – Bobby Blanco, Amy Jennings, Brendan Mortensen, Doug Miller, Chris Bello, Annie Klaff, Kush Lewis, Keith DeJesus – and several more who previously worked here (including Paul Mancano, Olivia Witherite and Sara Perlman) were the absolute best.

I was fortunate to be a small part of the TV broadcast over the years as well, and everyone I appeared with on-air (Dan Kolko, Bob Carpenter, Kevin Frandsen, F.P. Santangelo, Alex Chappell, Bo Porter, Johnny Holliday, Ray Knight) was so helpful making it easy for this print guy pretending to be a TV guy. The behind-the-scenes broadcast crew, led by producer Chip Winfield and directors Chuck Whitlock and Tim Walbert, always made me feel like part of the team.

And, of course, nobody has been more understanding than my family, my wife Rachel and our son Brian, who in spite of all the drawbacks of the job have never once stopped supporting me. That hasn’t changed, either, with this latest career development. They don’t want me to walk away now and get a “real” job. Besides, they get so sick of me being around all the time every winter, they probably count down the days til pitchers and catchers report even more than I do.

So, this isn’t really goodbye. I don’t know exactly what’s next for me yet, but I intend for it to include continued coverage of the Nationals in one form or another. I’m still co-hosting the Nats Chat podcast with Al Galdi and Tim Shovers. I’m still on Twitter/X and Bluesky. I should probably use that Instagram account I created several years ago. Check in periodically with any of those outlets for updates. When I know something, I’ll make sure you know it.

Because 27 years as a sportswriter, the last 21 covering the Nats, isn’t enough for me. So what if I’ve had to write three farewell columns along the way? I can’t wait to write my fourth introductory column someday soon.

And then hope many years pass before I have to write yet another farewell.