One month into the 2012 minor league baseball season, I was offered a position with the Baltimore Orioles as a minor league video intern in Bowie for the Baysox. Although the opportunity wasn’t handed to me (I did have to interview), I would be lying if I didn’t say that being in the “right place, at the right time” had a lot to do with me getting that opportunity. I spent the rest of the summer attending Baysox home games, video-taping hitters and pitchers. If you happened to attend a Baysox game in 2012, you probably saw me running around to different spots in the stadium with a camera on a tripod. It was truly an amazing experience that provided me the opportunity to get a glimpse at the inner workings of a professional baseball organization.
Despite being the most fun job I’ve probably ever had, the schedule could get grueling. I kept my regular job, so there was not much sleep to be had while Bowie was in the middle of a home stand. So when given the opportunity to come back in the same capacity the following season, I politely declined. In an effort to stay connected to baseball, I decided to start my own blog writing about baseball, and that blog became Orioles Proving Ground. After some initial blog posts and incredibly sparse readership, I reached out to Camden Depot to see if they would add my site to the list of links featuring prominent Orioles blogs. Instead, I was given the opportunity to write a couple of guest-posts, which ultimately resulted in Jon Shepherd allowing me to join the site as a regular contributor.
I cannot begin to express how much of a big deal this was (and still is) to me. I had never really thought of myself as a writer, and to be given the chance to write in the same space as some of the baseball writers I looked up to the most was something I never even considered. In addition to the (obvious) boost in readership, writing for Camden Depot allowed me the opportunity to produce podcasts, discuss baseball and interact with some of the best baseball writers and readers on the internet (not to mention interview Doug Glanville for an article).
Overall, I ended up writing 91 articles for Camden Depot. Some were good, some could have been better, and at least one of them made the majority of readers pretty angry. Here are a couple of my personal favorites:
- Life in the Minors: A Home Away from Home (https://camdendepot.blogspot.com/2013/09/life-in-minors-home-away-from-home.html)
- Darren O’Day’s Game 1 Mistake to Alex Gordon (https://camdendepot.blogspot.com/2014/10/darren-odays-game-1-mistake-to-alex.html)
- Nick Markakis’ Secret Platoon Issue (https://camdendepot.blogspot.com/2014/05/nick-markakis-secret-platoon-issue.html)
As the years of baseball writing on the internet went on, other life events and responsibilities (all good, thankfully) started to take higher priority and resulted in my writing less and less. Not only did I not write as much, but I began to feel as if my writing wasn’t contributing as much to the overall Orioles conversation, especially with so many other great Baltimore Orioles writers on the internet. When Camden Depot decided to shut down, I was given an opportunity to contribute to Baltimore Sports and Life. While initially hesitant to join BSL due to the same reasons above that prevented me from writing more, I accepted in the hopes that I could somehow find the time to provide meaningful insight to the Orioles minor league system. While I am proud of the work I contributed to BSL, finding the time continued to be elusive.
In addition to the 5 years writing for Camden Depot and the 1 year with BSL, I’ve hosted Orioles Proving Ground and wrote about baseball for almost 7 years, and it’s now time for my tiny Baltimore Orioles related space on the internet to close its doors, at least for the foreseeable future. I am very proud of the work I published over these years and am extremely humbled and honored to have been given the opportunity to work with the talented writers at Camden Depot (many of whom have turned great analysis into a baseball career) and Baltimore Sports and Life. My only regret is that I reached a point where I could no longer keep up with all of the great baseball analysis (in Baltimore and beyond) in both quality and quantity.
In the end, this “farewell” post is a bit self-serving. I do not believe that my Orioles writing has been missed, and no one has been clamoring for me to write more. There have not been swarms of Orioles fans checking this site daily for updates. If anyone HAS noticed that I have not been writing as much, they would have likely assumed that I just quietly stepped away, which wouldn’t necessarily have been wrong. However, it wouldn’t feel right to let this site end without taking the time for one final post and express my gratitude to some of the individuals who not only allowed me a high profile place to write about baseball, but also helped me become a better writer along the way.
So thank you to Jon Shepherd, Matt Kremnitzer, Chris Stoner, and all of the other writers I crossed path with at Camden Depot (including my podcast partner Pat Holden) and Baltimore Sports and Life, as well as the readers and commenters (most of whom were great) who helped make it that much more fun. See you at the ballpark.
Orioles Proving Ground 