Covering the St. Louis Cardinals is one of many reasons I’m thankful at Thanksgiving

I have a pretty good standard line at the ready for times when folks ask me whether I like my job. “It’s pretty hard to complain about work when work is going to the ballpark,” I tell them, and everyone laughs politely and then asks if I actually get to talk to the players.

(Yes, I do. It would be very hard to do the job otherwise. Actually, it would be very easy, but not nearly as good.)

And while that’s almost always true, the last three seasons have been challenging in baseball and for those who love the game. Of all the ways that the pandemic affected people’s lives, it seems imprudent to complain too much about constant temperature checks or being allowed into stadiums but forced out of actual press boxes, but it did make the job a lot less than it was.

Still, I was fortunate. I dodged COVID the summer of 2020 and that year saw more MLB games in person — other than those who work for teams or the league — than all but fewer than 20 people in the United States. I’m thankful for that, and for the lessons in improving my work, but frankly, it got old.

This season, 2022, was the first real, normal season since the end of 2019, and you could feel it. Even a lockout which felt catastrophic at the time couldn’t hold back the enthusiasm fans had to fill a stadium, unfettered, on opening day. After two years of entirely or mostly empty stadiums, I’m thankful for the wave, though I would still thank you if you could keep the “woo”ing at home.

I was thankful to get to cover Albert Pujols up close. The energy in Jupiter when it became clear there was momentum in that direction that was palpable, and I’m thankful for the night I spent attempting to report out a rumor while also trying to keep an eye on the Oscars. I was in the midst of writing a text to a baseball operations official when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock (and that’s still only my second-most vivid spring training Oscars memory, thanks to Kwang Hyun Kim).

The next day, when team officials were still hedging on what they were allowed to tell reporters even as players posted Instagram shots of his jersey, Pujols walked through the right field gate at Roger Dean Stadium. It’s rare that there’s much worth seeing in a late-in-the-schedule spring training game. That’s something we’ll almost surely never see again.

I was even thankful the first weekend of the season, when Pujols answered a question I asked him by calling me, “mang.” Work is work, and staying professional in the clubhouse is reflexive, but the teenager in me heard that particular salutation at a slightly different pitch than is typical.

Thankful for smooth transition

Being back in the clubhouse to have that informal conversation perhaps dominated the things I was most thankful for at work in 2022. Access issues are difficult and ill-fitted for public discussion, and the patience for complaints about them among the public is generally very thin. Walking the line between appropriate privacy and appropriate scrutiny is at the heart of covering a baseball team every day, and so yes, we do talk to the players, and yes, it’s better for everyone when we can do so with a modicum of privacy.

Besides, who among us didn’t perk up at the first report hastily filed from a clubhouse door about which players suddenly had his locker stall appear or disappear? Everyone likes the hot stove to burn, and it turns out people enjoy seeing the logs thrown on the fire as well.

I was also thankful for a smooth transition. In five full seasons covering the Cardinals, I’ve covered three managers, which is an outrageous amount in such a short period given the franchise’s history of stability. Each of the three has differences in how they communicate and what they’re willing to discuss every day, and there’s likewise a skill in learning those lines and how they intersect with the flow of information.

More about the joys of my job

Oli Marmol’s door was open, almost always, even if he scarcely got around to decorating his office. In his first year, he seemed to enjoy being challenged almost as much as challenging right back, openly and frankly. Whether that’s the result of youth or simply unflappable confidence in the way he plans to manage, it makes for an accountable exchange on a daily basis.

Each of those experiences, and the necessity of doing the work at all, springs from a thanks for the interest of the readers and the passions of those attached to the game. Complaining about going to a baseball game is indeed a bad look, and so I won’t; instead, it’s a privilege to be driven to provide the coverage and analysis that a storied franchise demands.

The strangeness appears to be largely behind us. The institutions of the game have resumed their places in our lives. I’m thankful to see where their paths unwind next.