Paving a Path, Women in Baseball: Britt Ghiroli

Women remain underrepresented across the sport, but there’s more than a few that have made their mark on the game, and it’s through their abilities we can see a necessary need for greater inclusion. Wanting to gain perspective from individuals in multiple different roles, I sought out to tell stories from the clubhouse, broadcast booth, and the farm.

Talent doesn’t recognize gender, status, ideology, or any other form of societal discrimination. When it comes to Major League Baseball, plenty of females have created synonymous personalities with what we’ve come to expect from an overall experience.

Sony made Heidi Watney its go-to presence on MLB The Show. Alexa Datt and Kelly Nash are staples at MLB Network. For Twins fans it’s the duo of Audra Martin and Marney Gellner that are routinely invited into our living rooms.

The talent is rich, and it runs deep. Highlighting that and kicking off this four-part series is none other than The Athletic’s Britt Ghiroli. An impressive resume and immediate tie to Baltimore precede her, but coming off a World Series year of coverage the Nationals writer has plenty of stories to tell.

Twins Daily: Was it always baseball for you? Graduating from Michigan State, did you know right away that this was the sport you wanted to cover? What role did the game of baseball have in your life prior to your career?

Britt Ghiroli: I get asked a lot if baseball is my favorite sport and – to be honest – it wasn’t at the time. I would stay up late at night watching hockey or football with my dad, and European soccer on the weekend mornings. But I fell in love with the stories and the nature of covering baseball, there’s so many nuances and so much access compared to football or basketball, that I’ve never regretted that decision. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always been a baseball fan and I’m from a big baseball/softball family and we all did the travel teams – my sister played at the University of Pittsburgh – but this job enhanced my appreciation of it. It was sheer luck that the internship I got was with MLB.com and I’m eternally grateful they picked me.

I was an athlete my entire life, all the way up through college where I was a swimmer at Michigan State. Once I got there I realized two things: 1) I wasn’t nearly as good of a swimmer as I thought and 2) I better have a plan for my life because women’s swimming isn’t a sport with a future to pay your bills.

Michigan State has an excellent journalism program and that’s what I always wanted to do – write. I used to write little stories growing up and have always been a pretty big reader and fan of long-form writers like Gary Smith. Plus, I’m abysmal at math. While swimming, I juggled a few internships which got increasingly harder with classes, but the experience was critical. At first, I thought TV was the way I wanted to go and I did work as a PA (production assistant) for Fox Sports Network in Detroit, which started as an internship and continued as a freelance gig. I also helped out the Big Ten Network when they’d come to town for a big game. I kept writing when I could and worked part time at the Lansing State Journal. It was a lot of grunt work, taking phone calls and filling in tiny box scores about high school games for that day’s paper, but I was also afforded the opportunity to pitch the occasional feature. That, and several other internships helped lead to MLB.com.

Obviously, the MLB.com internship was the one that led me to covering baseball full-time and never leave :-)

TD: Spending a decade with MLB.com you got to show off your abilities covering multiple beats. Establishing yourself with the Orioles, you quickly became one of the household names when it comes to bylines. What about covering daily action do you do to differentiate yourself?

BG: Got on Twitter! Seriously, it was just starting when I got on the beat and I quickly embraced it. I still remember the other beat guys making fun of me for it but it really helped me build up a big network. A lot of those fans, of course, are Orioles fan who now really don’t like that I went to the Nationals...

TD: As a female you represent a group that's not nearly proportionate in terms of voices within the industry. Is that a driving force to you? Is there something about the way you do your job that you feel like an additional impact can be made?

BG: I don’t think it’s ever been a driving force. I wasn’t raised in a household where sports were for boys- my dad had four daughters and we were all tomboys. My mom is also a big sports fan. I never thought, “I should be a sports writer and try to bring a female voice in!” I just thought it was the coolest job in the world. Most days, I still do. I will say, there are a lot more females now than when I got into this in 2008. I understand it’s what sets me apart a lot, but I spent years trying to shake the stereotype that I was someone’s token female hire, you know? It’s always irked me when I had a close relationship to a guy or got a scoop that some people will always equate it with my gender. I’ve sort of just realized that no matter what I do, good or bad, I’m going to stand out.

I always tell young female reporters that any advantage you have it cancelled out. Some people are going to be nicer to you and want to talk to you because you’re female. And some guys aren’t going to be nice or want to talk to you for that very same reason. A lot of the bull**** I thought that came with being a female - what you wear, for example - I thought would go away in my 30s. It hasn’t, but I do care a lot less what someone thinks. If it’s 100 degrees and humid, I’m wearing a tank top and it’s not to flaunt myself or hit on a guy. It’s because it’s 100 degrees and humid. As for additional impact, I look to women like Alyson Footer and Susan Slusser, who have made space for ME. I’d love to get to a point where I do an entire interview and my gender never comes up.

TD: While being a beat reporter is essentially a version of storytelling, what about your creative process has made such compelling pieces each time you hit the keyboard?

BG: That’s nice of you to say! I’ve been fortunate to have some really great mentors. The best part about being at The Athletic, and I’ll get into that more later, is the freedom you get to really go beyond the nuts and bolts of a baseball story. I was told once your lede should be the first thing you go home and tell your mom, or husband or friend about the person. What is it about that player or moment or game that everyone needs to know? Now, how can you make them care about it? That’s what I try to do. Fans now already know so much. They know the score and the stats. They may have even watched the post-game interviews. To be different, you have to add color and humanize things. You have to go beyond the “how did you feel out there?” questions, and that’s what I try to do.

TD: Moving from worst to first in a sense, what was the experience (and rollercoaster) of covering the 2019 Washington Nationals like first hand? It's not your first World Series, but it might have been the most improbable.

BG: It was pretty crazy. I remember a lot of people early on sort of joking, “You should have stayed in Baltimore!” because of the Nats early record. The 2008 Rays, which I wrote about recently may have been a little more of an underdog story (though they lost the World Series) but the turnaround in D.C. was truly made-for-the-movies stuff. I remember laughing the day they got Parra, we were in Milwaukee and I joked to my editor to print the World Series tickets. But, truly, you could have.

He was such a positive infusion for that team. People love to say clubhouse chemistry is overrated because they can’t see it or come up with a metric for it. But that team needed Parra. They were always talented. They just needed to start to believe they could turn it around. I’m not sure it hit me, like really hit me, until they started to come back in Game 7 in Houston. Up to that point, you kept thinking they were on the ropes and eventually going to lose. But that game, I remember being like, ‘My god, they are gong to rally.” It was unbelievable.

TD: Being at The Athletic now, what makes the newest outlet in the game arguably one of the best. It was a meteoric rise for the company, and it's more than just the top tier talent they've brought in.

BG: They let you be an adult. People will often ask me about switching teams and, for me, it was never about the Orioles versus the Nationals. It was the chance to get out of my box. I’ve written about powerlifting, grief, memories on the beat, sexism, being yelled at, retirement and mental health. I’ve done Ravens stories and Bruins stories. I’ve never once had someone tell me, “No, you cover the Nationals.” They encourage you to think about different story ideas (especially now!) and they aren’t afraid to take big swings. The Athletic could go under tomorrow and I still wouldn’t regret taking the job. It was scary to leave MLB, it’s a great job and I still have a lot of friends there, but I needed to sort of be pushed out of the nest. To be pushed out of my comfort zone. And that’s exactly what The Athletic has done.

TD: We're all worse off being without baseball right now, and the hope is we'll have something resembling a season soon. What have you been doing to keep yourself busy?

BG: I am currently trying to plan Take 2 of my wedding. (Our original day was in May and cancelled). So, that’s been interesting to plan from another state. I wake up every morning and read all about two things: baseball updates and the COVID cases in Colorado. (We live in Maryland.) My fiance and I met at the gym so we are very active people. He was a kicker in football and has taken that back up. He’ll knock them out from 50 yards and I’m just trying to make an easy extra point attempt. Work-wise, I’m still writing, it just looks a little different. I recently started a series about each year I’ve been on the beat which has been a lot of fun to do look back and reminisce. It’s easy to fall into the negative trap right now with baseball, so that’s been a nice reminder that this sport is pretty great and matters to a lot of people.

Follow Britt and check out her work here. Check back in next week for entry number two in this four-part series.

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