I walked into the Turner Field press box at an inconvenient moment.
“Sorry,” David O’Brien, our Braves beat writer, told me as I arrived to interview him for this column. “That was one of the weirdest plays ever and I’ve got to figure out what happened.”
And explain it to AJC readers. Quickly.
Minutes earlier, Milwaukee Brewers hitter Carlos Gomez had admired his home run way too long, then taunted Braves pitcher Paul Maholm while rounding the bases. Braves catcher Brian McCann confronted Gomez at home plate and hotly complained about his antics. Players spilled out of dugouts, punches were thrown, Gomez and two Braves were ejected, and an ordinary Wednesday night game yielded unexpected news.
Thousands of readers were depending on O’Brien to bring them the details right away. In today’s digital world, readers expect instant updates on their laptops, tablets and smart phones. It’s a landscape that’s changed dramatically since O’Brien started covering big-league baseball in 1995.
As always, O’Brien, an adrenaline junkie who thrives on deadline, was ready.
He hammered away at his laptop from his perch above the field. Surrounded by competing reporters, he needed to get a story about the brouhaha on ajc.com post haste. He checked Twitter and other sites to confirm details. He conferred with AJC colleague Carroll Rogers, sitting beside him writing another story due early in the evening. He checked his spiral scorebook, with newspaper stats taped to each page, to see if Gomez had been hit by a Maholm pitch in a previous game. (Yep, June 23.)
One thing O’Brien didn’t do was consult an editor; no time. He skimmed his finished story and hit send.
Minutes later, the story appeared on my AJC iPhone app.
“I still get a rush out of writing on deadline,” O’Brien said later.
The AJC covers all 162 Braves games – home and away — seven weeks of spring training in Florida, and starting this week, the playoffs. O’Brien is there for about 60 home games and 60 road games, plus most of the spring games. Rogers takes the rest, and when the Braves are home, they frequently both staff the game to broaden our coverage.
It’s a long season – a “grind,” O’Brien admits – but it’s nothing new to these pros.
O'Brien has covered the Braves for the AJC since 2002 and the Florida Marlins before that; next season will mark his 20th covering Major League Baseball. Rogers has worked with O'Brien since 2007 and was the primary Braves writer for six years in the mid-to-late '90s and early 2000s.
That’s a combined 31 years of experience. It helps explain why the AJC’s Braves coverage is so deep and insightful. And there’s another factor: O’Brien and Rogers love what they do.
“It’s addicting,” Rogers said. “People in Atlanta care so much about the Braves, and it makes you feel part of something special to write about something people are very passionate about.”
So much has changed since the pair started covering baseball. Workdays are longer, for one thing. Fans’ appetite for information is insatiable.
Back in the day, the next day’s newspaper was all beat writers had to worry about. The internet changed that, and social media accelerated the change. Readers follow our Braves coverage on ajc.com, myajc.com and Twitter, as well as in print, and on all manner of devices.
So O’Brien writes his Braves Beat blog for ajc.com over a couple of hours in the mornings, gets to the ballpark by 3 p.m., does pregame interviews, watches the game while Tweeting, checking stats, and writing a couple of versions of the game story for print and our websites, then conducts postgame interviews and files quotes to round out our online report. After Wednesday’s game he left the ballpark at 1:30 a.m.
Then there’s the 24-hour news cycle. “It never stops,” Rogers said. When she heard minor leaguer Alex Wood had been called up to the Braves after a game, she was calling sources after midnight.
Technology has put O’Brien and Rogers much closer to their audience. Both spend a chunk of their day answering reader emails, blog comments and Tweets.
“It keeps you on your toes,” Rogers said. “Because people asked about something, I’ll seek out the information. Sometimes it’s something I hadn’t thought of.”
As the season winds down, I’d be willing to forgive O’Brien and Rogers for looking forward to the off-season and a little rest. But neither would admit to it.
“I get so much satisfaction out of doing something I love to do,” O’Brien said. “I don’t know how many people can say they love what they do for a living. You make sacrifices, but I love what I do.”
