I had one of the more surreal moments of my life yesterday.
A few weeks ago, I tweeted a link to my recent piece on Herman Long to Keith Olbermann. Like me, Olbermann’s a member of the Society for American Baseball Research and he wrote something about Long a few years ago that caught my eye.
I originally hoped Olbermann might like my piece enough to retweet it or even just say he liked it. It’s gratifying to get a response from someone of Olbermann’s stature, a sign that perhaps all the work I do here isn’t in vain. There’s also a tangible benefit, as even a 0.1 percent click through rate on my story from Olbermann’s 500,000 Twitter followers would bring 500 visitors here, a good traffic day by this website’s standards.
It made my night when Olbermann retweeted my piece just before Christmas and told me great job via Twitter. Yesterday, Olbermann went one better and did something that, to my knowledge, no television personality has done for me before. In a segment Tuesday on Long’s forgotten Hall of Fame candidacy, Olbermann mentioned me and my piece during his show “Countdown” on ESPN2, even quoting what I wrote on the air.
The mention of me starts around the 4:30 mark of this.
I can’t say how flattered I was to see this. I’m 31 years old, haven’t sold a freelance piece in almost a year, and I question sometimes how much longer I can keep trying to write about baseball for a living. I love researching and writing about baseball history, and I think I’ll always do it at least as a hobby, but economically, it doesn’t make much sense to keep telling myself I can one day make a career of this. Days like Tuesday make me want to keep trying.
Most cool. Hopefully this will open doors for you.
I read your posts frequently. I find your approach innovative and
professional. You are very good at what you do with this blog.
I often find myself commenting to myself that you have taught me
something I did not know. I think you have a knack for this work.
One never knows what it will take in life to get recognition of one’s
work. You can take comfort in knowing that folks you have never
met find your work both informative and entertaining. Keep at it-your
love of baseball is manifest in your work.
Gregg
Congrats and this is good to hear.
Any time to be mentioned on ESPN or in the USA TODAY or major media venue or even to hear back from the makes all of our efforts worth while.
And now, thanks for social media, we can share our good news with all.
As a free-lance college football stathistorian, I can most certainly ID with you.
This is by far the coolest thing to happen! You work so hard on this site, your writing, and research so it is much deserved. Could not happen to an nicer, more knowledgeable, or cuter guy. ; )
That. Is. Awesome!
Stay with it Graham, great piece and great ob getting yourself out there to the likes of K.O.
I went to the ESPN link you provided and there was some problem with the audio either no being on and later being slow. I found the link for the same piece on K.O.’s youtube channel in case the problem persists on the other link.
Well I left out the most important part. Here’s the YT link!
“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tWraTcEwSw”