| 28 July 2010
I have followed sports for as long as I can remember.
My grandmother was a huge Atlanta Braves fan, so as a kid in the early 1990’s I would join her in watching them play. Her favorite team became mine. My idol was Chipper Jones, and as I began to intently follow him and the rest of the Braves, I became a huge baseball fan.
Though I follow a variety of other sports, I am most passionate about baseball. I played when I was young. I pretended I was in the major leagues every time I took the field, and I longed to live the dream every time the Braves or another of my favorite teams were playing.
As my love for the game grew stronger, I began to focus more on statistics. By my early teenage years, I recognized relatively every player by name, understood their potential, and had done my best to keep their statistics in my memory. I watched baseball more than I played it, studied boxscores, and read books about Bobby Thompson, the Brooklyn Dodgers, Willie Mays, and the 1918 curse that hung over the Boston Red Sox.
Like most kids who love baseball, I dreamed of playing in major leagues. I knew that wouldn’t happen, but I wanted to remain involved in the sport in some way.
The answer came during my junior year at Eugene, Oregon’s South Eugene High School. In December of that year, 2007, I started a sports blog titled Swamigp’s Sports Blog. It gave me the chance to be more than just a fan. I was an awkward writer at first, but the more I wrote about my favorite teams—the Portland Trail Blazers and Boston Red Sox—the more comfortable I became in trying to put the readers in the stands.
At the beginning, I didn’t necessarily want to write professionally. I was just writing for fun, trying to put my sports knowledge to use. But, as I have gained a following and improved my writing, it has become much more than a hobby.
Writing on my blog has allowed me to follow teams more intently. Prior to this past summer when I was hired to write about the Blazers for Fan Huddle, I was a casual fan of the team. But that opportunity transformed me into an obsessed, die-hard enthusiast.
Looking back, I would be lost without the ability to write.
I had once toyed with the idea of pursuing a career in architecture, but that wasn’t where my heart was. I realize now that sports writing is what makes me most happy.
photo: alex mcdougall photography
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