Friday, February 20, 2026

Copyrighted by Sarah Morris, 2026

Since July 3, 1993, I have worked on my baseball writing career. It has challenged and defined me. During baseball season, I am busy. I never regretted my decision to be a baseball writer.

Am I retiring soon?

No. I can’t picture myself doing anything else for the next twenty-five years.

It isn’t because the Dodgers just won two consecutive World Series titles. I just love baseball, especially the Dodgers.

I grew up listening to and watching the Los Angeles Dodgers. Everyone whom I respected was a Dodger fanatic. On a random Sunday afternoon, when my family visited my grandparents, the Dodgers were on the radio. On a family road trip to Coronado to visit family, we listened to the Dodgers.

Before 1977, the Dodgers annoyed me. They took off the Brady Bunch reruns. I didn’t understand the game. After all, I was a little child. I wanted to play with blocks, a Tonka bulldozer, and dolls.

I had a home teacher for first grade, so I could concentrate on therapy. I am disabled, and my parents wanted me to develop physically as much as I could. The therapy didn’t work.

I went to school for second grade. After the first day of school, which was filled with bureaucratic paperwork, I was in my class. Most of the day was boring, but we had an hour of PE. In PE, we played T-ball with orange cones. I loved it and recognized it was baseball.

I went home and didn’t grump when the Dodgers came on the TV. In spring, my teacher turned on the radio, so I could listen to spring training games. Honestly, she hoped it would keep me busy for a few hours, so she could work with the other children. I was a teacher’s nightmare because I wanted to be busy, and I couldn’t do anything by myself. I got into trouble constantly. However, when I was listening to the Dodgers, I was quiet and good.

Through school, I followed the Dodgers avidly. In junior high school, when my English essay topic could be written about the Dodgers, I did. My eighth-grade English teacher had to follow the Dodgers to know what I was writing about, but he encouraged me to consider becoming a writer. The rest of my English teachers laughed because my grammar and spelling sucked.

In high school, I wasn’t a great student. I hated school, particularly at least three hours of homework after school. I had more homework during the weekends. I didn’t have any time to be a kid. I wanted to drop out of school, but Mom wouldn’t let me.

Luckily, my adapted PE teacher, Mike Sellers, coached the JV baseball team. He invited me to try out to be a statistician. Although my special education teacher protested, Mom agreed because she hoped it would give me a sense of belonging.

While it was forty years ago, I still remember the feeling that I had when I wheeled on the field. I felt I belonged, and I had an important job to do. For the rest of my high school career, I was a statistician. I knew I wanted to have a career in baseball, preferably with the Dodgers.

During college, I kept a Dodger journal. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life when I graduated from Pasadena City College because no class gave me a direct career path. I knew I was a history major, but Mom told me that I couldn’t have a job in history because I couldn’t dig in old piles of papers and books.

On the day that Don Drysdale died, I was writing about his death in my Dodger journal. It dawned on me that I wanted to be a Dodger writer. I told Mom.

For a moment, she thought about it. She said, “Okay, but you can’t be a beat writer because you can’t type fast enough or go to games.”

For the next eight years, I covered games and wrote editorials and analyses.

Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times discovered me as a writer and wrote a widely popular article about my love for the Dodgers. I was famous. Major League Baseball Advanced Media hired me as a freelance Dodger columnist. My story even appeared on Good Morning America. I was having a moment.

The fame. I don’t care.

From August 23, 2001, to March 15, 2018, I worked for Major League Baseball Advanced Media. I did my best. I wrote hundreds of articles. I remember two — about the September 11, 2001, attack and the farewell letter to Vin Scully. I kept watching every Dodger game. I still remember Plaschke telling Mom that he watched only ten Dodger games a year.

I was like, “What?” No wonder I thought you were an idiot.

My first boss, Ben Platt, constantly wanted me to relate my disabled struggles to the Dodgers. I did what I was told, but I felt like I was writing “fluff pieces.” These pieces are what I don’t read. Only a few people care about how my disability relates to the Dodgers.

I love the baseball grind. Every game represents a different story. I love knowing how an injured player impacts the Dodgers. I love analyzing a player’s performance and a roster move. My job is to devote my professional life to knowing the Dodgers and explaining the Dodgers to the common fan, who can’t watch every Dodger game. This is what I love.

I can’t picture myself doing anything else on a summer evening other than watching a Dodger game and reporting on it. I don’t like sharing my personal life. I am not interested in breaking a story about the Players’ Association’s head having an inappropriate relationship with his sister-in-law.

I do care about how Yoshinobu Yamamoto looks tomorrow. I will be watching the game. It’s like the excitement of the first day of school. I will be reporting.