On Saturday, I was lucky enough to be a part of the St. Louis Cardinals’ annual Blogger/Podcaster event. This event has been hosted since 2011 and outgoing President of Baseball Operations was kind enough to take the time to do a quick Q&A session with the 20 or so Cardinals writers in attendance. These writers were specially invited by the organization’s communications team, namely Carson Shipley, who began the event with an introduction of Mozeliak and his accomplishments from his 30 years in the organization.
Because this was my first time being invited to this event, I wanted to first do a quick recap of the day and what it was like being in the Legends Club for the game. Now, this may be a little reminiscent of online recipe blogs that tell the history of chocolate chips before sharing the recipe through a plethora of ads and plenty of scrolling. So if you’re here for a recap of a few of Mozeliak’s answers, click here to head straight to that section!
My “journey” to becoming what is apparently considered as a blogger started around this time last year. I am a current high school softball coach and I felt that the coverage of the sport at the high school level had fallen off since the explosion of travel sports and the slow death of traditional media. Because of that, I put together a small website for our high school team and created roster, stats, and schedule pages and challenged myself to write a recap after each game. In those recaps, I would cover the game but also point out specific performances that the players could be proud of because who doesn’t like hearing about how good they are?
I had a lot of fun doing this and my wife, Sara, thought that I was doing well with the writing and asked what I wanted to do. I kind of touched on how I would like to breakdown Cardinals games since I watch as many games as possible and, as a former pitcher, try to think my way through all the situations, pitch counts, and managerial decisions that happen during the game. I was born and raised in Arlington Heights, Illinois, so the ability to share my Cardinal fandom was few and far between in Cubs country. I remember reading Joe Strauss and MLB Trade Rumors nonstop and have been taking in writers like Derrick Goold and especially Katie Woo of The Athletic, who’s writing style and social media presence helped shape the kind of writing I wanted to do.
That lead me to creating another quick iteration of a website called “Bird’s Eye Breakdown”, where I just jotted down my thoughts and reactions to the team. I shared those on Facebook and again got a nice reaction so that made me confident enough to apply to be a contributor to the Cardinals’ FanSided website, Redbird Rants. Josh Jacobs, the site editor, reached out to me and I was fortunate that he gave me a chance and brought me on the staff. While with RR, I have published plenty of articles ranging from my opinions, news, recaps, and anything in between while trying to figure out how to arrange my thoughts and decide which type of articles I enjoyed writing the most.
Again, if you are sick of reading this and want the Q&A, click here.
Because of success being determined by “clicks”, that got me back into Twitter, which has been both a ton of fun and extremely frustrating and concerning. I have tried to stay true to my thoughts while bringing in analysis, game feel, and sarcasm while finding a fun connection of Cardinals Twitter that I enjoy engaging with. I also found the dark side of Twitter, and I don’t just mean about sports but the rude, arrogant, idiotic, bigoted, and everything else in between “keyboard warriors” which led me to also make a shift over the Bluesky to try and find another, happier community.
This jump took me to finding Redbird Rundown, a Cardinal podcast hosted by three brothers that remind me of the conversations I would have with my brothers. I shared and reviewed all of their episodes on Bluesky and was pumped when Matt Smith reached out and invited me to be a guest! I was extremely nervous and kind of embarrassed by my Cardinal fandom but decided to go through with it and I had a blast!
After figuring out how I wanted to create my online presence around the Cardinals, I again found more people that were great to connect with. Jeremy Karp, the founder of Interstate 70 Sports Media, reached out and asked if I would be interested in writing for this site. I figured why not as this site gives me another, different way to share other thoughts that don’t always fit with what posts and performs well with RR. Working with Jeremy has been fun and he has been working hard to push I-70 further forward and I am excited to be a part of it.
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