Next up in our Women in Baseball series is Jenifer Langosch, MLB.com’s beat writer for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Determined young Jennifer Langosch knew at early age that she would work in baseball. Born a Braves fan in Marietta, GA, Langosch was eight when the Atlanta Braves beat the Pittsburgh Pirates in Game 7 of the 1992 National League Championship Series. From that moment on, Jennifer was hooked. Today, ironically, she’s Major League Baseball’s beat writer for the Pittsburgh Pirates. “In Pittsburgh, people here are so devastated about that game. I hear every week someone make a reference to that game and how they cried afterwards or how the Pirates have never been the same since that game.”

Jennifer too hasn’t been the same since. As a child, she began following baseball closely and analyzing it, preparing for a career in the industry.

When I was eight, we had to do that activity in school where you write down and draw a picture of what you want to be/do when you grow up and I told everyone that I was going to be the first female broadcaster for the Atlanta Braves. I went home and told my parents this, and surprisingly enough, they said, ‘Go at it.’ That’s when I started reading the Sports page everyday, keeping scorebooks during every Braves game and our family would take a trip each summer to a city where the Braves were playing and go to a few games and stay at the same hotel as a team. I guess you could say, that’s where the dream all started.

From that moment on, she’s been on the fast track to the major leagues. Langosch attended the prestigious journalism program at the University of Missouri. In college, Langosch landed her dream internship – a summer with MLB.com covering the Atlanta Braves. During the summer experience, she impressed all the right people. She was quickly offered a job to cover the Pittsburgh Pirates as full-time beat writer, a position that keeps her busy around the clock.

She arrives at the park around 2:30, an hour before the clubhouse opens. Before first pitch, Jennifer is required to submit 2-3 separate 400 word stories about general team news. During the game, she writes a “running gamer,” which is a 6 paragraph AP style recap of the game. The story is filed in the 8^th inning for the internet, but she has an opportunity to update and extend it later in the evening. Before leaving each night, she also has to file a game preview for the next day. On a given day, that’s 5 to 6 separate pieces. She stays busy in the off season too. As teams make trades, change personnel and prepare for spring training, she’s busy capturing those moments as well.

A lot of people think I have a cool job and I do have a cool job. I don’t take it for granted, but I don’t think a lot of people realize the time it takes to do all of it. Some people think I just go to the baseball game at watch it. It’s a lot more than that and especially when you throw in the traveling.

Combined with spring training and travel throughout the regular season, Jenifer is always on the run. But she has no complaints about that. “I always had a goal when I was little that I wanted to see all 30 ball parks. Eventually, I thought I would but this is speeding up the process a little. I think I’m at 21 right now.”

Despite her busy schedule, Langosch is so grateful for the opportunity to cover baseball, especially at such a young age. “I remember how many people would love to have the job I have and I think that makes me work harder in the end.”

Though she is a true fan of the game, she admits that a person could quickly lose interest in sports journalism if she didn’t love writing as well.

You have got to love the writing. If you don’t love the writing, the baseball part will wear off really really fast. A lot of people are huge baseball fans and they think, how can I get into the industry. Oh let me go into sports writing. Well, yeah you get to watch baseball games. But you’ll get burnt out in a heartbeat if you don’t like the writing part.

Though it’s a lot of work, Jenifer couldn’t imagine spending summers any other way.  While she’s always admired the game’s best, illustrated by her admiration of John Smoltz’s career, when asked about spending the day with a baseball legend, she quickly turns her mind to broadcasters and sportswriters like Rick Hummel and Hal McCoy.  She’s also a big fan of Don Sutton.

He was the guy I grew up listening to. He was with the Braves for so long. And he was the guy that I thought I would sound like, I just appreciated listening to him cover it more than anybody else. And so being able to understand it, for us, for me, it was TBS, listening to TBS and hearing him every night. He was Braves baseball for me.

Braves baseball was also something Jenifer experienced with her family. After all, they were at her side for Game 6 in 1995 when the Braves won the World Series. Langosch believes the family atmosphere and social nature of the game really make it important to so many people. Combine that with statistics, records and a rich history, and baseball is a special part of our lives.

It’s so special to Langosch that she refuses to ever let the profession change her appreciation for the game. “I absolutely still get a kick out of going to the ball park everyday. I think the minute that gets old, I will stop doing this. I don’t ever want to stop loving baseball — the sport.”

Though she’s new to the industry, she certain has had her share of challenging moments. There were doubts, for example, about whether she could handle the position. The Pittsburgh Pirates had never had a female beat writer. Several people in the organization voiced concerns to Major League Baseball about having a young female writer covering the team. But Langosch chartered a new territory and, one year in, exceeded all expectations.

I feel like I’ve had to prove myself, probably both because I’m young and because I’m female. Now, in the end, I think you gain a little more respect because you’re a woman and they expect you not to be able to do well in this profession. It’s definitely a challenge because you can tell that some of the men are looking for every little mistake you make or watching how you handle yourself, watching how you interact with players, things like that. It’s a lot more scrutiny early on.

It doesn’t take long to recognize that Langosch is incredibly professional. She laments the double standard that allows her male colleagues to socialize with players after a game. “I still feel like I can’t do that, because I feel like how will other people look at that? What will their impressions of me be?”

On a trip to Milwaukee, the security guard for the clubhouse singled out Jenifer, but none of the male writers. Pulling her aside and out of the line, he examined her credentials carefully while all the others entered with no problem.

Despite the challenges, Jenifer also has unique insight into how publications can uniquely appeal to the female fan. “I think women are more attracted to the human aspect of baseball and for me, I try to balance it out by doing a good number of feature writing and then also game stories. I think the women like knowing about the guys’ personalities and what they like to do off the field and things like that.” Getting families to the park is the other way to foster a better fan base of women, though rising ticket prices make that difficult as well.

The one thing that I noticed is women in this industry really stick together. Whenever I did that project in college, I called female sports writers all around the country; they would sit on the phone and talk with me forever if I needed them to. It’s kind of like a little sorority. We’re definitely the minority, so by sticking together and sharing stories, a lot of the women that have been doing this for 15-20 years really have reached out to the people of my generation to make sure that females want to come into this business.

Just as she found female mentors in the industry, namely Michelle Hiskey and Christine Brennan, she considers it a professional obligation to encourage young women to pursue sportswriting.

In the year that I’ve been here, I’ve gotten a lot of emails from girls and teenagers that told me, “I didn’t know I could do this stuff.” If it’s something that you are interested in growing up, immerse yourself in it. Find opportunities to write about sports, whether it be college, high school. I think it’s good to get an array of experience. I did game stories, I did feature writing, I did community sports, I did everything. The more that you do and the more that you are willing to do, I think, puts you a step ahead of some people. Some people have a huge ego. They don’t want to step as low as covering whatever they have to cover. You do have to pay your dues. You do have to just never be afraid to go out and find a story.

And, don’t ever let anybody tell you can’t do this. Because I had people growing up, friends in high school that told me, being a girl, I could not do this. And I was wasting my time. Actually, I had a friend of mine told me I was wasting my talent wanting to be a baseball writer. So, never give up on your dreams and never let anybody tell you that you can’t do that. Because I think any female in this profession will be told at least once that they don’t belong, or that they can’t do this or that they are making a poor career choice.

For Jenifer, it was the right choice. She couldn’t be happier covering baseball day in and day out, visiting ballparks across the country and thinking about innovative and exciting ways to describe the game she’s loved since childhood.

Given the recent passing of another one of her childhood heroes, Jenifer offered the following addendum to this interview:

On passing of Skip Caray…
 
I was just commenting earlier on Sunday, before the news of Caray’s death, about how I hadn’t had much of an opportunity to watch Braves games this season. Obviously my being with the Pirates makes that difficult schedule-wise. And the fact that TBS is no longer televising Braves games even limited the opportunities I had when I had days off. It was Skip, along with Pete, Joe and Don (it was always just first names to me as a kid) that brought me Braves baseball on TBS for so many years. 
 
The first baseball memory that I have was the 1992 NLCS. Game 7. Sid Bream’s slide to beat the Pirates in the bottom of the ninth inning. Skip made that call. He made the one when Marquis Grissom caught the final out in the 1995 World Series. He made the one with Otis Nixon’s famous climb-the-wall catch. Those are calls that I’ll remember word-for-word forever.
 
I had the opportunity to meet Skip a few times, both as a child and then as a professional working in the same industry. It was because of him and the other three Atlanta voices that I decided to go into this profession. I wanted to be a Braves broadcaster, just like them. When I found out that Skip had graduated from the University of Missouri, I sent my college application in there. It must be a pretty good journalism school then, right? Little did I first know that it was one of the best in the country. I still wonder if I ever would have looked at Mizzou had it not been for Skip. And if not, I most assuredly would not be doing what I am doing professionally right now.
 
Skip was one of a kind. His voice. His wit. His sarcasm. And even the way he used to pretend like he knew every person that caught a foul ball. (“Nice catch by Jane Myers from Woodstock, Ga., he’d say). Listening to Braves games won’t be the same. But, at least for me, that doesn’t mean that his voice has to die.

Many thanks to Jenifer for taking time out of her busy schedule to talk with us and sharing her story. 

This entry was posted on Monday, August 4th, 2008 at 10:24 am and is filed under Women in Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.