Chris Landers: Rounding the Bases

Although he enjoyed playing all kinds of sports growing up, Chris Landers’ favorite was always baseball. A native of North Jersey, Landers was raised in the shadow of the baseball capital of the world and grew up making trips to the Bronx.

“My Dad, his favorite sport is baseball and he took me to games since I was little,” Landers said while seated at a lunch table outside Newhouse. “I played soccer, football, basketball, baseball when I was a kid, and I focused more on baseball in high school. I played baseball all four years, that was always my favorite sport.”

Landers has always enjoyed sports of all kinds, but baseball always stood out. When a career as an athlete didn’t seem likely, he pursued sports journalism as a way to stay around the competition he loved. Most importantly, he wanted to be around baseball. He spent his first year of undergrad at Wake Forest, writing for the campus newspaper about baseball along with more obscure sports like volleyball and field hockey. He believes that his time spent covering the sports that didn’t interest him as much helped his writing.

“It broadens your horizons a bit and I think it makes you a better writer to have to cover something you don’t really know about,” he said.

Landers decided to transfer to Oberlin College following his year at Wake and continued to work as a sportswriter and editor. He liked having the opportunity to be a “big fish in a small pond,” but felt he needed the formal training and access to contacts that Newhouse provides.

Landers says he is open to covering all kinds of sports, but his main goals are to write for a major baseball publication and to host a sports talk radio show.

The Interview: 

JF: Tell us about yourself and how you first got into sports.

CL: I'm Chris Landers, I'm from New Jersey. I've always been into sports ever since I was a little kid, I mean I played pretty much anything I could get my hands on. But I never really saw it as a career til pretty recently. It had always been a passion, something I was really interested in following, but it never seemed serious enough to be something worth pursuing as a job. A couple years ago I started writing for Wake Forest's campus newspaper when I was a freshman in college. I started working for their sports section and I kinda fell in love with it. I realized that writing about sports and talking about sports could be something that I could pursue. I thought about it and decided it was important and something I cared about a lot and was what I wanted to try and do for the rest of my life, which kind of led me here.

JF: You said you played a bunch of sports as a kid. What were some of those sports?

CL: I played soccer, football, basketball, baseball when I was a kid, and I focused more on baseball in high school. I played baseball all four years, that was always my favorite sport. But outside of that I've played pickup games in anything I could get my hands on. I always loved the competition, being part of a team was always really cool and something that I really enjoyed. So I focused mostly on baseball officially but I played pretty much anything I could outside of that.

JF: Since you focused mostly on baseball in your playing career, do you have goals to kind of go more towards baseball or are you trying to do more general sports?

CL: I would love to branch out, do talk radio or report on just about anything but my main interest is to be eventually writing about or producing content about baseball. It's been my love ever since I was a kid. My Dad, his favorite sport is baseball and he took me to games since I was little so I guess as far as a career goes, I would love to write for Baseball America or FanGraphs, something like that to cover baseball but I would also love to cover anything. Talk radio is one of my big interests so I would love to do that too, see where it takes me.

JF: What position did you play when you were playing baseball, and what effect do you think playing the game your whole life has, do you think it gives you more of an insight into baseball than you normally would have?

CL: I played Left Field. Yeah, obviously I didn't play in college or that seriously, but you know we played a pretty high level of high school ball, and I think having the experience of playing the game and knowing what it's like to play the game, even if it doesn't make you any smarter or a better analyst than somebody who didn't, you can at least empathize with the guy you're covering. You can understand questions to ask and angles to take because you've been there, you've been in those situations before. I never played professional baseball or Minor League Baseball or anything like that but the situations are kinda universal. You know an at-bat is an at-bat regardless of where you're taking it. So yeah, I think it's helped me a lot. Playing baseball definitely helped me mature a lot and I think become a better writer and a better student of sports and baseball in particular.

JF: In writing for Wake Forest sports, did you focus more on baseball or did you do generally (a bunch of sports)?

CL: Actually since I was a freshman I couldn't really get my pick. I only stayed at Wake Forest for one year, I transferred after my Freshman year. But yeah actually I got to cover one basketball game, which at Wake is a pretty big deal. It was a lot of fun. I got to cover a couple baseball games too, and also I kinda like the fact that I got to cover some more obscure sports. I covered volleyball, field hockey, whatever. It broadens your horizons a bit and I think it makes you a better writer to have to cover something you don't really know much about.

JF: You said you transferred from Wake your first year. Where did you go and did you kinda continue your (writing)?

CL: Yeah, I went to Oberlin College out in Ohio after I left Wake, and I became the sports editor and eventually the editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper. See, I did a lot of writing. It's a small liberal arts school so there aren't many connections to be made with people in the field. It's kind of tough to make a name for yourself in that kind of environment because sports aren't really a big deal, they're only Division 3, but it gave me the opportunity to write a lot because there weren't that many people in my way. I could kind of make of it what I could, so it was kinda nice in a way.

JF: How is it different going from an Oberlin College where there isn't a whole lot of people in your way and you could kind of covered what you wanted as opposed to a Syracuse where now everyone wants to do the same thing you do?

CL: On the one hand it's tough because I became the sports editor after being on campus at Oberlin for three or four months. It's really low on the priority list there. But on the other hand, it's really cool to come here and be in a place where everyone loves sports, and not only loves sports but are really smart about it because it's what they want to do with their lives. So it's cool to bounce ideas off people and see what people are doing because it inevitably makes you better. If you stay as a big fish in a small pond for a while you're gonna stagnate eventually. One of the reasons why I came here is because I wanted to be in that sort of environment so hopefully it will make me a much better reporter, a much better writer.