From Business Writing to Baseball - Jonah Keri's Long Journey

By:  Joshua Carney

It took nearly 16 years for Jonah Keri to reach his goal as a sports journalist, but he says the long road traveled was well worth it. 

A Montreal, Quebec native, one would think that Keri loves hockey, but it's America's pastime that really grabs his attention.

Graduating from Concordia University in 1997, Keri fully expected to land a full-time role as a sports journalist right out of college, but business journalism appeared to be the only place he could progress quickly.

“I was 24 and had a pretty high-profile job at a newspaper called “Investors Business Daily,” which was, at the time, the second-best business paper in the country behind the Wall Street Journal,” Keri said in a telephone interview.  “And I had a major stock market column there called the, “Flagship 81” column, etc. I did that for a long, long time. It was great.”

Though it may have been great for him at the time, it still wasn’t exactly what he wanted to do with his life. After catching on with “Baseball Prospectus” as a freelance writer, Keri realized it was time to go after his dream, which put him on the path he needed to reach his goal.

Now working full-time as a baseball staff writer for Grantland.com, Keri says he has the best job in America, one in which he's able to do what he wants, when he wants, and how he wants, all from the comfort of his home in Denver, where he lives with his wife and kids.

But, it's not always as easy as it appears to be for Keri. This past March, he published a book about the history of the Montreal Expos - a team he grew up loving, and still loves to this day even after its demise. Balancing a busy workload at Grantland while raising a family at home, Keri was left with little time, but the time that he did have was put into writing the book.

"I completely neglected my wife and kids (laughs)," Keri said. "No, that's not a good idea. I hate it. It’s a very, very stupid idea. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone unless they want a nervous breakdown. And not something I want to do again anytime soon."

Jonah Keri though, says he'd rather write ten books and do what he's doing now with Grantland, than get back into business journalism. Baseball is his passion. He loves the game, there's no mistaking that. The fact that he gets to cover baseball for a living - which is what he wanted to do right from the start - lets him know that he's finally made it.

Interview with Jonah Keri

Or read it here:

Q:  How did you get started at Grantland?

A:   The short version, or the long version?

Q:  Whichever story you have time for.

A:  This is my first full-time sports writing job.

Q:  Really?

A:  Yeah, I was hired in 2011. I was almost 37 years old by then. I wanted to be a sports writer the entire time.  When I got out of college in the late-90s, the internet was happening, there was stuff going on, but it was hard to make a living full-time as a sports writer. The only two people that I read with any regularity full-time online was Bill Simmons and Rob Neyer.  They had cool jobs, but I couldn't figure out how to get a cool job like them. So, I said alright  and went on to become a business writer. I did that for a long time – more than a decade. You could just advance more quickly. I was 24 and had a pretty high-profile job at a newspaper called “Investors Business Daily,” which was, at the time, the second-best business paper in the country behind the Wall Street Journal. And I had major stock market column there called the, “Flagship 81” column, etc. I did that for a long, long time. It was great. Not necessarily what I wanted to do with my life, but it was just, “alright, this is a good way to make a living and get established as a writer,” as you get into those 10,000 hours that [Malcolm] Gladwell talks about in his books. The deal was to get better and do what you do. As that was happening, the internet started getting more coverage, and “Baseball Prospectus” came along in particular. I love reading “Baseball Prospectus,” so I thought, “oh, man. I’d love to write for them even if it’s just on the side.” So, basically I started writing for them on the side making either nothing, or $50 a pop. Whatever, just doing stuff on the side. I really enjoyed it. That blossomed into a bigger role with them. I edited three of their annuals. I edited a book called, “Baseball Between the Numbers,” and was writing columns more often. That was really good. By the time we get to 2006, at that point I am done with “Baseball Prospectus,” and kind of winding down my time with “Investors Business Daily," – I was still full-time with them, but I wasn't working in the office anymore, and I was living in a different city, so then I went part-time. I started freelancing with ESPN.com, along with a million other locations, and I wrote books. I was doing all that, but I still didn't have a full-time sports writing job, which is what I wanted to do. Eventually, with the whole body of work with Prospectus and the books, and all this other stuff, when Grantland started, I guess there were enough people there that had read my work and liked it, so they emailed me one day and said, "Hey! Come write for us." So, that was pretty much how it came to be. It took a long, long time. Many years into my career, but it finally happened. What's funny about the whole Simmons and Neyer thing is that, you know, those are the two people that I read, and now Simmons is my boss, and Neyer has become my best friend. That's funny how these things come to be, but it all worked out great.

Q:  You're a staff writer at Grantland. Did you reach that level right away when you started there, or is that something that you worked your way up to?

A:  That was the intention all along. The way that Grantland works is that you write a piece, and then you write another piece and start contributing more regularly until they say, "Alright, you're full-time." Verbally, the pretty much told me that I was full-time when I first started. But I didn’t really sign a contract until August of 2011, but I was full-time at that point, just unofficially. I became a staff writer Nov. 1 of 2011.

Q:  What goes into what stories you write about each week. Recently, in the middle of June, you wrote a piece about the Cuban pipeline of baseball players in the majors. Is that something that you sit down with you editors and talk about, or do you just have the latitude to do whatever you feel like you want to do?

A:  The answer is that I get to do what I want to do. Simmons is a...he's a busy guy. We've communicated on stories a few times, but not recently. My main editor is Mallory Rubin. She's a real baseball nut. We work very closely together. We communicate regularly. She definitely improves the product quite a bit. She's very good about smoothing out an idea and getting rid of the rough edges. But, the original idea...oh, 98-99 percent of them are mine. It’s just pretty much…you watch enough baseball, you follow enough baseball, you read enough baseball that there’s never a shortage of things to cover. Especially if you’re covering all thirty teams, right? I mean, oh, I wrote enough about the Yankees, but geez, there’s twenty-nine others teams to cover, so there’s never a time where I have too many ideas and I have to widdle them down. And yeah, for the most part they are mine and I try to push it out. I mean, there’s “meat-and-potatoes” stuff about, ‘okay, the A’s are doing so well, here’s why.’ But, with the Cuban pipeline story, everyone was talking about [Yasiel] Puig and had covered that story, so it became "what can we bring to the table? What if I talked to two people that were actually experts on Cuban baseball and tried to do a little bit of a historic piece to get to how the heck we got to now, not so much with Puig, [Jose] Abreu, [Yeonis] Cespedes, [Aroldis] Chapman, [Jose] Fernandez and all these amazing players that come at once." The basic idea is that, if you do this long enough you’ll come up with good stories. Hopefully you have a good editor that can say, ‘Okay, you have a good idea, you’re 90 percent there. Let’s figure out the rest,” and help take it the rest of the way. Mallory Rubin, my editor, is very, very good at that. But, like I said, the original ideas are generally mine.

Q:  Is there a process you go through? Do you plan out stories weeks in advance? Or do you just come up with stories for that week and work from there?

A:  I have a quota…well, actually quota is too strong of a word. I have this expectation to produce a certain number of columns and stories a week. I have to produce three columns and one podcast a week. The columns almost always run on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Monday is my weekly power rankings, and those are pretty darn long. I cannot do them in advance. I have to wait to write that because a team could go on a 7-game losing streak, which could make what I wrote in advance completely irrelevant. I usually write those on Sundays. I don’t have Sundays. From April to September my Sundays are usually shot to hell. I am working on something for Monday. Wednesday’s are more feature-ish, and flexible, so I do have the ability to work on them for weeks. There’s one piece that I started on in the spring, but I put down – it’s not done yet – we’re sitting here in mid-July, so there’s that. The piece I’m working on now will run on Thursday of this week, so we’re switching up the days a bit. That story, I originally came up with the idea about a month ago, but I have been able to pick it up and put it down. It depends on what is going on. With the Wednesday stuff, its longer form features, so sometimes I’ll be working on something we’re I’ll be like, ‘You know what? We could use just a bit more information that could make it really good. Oh, there’s more media attention for a story right now, so let me put this down and come back to it. There are flex days. Fridays are a little bit lighter for me, so typically that piece will only take me a couple of days or so to write. But, yeah, that Wednesday slot lets me have leeway if I want it, but never on Mondays.

Q:  You mentioned the podcast. Did you start that this year?

A:  No, I’ve had my own podcast dating back to 2009-10…way before Grantland. When they hired me, I asked them if they wanted my little rinky-dink podcast to come with me, and they said yes. It was just something I had with my own blog. I mean, I scheduled some big guests with it, but it was something that my friends and family would listen to. I will say that you’re not completely on the wrong track with the podcast, because Grantland has given me more space this year than before to do it. Before, they didn’t want a bunch of podcasts going on with football and basketball, so they didn’t really NEED the podcast until everything else ended.

Q:  What goes into the podcast every week in terms of setting up guests?

A:  I can’t even begin to tell you how much autonomy I have at my job…

Q:  Really?

A:  Yeah, I tell them what I want to do, and who I want to have come on. It’s the same with the articles. I really have the best job in America. I get to do what I want. I mean, I have support if I want it; I have feedback if I want it. It is entirely self-driven. The guests usually happen to be friends. Those that aren’t are people that I work with and respect in the industry. But, I schedule all of the guests myself. We call them up and that’s about it. It’s really self-driven.

Q:  How did you balance your job at Grantland while writing your most recent book, “Up, Up and Away:  The Kid, the Hawk, Rock, Vladi, Pedro, le Grand Orange, Youppi!, the Crazy Business of Baseball, and the Ill-fated but Unforgettable Montreal Expos?” How difficult was that?

A: How did I balance it? I completely neglected my wife and kids to the point of being not around, to answer your question (laughs). No, not a good idea. I would not recommend doing it.  I hate it. I got a few days off, but guys who write at the New York Times or Wall Street Journal say to their bosses, ‘Hey, give me four-six months off to let me work on this. It will raise my prestige level, and it’ll be good for my blah, blah, blah.’ And they say ‘Sure! Take your hiatus, I don’t mind.’ But, I received no such thing at Grantland. The only vacation time that I am specifically allotted is the first two weeks in November. The day that the World Series ends I’ll book a…well, not every year, but I will get on a plane the next day and go somewhere just to get the hell away. It’s a lot. You’re going from…well, almost winter meetings in mid-December up until the end of the World Series. It’s just working, working, working, so there really isn’t time off to focus on all of that, so I was finding time whenever I could a little bit later in the off-season, but I was doing all the writing, traveling and reporting in June or July, which was midseason. I’d be in Toronto, Los Angeles, New York or whatever doing interviews, banging out whatever I could, and then just working on Grantland stuff the rest of the day. It’s a very, very stupid idea. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone unless they want a nervous breakdown. And not something I want to do again anytime soon.

Q:  Do you do a lot of traveling with your job?

A:  No, not for Grantland. Grantland is pretty moderate with the traveling. Most of the traveling was for the book. I wanted to do in-person interviews because they are better than interviews done over the phone. I did a lot of traveling for the last two books that I wrote.

Q:  What’s your typical day like with Grantland? Do you go to the office every day, or do you work from home?

A:   No, I work from home. It’s very simple the way it’s set up. All of the editors are based in Los Angeles in one office ten steps from the Staples Center in a place called “LA live,” which I’ve been to a few times, but it’s not required. Almost all of the writers are elsewhere. Bill Barnwell lives in Boston, Zach Lowe lives in New York, Sean McIndoe lives in Canada, Katie Baker is in San Francisco and Wesley Morris lives in Boston, so it’s more spread out. I live in Denver; I’m talking to you from my house. I have an office in my house with all of the baseball books that I need, I have my standing desk and all of that. I do like…I’m a social person, so it’s nice to be around people, but when I’m focusing on my work I get to be by myself.

Q:  Is there any part of your job that…sometimes wears on you?

A:  No, I don’t think so. It took so long to get this job that I wanted, and I’m doing a lot more with TV and Baseball Tonight, so I can essentially work my way up with other things and other opportunities, so no. If I felt like, you know ‘baseball, baseball, baseball,’ and the fact that I get to write about baseball, baseball, baseball, but they allow me to do TV, some radio and a podcast changes up the rhythm so that it doesn’t get stale. I do love basketball. I am a huge basketball fan, and I think that if I could, you know snap my fingers and take all of my baseball sources and knowledge with me and became a basketball guy…I’d probably want to do that at some point, but it’s not really realistic right now and I’m not too, too worried about it. I’m…whatever, you know…young enough, mobile enough that if I really, really wanted to get into it…

Q:  How did you get involved with ESPN’s Baseball Tonight? I noticed this past year that you’ve been on as an analyst. I thought that’s pretty damn cool, because you’re a Grantland writer, and you’re on ESPN as well. What’s that like for you just sitting in with those guys talking baseball?

A:  It’s great. When I started at Grantland it’s what I wanted to do. I’m friends with a couple of people at MLB Network, and just before I started with Grantland Brian Kenny was starting up a show, and I became his friend for a few years, and so the thought was ‘oh, well maybe I’ll be involved with that.’ But Grantland, which is a part of ESPN, was like ‘no, you can’t do that.’ MLB Network is a competitor. So I said, “Hey, okay how about putting me on Baseball Tonight?” It just wasn’t available at the time, so I bided my time, did the writing and eventually I asked again a little while later and they said, “Alright, let’s give you a try.” I went on for a few times, and they liked me well enough. It’s been great. The producers are really, really good. When you’re on the TV side…I guess it’s pretty similar to print, which means that if you have good editors you’ll improve a whole lot. If you have good producers, they’ll help you a lot. They lead the direction with the show, just like our editors set the direction of the website. They do a really good job of coaching us up. I mean, I’ve been on TV before, back before I even joined Grantland, but it was periodical. It was week after week doing it. You learn a lot because it’s so relatively new for me. Those producers are really great. The other people? The talent, the on-air people are really nice, too. You get to sit in the greenroom with these ballplayers, and whatever, I feel I know a bit about baseball, but I don’t know what it’s like to take a 97 mph fastball. Those guys are terrific. They’ll walk you through it, and I’ve learned so much just sitting there and absorbing it like a sponge. I keep my mouth shut and let them talk. That’s been one of my favorite parts of this job is just having access to these kind of baseball minds. Guys like Doug Glanville are just so smart. Maybe I don’t express it properly, but I feel like it’s a great privilege to work with them.

Q:  I notice in your columns, and in your other pieces that you talk a lot about advanced metrics in baseball. It seems that a lot of young baseball writers who are getting into the field know a lot about them. Do you suggest, for someone like me, to get involved with stuff like that and get a good understanding of it all, because I feel that I have a pretty good understanding of most of it, but there are some things that you mention that I have no clue about.

A:  Advanced metrics…I mean, no, it’s not something that you have to be fluent in, but that’s the way the winds appear to be blowing. But, there are a lot of good, I mean great writers out there who…don’t use it at all because they don’t need to. Let’s say that you want to be a storyteller. You want to write long form features about baseball, or any sport or whatever…you don’t necessarily need advanced metrics. Maybe you need a working knowledge or…let’s put it this way, if you’re close-minded – it’s never good to be close-minded.  You need to be open-minded because it’s a good trait to have, but I also don’t think you need to have a deep knowledge of these things because there are all kinds of ways to write and this is just something that I do. Its part of me, it’s organic to who I am. I read Bill James when I was…oh, I don’t know, 8- or 9 years old. My dad bought me the book when I was really, really young. It was a book that a normal 8- or 9 year old should be reading, but whatever. That was my taste. I liked reading books from a young age…I was a nerdy kind of kid. It was great. Not to say that I couldn’t do this stuff with advanced metrics if I just discovered it when I was 25 or anything, that’s not true. I love, love reading, but I loved Bill James, I loved Rob Neyer, so it wasn’t something that I had to rub my hands together and say, alright, I have to take advantage of this market opportunity. It was more like “this is what I do.” And I got lucky, because this thing happened as I grew up, so when I was reading Bill James…it wasn’t something that I could make a living – unless you were Bill James – in.  It was stuff that happened to grow up around me. The answer to your question is, if you have those skills and that desire, go ahead and do it, but by no means is this a broad lesson. If you want to write about sports, the only two things you really need to do are:  you need to read a lot, and you need to write a lot. That’s it. That’s the only real advice that I could give to people, because the reading helps your thought process. You’re brain develops when you read. And writing is just practice. That’s all it is. Like I said, it took me a long, long time to get the job that I wanted, but I wrote anyway. Carve out time in your free time to do what typing of writing that you want to do.