An Interview With Yankees Beat Writer Bryan Hoch
This story was originally published in The Hawk Eye Newspaper in November 2019 and has since been edited for content.
The Major League Baseball (MLB) season is a long, treacherous journey. The preparation starts long before the season begins, for most teams that don’t make the postseason, after the regular season. In stark contrast to the lengthy workout routine many players perform, most MLB.com beat writers begin their preparation with research and thought about rosters, player history, and opposing teams they will be facing in the upcoming season. Each MLB team has a beat writer, who is assigned to report on the team wherever they may go, whether it be to Boston, Toronto, London, or even to Iowa, where the Yankees were supposed to face the White Sox this upcoming season.
Bryan Hoch has covered New York baseball for the past two decades, working the New York Yankees clubhouse as an MLB.com beat reporter since 2007. Bryan is the author of “The Baby Bombers: The Inside Story of the Next Yankees Dynasty,” which was published in 2018 (revised for paperback 2019), and a co-author of “Mission 27: A New Boss, A New Ballpark and One Last Ring for the Yankees’ Core Four,” to be published in 2019. Regularly seen on MLB Network and heard on many radio stations throughout the United States, Hoch’s work has also been featured in Yankees Magazine, New York Mets Inside Pitch, and on FOXSports.com. Raised in Sloatsburg, N.Y., Hoch began his journalism career during his freshman year at Suffern High School, launching a popular “Mets Online” web site that would eventually open doors to big league press boxes. Since joining the Yankees beat, he counts witnessing the closing of old Yankee Stadium, the World Series celebration of 2009 and the final days of the “Core Four” among his most memorable experiences on the job. Hoch is a two-time New York City Marathon finisher (2010, 2011) who still fondly recalls getting a Fantasy Camp hit off a Jeff Nelson slider. He loves “Back to the Future,” vintage Topps cards, Ron Burgundy quotes, good bourbon and compelling games. I got a chance to correspond with him and ask a few questions.
What is life like as a beat writer?
It’s a fun and challenging career, and this is my dream job. Generally speaking, my job is to cover everything that happens with the Yankees, which includes the games on the field, the players in the clubhouse, events that take place at Yankee Stadium and the business that takes place in the executive offices. Including Spring Training and the postseason, I cover approximately 140 to 150 games each year, which means I’m on planes and in hotels a lot. While watching the games is a huge (and fun!) part of the job, writing and reporting are the real keys. The aspect that I enjoy is developing relationships with the people connected to the Yankees and having the opportunity to tell their stories.
What is your favorite story you have ever written?
It’s difficult to pick just one, so I’ll give you a few. I enjoy the stories that take me out of the day-to-day grind and go a little deeper behind the scenes. In Derek Jeter’s final season, when everyone thought we’d learned everything there was to learn about him, I did a feature about his daily Starbucks trip (venti red eye, black) which summed him up as a creature of habit. I even went to his favorite Starbucks in Tampa and talked to the baristas there. I remember doing another story about player nutrition and talking to a lot of future Hall of Famers about how they fuel their performance. This past season, I did an oral history of David Cone’s perfect game that was enjoyable to work on. Maybe my favorite, though, was talking to the dads on the Yankees circa 2016 for a Father’s Day story. I was about to become a father and my angle was to ask each of them, guys like Joe Girardi, Mark Teixeira, and Alex Rodriguez, for their best piece of advice. We have that printed out and put aside for my daughter to read someday.
What was your life like before the Yankees?
I came on the Yankees beat in 2007. I grew up in Rockland County, N.Y. loving baseball and knew I wanted to do something in the game, and I always enjoyed writing. At age 14, I started what you would today call a blog about my favorite team at the time, the Mets. This is in the dial-up days of the Internet, so my website (“Mets Online”) predated Mets.com and became very popular. This led to a number of opportunities, including interning with the Mets during the 2000 season (including the World Series) and having the chance to cover games as a member of the working media. During college, I freelanced for a number of outlets, including FOX Sports and Mets Inside Pitch, the team’s official newspaper. I also worked for Mets.com, and when the Yankees beat opened after the ‘06 season, I was hired to become the beat reporter.
What is being a MLB writer like on a daily basis?
The first thing I do every day is to read my competition to see if they have anything that we don’t. Hopefully not! I generally try to get to the Stadium 30 to 45 minutes ahead of the clubhouse access time, which is 3:20 p.m. for a home game. When I arrive, I’ll have a few ideas in my notebook of things I want to ask about, work ahead on or follow up on. Preparation is a huge part of the job, as is forward-thinking. We have access to Aaron Boone twice a day, before the game and after, at which time we can try to get updates on whatever is happening with the team. I watch batting practice on the field, then go upstairs to write my notebook — generally 600 to 900 words. During the game, I am working on my running (no quotes) game story, as well as any necessary sidebars that get pushed out immediately (an injury, a record being broken, etc.). After the game, we go downstairs to interview Boone and the players, and I have 90 minutes to transcribe that and re-write my story into a final edition. Then you go home and do it all over again!
Who is your favorite player to talk to?
I get asked this a lot. As reporters, we don’t root for the teams that we cover, but I root for good stories. Part of that includes players who make our jobs enjoyable. Over the years, I’ve loved getting to know so many terrific players on a first-name basis — Monument Park names like Jeter, Mariano Rivera, and Andy Pettitte come to mind. I also loved having Johnny Damon and Nick Swisher in the Yankees clubhouse. On the current roster, it’s a good group. Brett Gardner, Aaron Judge, and CC Sabathia have all been terrific Yankees and great to deal with.
Although last season wasn’t the result Yankee fans wanted, keep an eye out for Mr. Hoch’s articles throughout the season detailing the Yankees successes from the start of Summer Camp
