Meet Josey Curtis from Viva El Birdos

We have dozens of women covering pro and college sports for our team brands here at SB Nation. Meet one of those talented writers, Josey Curtis, who writes for our Cardinals blog, Viva El Birdos.

I fall more and more in love with baseball as the seasons come and go. I’ve grown interested in the in-game strategies over the years and watching games closely enough so that I can ‘manage’ along with the actual managers. I will admit that I am not very statistically savvy, but that is an outlet I attempt to study and hope to be fluent in someday.I cover the Cardinals because that’s the team I have grown up (in life and in writing) following. I watch all the games I can, of any team, and I am pretty proud that I know the majority of the coaching staffs and players of all MLB teams.

My favorite experience covering the Cardinals for Viva El Birdos isn’t a specific instance, but rather the several times when I can have conversations with readers about the game. I really enjoy getting personal feedback (emails, Twitter/Facebook responses, etc.) with fans and being able to connect with them. It’s always neat to see fellow fans who share opinions with me, but I also try to learn from any differences that I come across. It would be difficult for fans to find a website better than SB Nation for meaningful sports conversation, and I really mean that!

I consider myself lucky to work for SB Nation, in the fact that I haven’t faced many challenges that I know so many others in the sports writing world have. The aforementioned feedback is typically in good nature, but there are also some not-so-nice things said on occasion — and almost all of them stem from me being a woman. If one was going to question my baseball knowledge, I would not try to stop them; I would request, however, that they find something other than my gender to use against me.

I got my start at Viva El Birdos writing farm reports in May of 2016. I spent at least two to three hours, two evenings a week, reading through Minor League box scores from Triple-A to Rookie ball and striving to write stories that were fun to read but also as informative as possible. (The longest farm report I can recall writing was over 1,700 words, and if any of you read that from start to finish, I’d like to hear from you!) I sometimes contributed analysis pieces and eventually got the opportunity to manage the website in April of this year. I am so grateful to have gotten that chance and appreciate greatly the writers I have on staff who put tremendous thought and effort in all of the their writing.

At SB Nation specifically, Tanya Bondurant and Jeanna Thomas were immeasurably supportive as I took the leap from a writer at Viva El Birdos to the manager of such a truly great site. The nerves were still there — and remained for a few weeks — but without them and their words, I was hesitant to take the spot in the first place. In the sportswriting world as a whole, Jenifer Langosch of MLB.com is a woman I have admired for years. I read all of her work, and when I work on an analysis piece or game recap of my own, I love that I catch myself using a similar writing style that she does. Brittany Ghiroli and Jane Lee, also of MLB.com, are two women whose writing I rarely miss out on.