Meet Sara Sanchez from Bleed Cubbie Blue

We have dozens of women covering pro and college sports for our team brands here at SB Nation. Meet one of those talented writers, Sara Sanchez, who writes for our Chicago Cubs blog, Bleed Cubbie Blue.

I grew up in a baseball family. My brother and I played wiffle ball in the living room with our dad until my mom made us move the game outside when I was about five years old because we started hitting the ball too hard. When I was nine, I brought the Little League sign up home, only to be tremendously disappointed that girls “didn’t play Little League.” I’m not easy to deter, however, so I stayed involved however I could. My dad coached the team, my brother played, and I kept the scorebook, operated the hand scoreboard in left, and when I was older, I channeled my inner Harry Caray and announced my brother’s Little League and Babe Ruth games on the PA system.

All of this led to my first byline, because our little town had a paper, but not a lot of people to cover every event. So at 13 years old, I started writing up some of the Little League All Star games and was thrilled when they were published by Price, Utah’s Sun Advocate.

This will sound cliche, but like Cubs fans all over the country, I love this team because of WGN. Growing up in Utah in the 80’s, there were only two options if you wanted to watch a team regularly: The Cubs on WGN and the Braves on TBS. I picked the Cubs and my brother picked the Braves. (He later picked the Yankees, then the Mariners, then the Giants, and now the Yankees, again). While that worked out better for him in the short term, I’ve never wavered since the Sandberg game, and it definitely worked out better for me in the long run. In fact, through a series of lucky career moves and decisions, I moved from Utah to Boston, and then to Chicago in 2015. Nothing has ever been better than falling in love with Cubs baseball as a child and then living five blocks from Wrigley Field and writing about the greatest Cubs team in generations as an adult.

Favorite is going to be tough. There have been a lot of magical moments, including every message I get from people who take the time to read my work and let me know what they think. Every now and again I get some really incredible ones and have made some new friends that way, like the guys on the Away Games Pod. But honestly, my *favorite* moment is probably still my first official story on the masthead. The universe collided in a weird way that allowed me to cover my day job and baseball at the same time. It was a huge step in accomplishing a lifelong dream of writing about baseball. I smile every time I think of 13-year-old me writing about baseball in rural Utah. That girl had no idea she’d get to cover the Cubs someday.

I’ve honestly been tremendously lucky on this front. I feel like 95% of the interactions I have with readers are thoughtful and come from people who have the best intentions. I had also been part of the BCB fan community for a long time, so it helped tremendously that I already knew most of the frequent site contributors and commenters when I started. That said, there have been some odd moments, I remember going to a meetup hosted by another site last year and being *keenly* aware that I was one of maybe five women in the room. It took about an hour for people to believe I was there to talk about baseball, and then another thirty minutes or so of answering questions before I felt comfortable. I definitely spend more time answering baseball trivia questions than my male friends (special shout out to the guy who mansplained Lester coming into the game during Game 7 of the World Series to me). I’m also very cautious about separating my personal and political views from baseball because I’ve seen how women in this industry take heat for that.

I’ve been a member of the BCB community since before it was part of SB Nation. It’s a really incredible community of Cubs fans. When I was living in Boston, there was a New England BCB meetup when the Cubs played at Fenway for the first time in almost 100 years. It was a ton of fun. Cubs owner Tom Ricketts came by to say hi to our group and President of Business Operations Crane Kenney had an extra beer that he wound up giving me, so I like to say Crane Kenney bought me a beer once. Oh, and the best part. I met Al Yellon. We’ve been friends ever since. When I moved to Chicago a few years later I’d always sit with their group in left field when I had a bleacher ticket.

During the Cubs’ absolutely magical World Series run, I happened to let him know I had some cool pictures of the Wrigley Chalk Wall that spontaneously showed up after the Cubs won the NLCS. He asked if I wanted to write it up. I did, and he published it with a shout out to my old screen name. The next week I wound up writing up a piece about cover charges in the neighborhood and he was interested in that too. During the World Series he asked if I wanted to write for the front page more regularly, and while I think I said something like “absolutely, I can put together a piece or two a week.” I kind of left out the part where writing about baseball was a lifelong dream of mine. I still sort of pinch myself sometimes that I get to write about my favorite team and my favorite sport.

It would probably be too simplistic to say “all of them,” right? But honestly I’m amazed by every woman I encounter in this industry. I try to seek out stories about women doing incredible things in baseball. Specifically I never miss things from the following women: