Meet the women of SB Nation’s MLB Team Brands

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.

We have dozens of women covering pro and college sports for our team brands here at SB Nation. Meet one of those talented writers, Tawny Jarvi, who writes for our Minnesota Twins blog, Twinkie Town.

My parents were both baseball fans, and my older brother was always the best kid in little league, so I grew up around the game. I pretty much just wanted to beat my brother at something for once because I was always losing to him at video games. To practice, I made my poor mother pitch tennis balls to me for hours on end, mostly ricocheting them off various parts of her body. Never did beat him though!

We have dozens of women covering pro and college sports for our team brands here at SB Nation. Meet one of those talented writers, Maija Varda, who writes for our Minnesota Twins blog, Twinkie Town.

I fell in love with baseball because of my mom. She grew up in northern Minnesota and has been a Twins fan since the day the team moved here in 1961. I was born and raised in Minneapolis, and my mom instilled the same fandom in me. We’ve gone to hundreds of Twins games together. It didn’t hurt that the Twins won two World Series in my formative years, either. The Twins and the Lynx are the only teams that have ever done anything for us Minnesotans.

We have dozens of women covering pro and college sports for our team brands here at SB Nation. Meet one of those talented writers, Stacie Wheeler, who writes for our Dodgers blog, True Blue LA.

I was born into Blue and come from a long familial line of Dodgers fans going back to my grandfather, who rooted for the Brooklyn Dodgers in Boston. My brother and I grew up watching Dodgers games together, and we took score by hand in our personal ‘scorebooks’ while watching games — the ones that were televised — on our console TV in the 1980s and ‘90s. My uncle, who was at Sandy Koufax’s perfect game, took us to countless games at Dodger Stadium as kids.

We have dozens of women covering pro and college sports for our team brands here at SB Nation. Meet one of those talented writers, Stacy Marlow, who writes for our Atlanta Braves blog, Talking Chop.

I can thank my twin brothers for my love of baseball. We spent countless hours at the baseball field from the time they were 4 years old. I can’t remember a night in season that my family wasn’t gathered around the TV watching a Braves game. Still to this day I watch or listen to all 162 Major League games, attend spring training and affiliate games, and passionately track statistics, player status, and trade rumors. Being a true Georgia peach and growing up during the 90s, I can’t imagine loving another team like I do my Braves.

We have dozens of women covering pro and college sports for our team brands here at SB Nation. Meet one of those talented writers, Renee Dechert, who writes for our Colorado Rockies blog, Purple Row.

I grew up on a farm in rural Wyoming, and when I was a kid, we had limited television access and no regional MLB team. But we always watched baseball, following the players that interested us. When I went to graduate school at Texas A&M, I finally experienced baseball in person and fell in love. I became an Olson Field season ticket holder and learned how to fill out a scorecard. Baseball kept me sane. My first season, the Aggies had three very talented left-handed pitchers and made the trip to Omaha.

We have dozens of women covering pro and college sports for our team brands here at SB Nation. Meet one of those talented writers, Sam Bradfield, who writes for our Rockies blog, Purple Row.

My grandfather was a HUGE baseball fan and took me to White Sox spring training when I was really little — even before I really remember! Whenever my grandparents would come to visit, my grandpa and I would play catch or tee ball in the backyard when it wasn’t too hot (we lived in Phoenix at that time). After he passed away, I lost a little bit of my interest, but my family still went to scattered games after we moved to Denver. When the Rockies went on their impossible Rocktober run in 2007, that really got me back into it.

We have dozens of women covering pro and college sports for our team brands here at SB Nation. Meet one of those talented writers, Hannah Auringer, who writes for our Colorado Rockies blog, Purple Row.

I fell in love with baseball at a young age. My dad would bring my three sisters and me to Coors Field, driving us down from Longmont to spend a wonderful afternoon with the Rockies. I adored the well-manicured field, the crisp uniforms, and above anything else, a Rockies win. I loved the Rockies, but I also started admiring the sport itself. Anywhere we’d travel, we’d visit the local baseball stadium to catch a game. I’ve been hooked ever since.

We have dozens of women covering pro and college sports for our team brands here at SB Nation. Meet one of those talented writers, Caitlin Rogers, who writes for our Yankees blog, Pinstripe Alley.

Growing up, I was that kid who tried out for every sport at least once. I was on the quest to find the perfect fit. Between first grade and high school, I tried everything from basketball to cheerleading to taekwondo. You name it, I tried it. I was so interested in the idea of baseball that I not only played t-ball, but also tried out for softball three consecutive years. I failed to make the team (I have a similar skillset to Brett Gardner, if Gardner could only throw the ball 15 feet). It finally dawned on me that I could at least watch it if I couldn’t play it.

We have dozens of women covering pro and college sports for our team brands here at SB Nation. Meet one of those talented writers, Michelle Berthiaume, who writes for our Red Sox blog, Over the Monster.

I fell in love with baseball at a pretty young age. My dad has always been a huge Boston sports fan, so I was exposed to it a lot growing up. Once I was old enough to understand what the Red Sox meant to the city of Boston, I was immediately enamored by the Sox and the sport itself. My first trip to Fenway Park was when I really started to feel the way I do now about baseball though.

We have dozens of women covering pro and college sports for our team brands here at SB Nation. Meet one of those talented writers, Cristiana Caruso, who writes for our MLB Daily Dish.

Falling in love with baseball was something I was born into. I grew up taking the 4 Train to Yankees games with my dad, brother, and uncle. I remember sitting at my first game ever —which was a big deal to me because it was Beanie Baby Day, but ended up being David Wells’ perfect game — feeling so at peace and at home, that I had so much passion for this game to uncover and it was just circulating through my bloodstream. My love for the team and the game was so well-nourished by my own curiosity and my family’s willingness to field any and all of my questions. I also played baseball until I physically couldn’t anymore, spending an intangible number of hours in my backyard running drills and wishing to be the first woman to go pro in the MLB (I made myself a trading card, #noshame).

We have dozens of women covering pro and college sports for our team brands here at SB Nation. Meet one of those talented writers, Carmen Kiew, who writes for our San Francisco Giants blog, McCovey Chronicles.

My father is my main influence into baseball — while he signed me up for ballet classes, he also toted me to Candlestick Park to watch extra inning games and also had sports talk radio on. He was my personal teacher to the game. I grew up a Giants fan because of Dad and his love and passion for the sport.

We have dozens of women covering pro and college sports for our team brands here at SB Nation. Meet one of those talented writers, Sami Higgins, who writes for our Giants blog, McCovey Chronicles.

I was born into a baseball family. My first identity was not Californian or even American, it was Giants fan. But what led me to fall in love with baseball was playing it in the empty lots in the trailer park where I grew up. We would go out there and play wiffle ball, with ghost runners, and we all thought we were Barry Bonds, about to hit a grand slam full of ghost runners.

We have dozens of women covering pro and college sports for our team brands here at SB Nation. Meet one of those talented writers, Isabelle Minasian, who writes for our Mariners blog, Lookout Landing.

My mom is a big baseball fan; she was an early beneficiary of Title IX and played baseball when she was young, and has likely eaten more Dodger Dogs than she’d care to admit. I grew up playing softball, but insisted on using her ancient baseball glove until a coach gently suggested that I might have better luck catching softballs with a softball mitt. My Mariners fandom developed as a result of my quest to be “special” in elementary school — surrounded by A’s and Giants fans, I adopted the team of my birth state, with little regard for how profoundly this would shape the rest of my life.