Goodbye, Baseball

After six years of covering the Dodgers, I’ve decided to step aside to focus on things away from baseball. 2018 was a challenging year personally and the time is right to move on.

I’ll still hang around the site in the future and will be in charge until someone takes my place.

It’s been a wild ride that has given me more opportunities than I could’ve imagined and memories that I will tell my grandchildren about someday. They won’t know the summer sound of Vin Scully while watching a Dodger game, but they’ll hear about the time I had a conversation with the Legend while unknowingly wearing chocolate from a cookie on the side of my face.

I’ll probably skip the time another writer introduced me to Ron Cey and I said “hi, I’m Ron” as I extended my hand to greet him. Don’t worry, I played it off well because sometimes Ryan sounds like Ron if you mumble.

I’ll never forget the friendships I’ve made and the conversations we’ve had. I learned a lot from Eric Stephen and will always be grateful for his help over the years before and after he brought me on at True Blue LA. I still don’t know how he was able to post so much, the man is a machine.

Taking over this season wouldn’t have happened if there wasn’t a great group of people to help along the way. Each and every person who contributes — both in posts and comments — to making this site what it is, will continue to do so as a new leader emerges.

The journey started so randomly for me towards the end of 2012. Four episodes into a podcast I had started with a friend, I was offered a spot at Valley Bay News to cover the Dodgers as they started a new site. I hadn’t ever given a thought to writing until the moment I was contacted about doing so.

By July of 2015, I joined TBLA to handle the Facebook page and occasionally contribute. As a lifelong Dodger fan, I’ve been fortunate to experience Dodger Stadium and the team in a way not too many fans will.

It’s not every day you sit in the Dodger dugout during batting practice, listening to Andre Ethier and Eric talk about what 1980s song Ethier should be using as his walk-up music.

The Dodgers made the postseason every year I covered the team and the last couple have been stressful. I hardly slept during the postseason because of the long extra innings, but I loved every minute of covering a World Series in person. I look forward to watching them finally win another championship, hopefully next year.

For now, I say goodbye to baseball.