My first instinct in writing a difficult essay about the difficult decision to leave Sox Machine was to tell the story about how I found Jim's work so influential when I first began writing, that I began imposing limits on my consumption, so that I might start to find my own voice.
It just felt like a story I had told before, because it's actually the exact anecdote I used when I joined this site 2½ years ago. The aging process is great and I am very excited to experience more of it. Telling a polite but confused Caleb Bonemer at the Futures Game how he reminds me of Carlos Quentin is surely only the beginning.
A better story to tell at this point might be how I interacted with Jim's work as a beat writer from afar, since that's how I'll be doing it again while covering the White Sox for the Chicago Sun-Times.
An MLB team -- even a decidedly off-center, indie rock one like the White Sox -- is a massive, multi-faceted organism, and it turns out that clubhouse access is just another sort of blinkered perspective. Talking to players, coaches, scouts and executives has produced the best work of my life. It's allowed me to build a career out of what I once -- and quite recently, up until when Jim and Josh were generous enough to bring me aboard -- feared was just an idle passion project.
What it has not done is make the perspective of the informed outsider, a plugged-in community of devoted readers and fans; a blog, for the continued lack of a better words, that combs through the sea of available media about a major league team for connective threads, prevailing themes, and overlooked details, any less vital. Just earlier on the day that I'm writing this, a commenter pointed out Billy Carlson's absence from the Kannapolis lineup that led to me getting an injury update on the former 10th-overall pick. And tomorrow I'll interview the team's pitching director armed full of questions informed by Jim's dutiful coverage of the minor leagues. So it has been, so it will ever be.
I quickly lost count of how many times at The Athletic that I wound up throwing a question into an interview that began as point of inquiry raised by Jim in an article, Josh in a podcast, or upnorthsox in the 189th comment of a gamethread. It's what made it clear this arrangement with me at Sox Machine would be aces from the start, and it's going to continue to be part of my process in the future. The job here is ultimately to serve White Sox fans, and this is best conversation with Sox fans in town. I so deeply appreciate you all, and hope that a decent amount of times, I got you the answers you were looking for.
There is a media ecosystem that builds up White Sox coverage, and it's healthiest when outlets like Sox Machine are strong. Not only do Jim and Josh make their readers smarter baseball fans, but they often empower their readers to present their questions about the team and the sport better than legacy media institutions do.
I was proud to contribute to Sox Machine for these last few years, but I will be counting on Sox Machine going forward. I'll still be here every day, reading and learning. I hope you will be, too.
