The Playoffs

Ray Carter
An interesting thing happened last night; the Cardinals won their playoff game against Philadelphia. It was described to me as David v. Goliath. If a major league baseball team were to have a dream team the Phillies would be it.  At first this might not seem like it has anything to do with an internship but soon you start to see why a sports department is needed in a newsroom. St. Louis is a huge baseball city, and it seems like area residents are bombarded to love baseball from birth. The Cardinals have a pretty significant stake in the area. Some of the area's best known restaurants and charities have Cardinal ties. 

It's interesting to see how the sports office works in conjunction with a major league playoff game. It works just like the actual game. At the beginning, everything starts out slow with laughing and complaining. Soon anxiety starts to set in when the team isn't doing what you want them to do. Immediately complications soon pop up. People have to run scripts, shoot video and try to gather stats. One bad thing leads to another, and a lot of people are literally running all over the place. The intern gets caught in the middle with trying to learn how to do certain tasks at a quick pace. I had to learn slang for certain words in script writing that were totally different then the "textbook" version.

During the third through eighth innings, there's a nice break in the office. The six and ten o'clock shows are hours apart, giving the producers plenty of time to get work done. A little while later, the game starts to heat up again. With this comes a lot of running in the sports department. Most of the works consists of trying to look up facts and figures for the late night audience.  As soon as the ten o'clock show comes on, everyone's nervous. The game is usually at it's peak. Most of the staff can't do any work until the weather report's shown, making things slightly complicated. A few seconds before the sports report, the fate the game is usually determined. The interesting part is trying to hand of scripts quietly while the anchors are on air; I learned the system. Everyone's relieved when both shows are over. At the end of the night both players and reporters are ready to head home, giving an interesting insight into the world of professional sports.