In the sports media business or any business in general, the path to get to the ultimate destination can be completely different compared to another person. Sometimes, it is the decisions you end up not making that end up being the best ones. For Jared Carrabis, the host of the Baseball Is Dead podcast, fans can still listen to him based on a decision he didn’t make a decade ago.
Carrabis was a guest on the Rise and Schein podcast with Adam Schein this week and Schein asked him how he emerged onto the scene in the industry. He went on to talk about how in 2012, he was able to get paid to write about the Boston Red Sox for the first time, but there were things that got him to consider not doing it anymore.
“In 2012, that was the first year that I got paid to do what I do. I got paid to write for, there was a magazine that kind of adopted my blog and they paid me weekly to do it. 2012 was a horrendous season for the Boston Red Sox.
“I know it sounds dramatic, but I fell out of love with not baseball or the Red Sox, but wanting to do this for a living because it was so toxic, it was really bad. I butted heads with the people that adopted the blog because they were print and they were just ‘What is blogging?’ They were trying to give me writing assignments and I was like the whole point of blogging is I want to write about something, I write about it. It’s an elongated tweet in a way.”
The butting of heads made Carrabis consider going to join the Marines and it almost happened, but one person ended up causing him to reconsider.
“I was like, I’m going to join the Marines. I took the written test, I took the physical test. I knew that if I wasn’t going to follow through with my intended career path of being in sports media and covering baseball and the Red Sox, I at least want to do something my parents are proud of. That was the only other alternative for me.
“My mom ended up writing me this letter begging me not to go. I was going, that was it. I read the letter, reconsidered, and 2013 happens. The Red Sox won the World Series and it kind of reinvigorated me.”
Due to that decision, Carrabis ended up bringing the blog he had back, but he went in a different direction that allowed him to get noticed by Barstool Sports.
“The following year was when I relaunched my blog. Not only am I going to relaunch my blog, but I’m going to bring in a team of writers. I was kind of following other Red Sox fans on Twitter. If you are witty or funny or interesting on Twitter, you can blog because you can just expand on your tweets. I built on my team for 2014 and that’s when Barstool noticed me. It was kind of a weird path, but that’s how we got there.”
Carrabis has gone on to do work at other places such as 98.5 The Sports Hub, NBC Sports Boston, and now at NESN among other places. But, to think one decision almost cost baseball one of its most trending talents in multimedia, it’s safe to say listeners and readers are glad he decided to continue writing.
