About Anna McDonald

As I compose this, I am not composed.  I've been choked up for the last hour and a half over the news that Anna McDonald likely has written her last regular article.  There are many of the same emotions I felt when Tim Wakefield retired - the strongest link to a chapter in my past is now broken, the chapter has ended, and I have to embrace a new reality.

Today I essentially finished revising my book draft on negligent communication before submitting it to my friend in book publishing to get advice on the next step.  There's a lot of emotion bound up in that effort, as it's a topic I feel strongly about and that I think needs more people exploring it.

You know who first said to me, unsolicited, that I should write a book?  Anna.  More or less after my stint at The Hardball Times ended due to looking for work, then finding work, then becoming a columnist in Magic: the Gathering, Anna e-mailed me saying she had read my archive and it, among other things, helped her start establishing enough confidence to write herself, as she had just started to do at The Hardball Times.  I was going through a lot of emotional stuff at the time, and she was willing to listen and care about me, and together we boosted each others' confidence enough to get ahead. 

For a long time, she beat herself up over an aborted attempt to interview Todd Worrell.  But even as I suspect there was always that bit of trepidation, she's interviewed tons of players and coaches since then: Bill DeWitt III; John Mozeliak; Joe Kelly; Adrian Beltre; Devin Hester; and others.  And she had a great interview style, being particularly adept at sculpting the interview into a narrative, which was aided largely by her asking thoughtful questions to begin with.  There was a fullness and a richness to her interviews, and her regular essays carried the same thoughtfulness and level of detail.  There was always a gracious balancing of opposing opinions, and you left the article feeling like you really had gained something.

That style served her extraordinarily well when she became a leading media presence on youth football concussions, spurred by her son's involvement in the sport.  She was part of a momference hosted by the NFL to help teach safety-conscious football techniques - a conference commissioner Roger Goodell spoke in.  If I had told the 2010 Anna McDonald that she'd hear the NFL commissioner speak to her on the NFL's invitation, and that her experience would get her an article on the front page of the New York Times, she wouldn't have believed me.  But that's how it ended up.

And this is the woman who put the bug in my head to write a book.  Admittedly, when I completed the first draft quickly in 2011 and she didn't have the time to read it, I was devastated - way more affected by it than I ought to have been - and didn't pick up the material for another 18 months.  I'm in my mid-20s; I'm not as mature as I would like to be.  But the point is that she believed in me in a way no one else had dreamt to believe in me.  And so on the day when the project she started in me came full circle, finding out her writing career has come full circle as well is incredibly emotional for me. 

Ultimately, Anna was the biggest fan of my baseball writing, and I wound up becoming one of her biggest fans in return.  Her sportswriting far eclipsed mine in quality and in popularity - ESPN and the New York Times are kinda big venues - and I was always kind of in the back as something of a proud parent, like maybe I had some sort of legacy.  It's a vain thought, I know, but friendships intertwine like that, where you're just honored to be a part of something special, no matter how small or large.

And that's why the news feels a lot like Tim Wakefield retiring.  As long as Anna was writing, I still had a stake, sort of, in current sportswriting, an anchor point for when other things were chaotic.  I went from a 9-year-old squirt to a baseball writer to a lawyer with Tim Wakefield still pitching for the Red Sox.  And I went from a confused twentysomething in Alabama to an arguably competent lawyer in Seattle with a mostly-completed book while Anna McDonald was writing for ESPN.  And I kinda rooted for Anna the same way I rooted for Wakefield; there was a personal investment beyond the basics.  (Wakefield is from my mom's hometown, and Anna and I had all these e-mails and times when we helped each other out.)

I'm out of words to describe the feeling.  When Anna's last article publishes on ESPN, it's going to be a bookend for something I never wanted to end.  As she tweeted to me on August 29, "I would have quit writing a LONG time ago without your encouragement."

And I wouldn't have accomplished what I have without your encouragement, Anna.  I'm going to miss your writing more than you know.  You mean a whole lot to me, and I hope that our next chapters are as fulfilling as this chapter has been.

-Brandon Isleib
September 26, 2013