On The Colorado Rockies’ Beat: Ben Hochman’s Great Work

Apr 10, 2015; Denver, CO, USA; General view of Coors Field before the start of the game between the Chicago Cubs against the Colorado Rockies. Mandatory Credit: Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports

Ben Hochman is doing great sports journalism work covering the Colorado Rockies and, more generally, baseball in Colorado with a summer must-read series.

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Kudos to Ben Hochman of the Denver Post, who’s back at it with more great storytelling in the paper’s Nine Innings series – features on baseball that sometimes have to do with the Colorado Rockies, but probably more accurately, reflect the impact baseball is having on communities in Colorado.

If you haven’t seen his latest yet, read this nice story about a lifelong baseball fan who has come back to the game in what, for most, are the very last years of their life.

I’ve said it before, and I know that enterprise journalism and features like what Hochman is producing don’t come cheap, and they take a lot of time to produce. In a digital world that’s fast leaving behind (and/or significantly changing) “legacy” media institutions, the dollars for stuff like this are drying up everywhere.

That doesn’t mean it can’t happen somehow, somewhere. It’s refreshing to see the Post produce original content that isn’t of the opinion variety.

Not that there’s anything wrong with opinion commentary – let’s be honest, we do a ton of it here – but it comes cheaply and it’s easy to produce. For a blog at a scale like Rox Pile, opinion commentary is fine, and probably preferred. For a larger institution like the Post, the less opinion commentary and the more thoughtful, nuanced stuff they can produce, the better.

It’s a stark – and important – contrast to see just how much better Hochman’s work is than, say, the Denver Post Sports Show. Like, head and shoulders above. Anybody can do what the DPSS guys do. No, really. You can do it with your iPhone. What do you think all these YouTube sports commentators are doing?

But hey, this isn’t even a new thing I’m writing – we discussed a similar idea just a little while back.

Point is, if you haven’t already, or you’re not keeping up with the series generally, you should start reading the Post’s Nine Innings series and, the rest of Hochman’s work more generally.

Inning One: Peggy and Mark LoRusso

Inning Two: Obie Sanni and the Jennings Family

Inning Three: The Eaton Reds

Inning Four: Lou Rotola

On The Colorado Rockies’ Beat: Ben Hochman’s Great Work

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