When I joined The Athletic last Aug. 23, I never imagined that I would end up teammates with many of the best baseball writers in North America. We already had five city verticals—Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Toronto and the Bay Area—and were planning to expand to Philadelphia. Our baseball coverage in most of those cities already was quite good. But as a company, we were just getting started, taking deliberate, strategic steps. The idea that we would become a baseball-writing powerhouse within six months was the furthest thing from my mind.

Well, it’s happening.

Start with the great Jayson Stark, formerly of ESPN.com, a friend and one of my heroes in the business for more than 30 years. No baseball writer loves the game or sees the game like Jayson. His work bursts with humor, creativity and insight, and now his useless info—and useful info—will be available only on The Athletic. I’m almost shaking with excitement, knowing we will be working together for the first time. Jayson will start on April 1.

Our national staff also includes J.G. Taylor Spink Award winner Peter Gammons, former major league general manager Jim Bowden and the head of our own analytics department, Eno Sarris. The editor of our baseball coverage will be Emma Span, who previously worked at Sports Illustrated. And yesterday we announced regular coverage of 20 of the 30 major league clubs this season, with a roster that amounts to an All-Star team.

As some of our additions became public, clever fans took shots at baseball’s slow off-season on Twitter, joking, “The Athletic is signing more free agents than any major league team.” If you’re keeping score, it’s not even close—and we’re not done. We expect to continue adding writers, both at the local and national level, to provide the type of in-depth, well-crafted coverage that has been The Athletic’s trademark since the company launched in Chicago at the start of 2016.

Our rapid expansion in baseball is possible because you, the readers, are subscribing in big numbers, showing you value our work. At a time when many websites are pivoting to video for financial reasons, participating in the rise of a site almost entirely devoted to the written word has been one of the most gratifying experiences of my career. As I explained in my introductory piece, as much as I enjoy working on television for Fox Sports and MLB Network, writing and reporting are the foundation of everything I do.

And now I get to do it collaboratively with nearly 30 fellow baseball writers, similar to when I worked for the sports staff at The Baltimore Sun from 1987 to 2000, but focused on only one sport.

When I’m on Fox and MLB Network, I’m part of a large team, not just of broadcasters, but of producers, camera operators, audio technicians, even makeup artists—more people than the average viewer probably can imagine. Yet, except for a period at Foxsports.com from 2009 to ’16 with Jon Paul Morosi, I’ve worked largely without writing partners most of my career as a national baseball writer. I much prefer to be part of a team. The ability to share information and ideas leads to better work.

The men and women we’ve hired are among the best and brightest in the business. Like all of the writers at The Athletic, they will not be restricted by the rigid deadlines and space constraints of newspapers. They will have time to report, time to write, time to give readers the depth and context that too many outlets no longer are equipped to provide.

I won’t make any predictions; if you follow me regularly, you know my regular-season and postseason predictions generally range from awful to brutal. But when I joined The Athletic, I might have finally gotten a forecast right. I wrote that from the beginning of my career, the print outlets I worked for have been underdogs. Then I added, “I don’t suspect The Athletic will be an underdog for long. We are daring to be great, and that is a heck of a place to start.”

I’m not saying our days as an underdog are over; it’s too early to make such a claim, and besides, that’s for others to decide. But what I said about our vision, about daring to be great, I got that part right. We were daring to be great then. We are daring to be great now. And we hope you join us for the ride.

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